Promising to Evangelize in a New Year: Is the Gospel News?
All of the parishes of the Archdiocese are getting involved in “Sharing Christ’s Gifts”, a campaign to make us stewards eager to share the material gifts Christ has given us. Stewardship is a form of discipleship. A disciple of Jesus Christ has received gifts from the Lord, and the Lord asks his disciples to be generous with others as he is generous with them. The reports from the parishes indicate that the generosity which is a sign of Christ’s life in us is strong, and I am grateful to the thousands of Catholics in the parishes of the Archdiocese who are making the “Sharing Christ’s Gifts” campaign a success.
But the stewardship instruction is only half of the campaign to share Christ’s gifts. The more important gifts from Christ are spiritual. Sharing the Gospel, the sacraments of the Church, the apostolic faith and other spiritual gifts makes us evangelizers. Evangelizing, I was told when I first came to Chicago as Archbishop, is the first goal of the Archdiocese. In 2002, I hope everyone will begin again to consider how, as disciples of Christ, we are called to share not only his material gifts as stewards but also his spiritual gifts as evangelizers. Materials to help us understand more deeply the call to evangelize are being prepared and will be in the parishes before Lent.
We have just discovered again that celebrating Christmas is impossible without giving gifts to others, because Jesus is the Father’s gift to the world. God makes us a new creation in Christ, forgiving our sins and forming us into the Church. The purpose of evangelizing is to make Jesus Christ known and to invite people to be part of the company of his disciples in the Church. The motive of evangelizing is gratitude for what Christ has given us. The method of evangelizing entails our own personal renewal in the faith and in living Christ’s life in his body, the Church.
The Archdiocesan evangelization project will be called “Spreading the Holy Fire.” It has been put together under the guidance of Franciscan Father Joseph Kruszynski, and will be vetted with the Presbyteral Council and the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council. When the Pope speaks about the new evangelization, he does not propose a magic formula or even a new program. He speaks of the plan of God which “has its center in Christ himself, who is to be known, love and imitated so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity and with him transform history until its fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem.” In the sacramental life of the Church, Christ transforms us and implants in us the desire to bring others to discover life in him, which makes the life of future glory present now in word and sign.
There are obstacles to evangelizing. The fundamental obstacle, of course, is our own sinfulness, which isolates us from Christ and deprives us of spiritual energy and purpose. But Catholics are also often hesitant to speak of Jesus to others because they do not know their own faith well enough to share it. An evangelizing Church is a Church which catechizes her own members and leads them securely into the vision of things given us by faith. The publication of The Catechism of the Catholic Church a decade ago as a sure point of reference for explaining the faith was background to the mission to evangelize. The Catechism is being used to renew and reform catechesis in all our archdiocesan programs, and there are many other aids to adult catechesis available now.
Another obstacle to evangelizing is a defective understanding of the Church herself. By Christ’s own decision, one cannot know him adequately apart from his body the Church; but the internal disputes which mark Catholic life make the Church a less effective witness to her Lord. The anti-Catholicism that pervaded the national cultures of northern Europe after the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago also shaped the dominant American culture here; it shapes as well the mind-set of Catholics who are products of the now secularized individualistic culture in which we live. Individualism in religious faith and practice is background to many of the disputes in the Church today. Judging when an individual voice is prophetic and when it is simply maverick is a discernment that takes time, and the Church is slow to judge on important issues and must be respectful always of persons. But some of the disputes today are turf wars that erupt when individuals want to do it “their way”, no matter the clear and settled teaching of the Church and despite the tradition that unites us to Christ through the ages. Few of the divisive issues that sap our energy and distract us from evangelizing are original. What is somewhat original is the idea that one can definitively abandon articles of faith and continue to claim membership in the faith community. Those with more personal integrity make no such claim but simply explain that they have given up the life of faith in exchange for an individual quest for “spirituality.”
A major difficulty in evangelizing often arises when, moving from personal conversion and life in the faith community, the Catholic evangelizer works to transform the general culture according to the Gospel. Outreach in charity, especially through hospitals and schools and social work, has marked the Church’s ministry through the ages. In the last century, the Church began to speak more insistently about social justice. Do charity and justice create a social agenda that is original, genuinely new? First of all, believing and worshiping do create an original culture expressive of both love and justice. When the life of the faith community tries to influence the general culture, however, it is easily co-opted or diluted. The Catholic evangelizer becomes party to larger movements—labor unions, political reform, volunteer organizations-which are good in themselves and deserve support but which can mask the originality of the Gospel’s social consequences. Some Catholics and other Christians can therefore be tempted to withdraw from the larger movements that change society, but it is better to remain fully in them and act as a leaven.
This Archdiocese has a long and noble history of Catholic social activism. There are many lay Catholics who understand their role as transformers of society and culture. Their faith is put into action not so much in officially Catholic organizations but in secular institutions. This is evangelizing, provided that faith can be itself and be explicit in its motives and program. The Gospel and the Beatitudes exclude methods incompatible with the faith, e.g., the promotion of hatred among peoples or class warfare. The Catholic evangelizer will bring a set of questions to judge the need for social change: what is the degree of actual suffering inflicted on people in order to keep a social system going—starvation, discrimination, reliance on imprisonment? Is it possible for honest people to become leaders? How is political and economic power obtained, maintained and exercised? What is the degree of manipulation employed to preserve the present system? Is life arranged in such a way that opposition is systematically eliminated? What are the complaints of the poor? A moral analysis of society by Catholic evangelizers brings Catholic social teaching into dialogue with a particular society. In the United States, the fight to overcome racism must remain a priority, although it uses different means from generation to generation. In the Chicago area, affordable housing has drawn attention because housing protects human dignity, the population is in great flux and the government itself has turned its attention to rebuilding the city and neighborhoods. Behind the cases in point, social transformation according to the Gospel is integral to Catholic evangelization wherever Catholics live.
Conversion to Christ, life in his Church and transformation of society are the results of successful evangelizing. As we share all of Christ’s gifts in the New Year, new life will be born in this local Church. God bless you with a peaceful and joyful New Year.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
