Gathering on New Evangelization St. Vincent de Paul Parish, Dartmouth Anthony Mancini Archbishop of Halifax-Yarmouth The New Evangelization: The Vision, The Mission, The Ministry The New Evangelization: Who are we and why are we here? We are all here, because, as individuals, we are involved in the life of our church at various levels. Most of us here are people who were invited to an initial brainstorming session last June, to contribute our thoughts on the themes and challenges which I had identified for going forward as the churches of Halifax and Yarmouth, and now, as one Church of Halifax- Yarmouth. Already I had begun to articulate the challenges in key phrases, which I have repeated now on different occasions. I spoke when I first arrived over 4 years ago, about proposing Jesus Christ ; I have talked about refounding our Church shortly after the Ray Lahey crisis and when I returned from Rome at the end of the Year for Priests, I presented the preliminary notion and vision of the New Evangelization. I saw it as having a particular applicability to the western culturally connected Catholic Church, but it seemed uniquely appropriate for our Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth as we struggle to find our way to a better place; as we explore and define a new selfunderstanding and as we evolve into a new clarity of purpose and mission. How to bring this New Evangelization to fruition was the question on my mind when we gathered in June. Now, it has become the primary preoccupation of many who are collaborating with me as we engage together in the development of the vision, the mission and the ministry of making the New Evangelization, a lived reality for our church i.e. for each of us personally and for all of us collectively. All of you here today, are persons playing key roles in essential areas of our church s life, so you are more than people in the pews. You are already
persons engaged in varying degrees in specific areas of ministry, crucial to the pastoral care of God s people and who live your faith in the parishes and communities which make up our Church. Because of your specialized interest and your personal engagement, you are, therefore, important, needed and necessary for the successful realization of this major undertaking which is the New Evangelization. Tonight and this weekend, I hope we can get a fairly good grasp of what this New Evangelization is about. The New Evangelization: Experiencing the Power of the Resurrection In fact, this undertaking is more that a diocesan pastoral plan; or something to provide context or framework for what we ordinarily do. It is not just a new packaging or marketing approach to the same old thing! It is a major shift in self-understanding. It is new because we are being asked to envision a 180 degree turn around; to consider the implications of such a call to conversion and accept to change our minds, our hearts; and to modify the way we see, understand and do church. New Evangelization is a process which goes beyond reform and renewal. It s more than re-cycling or re-fitting ourselves; it s about experiencing and proclaiming the Resurrection of our Church, i.e. the Body of Christ. The heart of the New Evangelization is expressed in what St. Paul said in Philippians 3: 10, All I want is to know Jesus Christ; and the power of his resurrection that I may share in the sufferings of his death. Our times and our people need to know Christ our Church needs to experience the power of the Resurrection so that we can overcome the deadness of our circumstances and culture; break out of the darkness of our own tombs. We need to see and understand that daily suffering, pain, 2 February 24-25, 2012
hardship and difficulties are not just to be tolerated or maybe avoided, but lived through with hope because life is greater than what meets the eye. It is this shift in vision and thinking that we are here to grasp and to be grasped by! More concretely, we are here to share together and imagine what we might do to provide opportunities, and create the conditions, here and now, in our church, to experience the Power and the Grace of Resurrection! This time together is about fleshing out what new ardour, new methods and new experience mean or could mean as we take up the New Evangelization. I m calling on you to help our Church to experience this time of grace. This is what makes your involvement and engagement in this mission so important. Without a well trained, formed and well-informed crew, the ship of Peter cannot be safely steered and effectively operated. This ship of Peter, for us, is the Church which is right here; it s the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth. Tonight, by gathering together, we are taking some first steps in mobilizing essential personnel, in identifying the needed gifts and talents required to equip our Church and to successfully complete that part of the journey of faith, which belongs to us, as our mission and responsibility at this time. The New Evangelization: Mission Possible or Impossible Each of you has some knowledge, some expertise; some talent and experience, necessary for us to accomplish the mission. But what is this mission? What is the New Evangelization really about? It s about discovering again! It s about being and becoming faithful disciples of Christ; it s about transmitting the gospel to anyone interested and it s about going to where Christ would like to take us, which I believe, is the establishment, again, of a vibrant and new generation of followers and friends of Jesus Christ. This 3 February 24-25, 2012
means being committed to live Christ s way, truth and life, in today s world; committed to manifesting the true nature and purpose of the Catholic Church and committed to demonstrating a new appreciation of our Christian faith with all of the consequences which this brings to our purpose in life. [Following Christ is about taking up the Cross.] If we take this to heart, the New Evangelization will revolutionize our church and certainly, by much more than what presently happens on any given Sunday! The New Evangelization: A Series of Assemblies of God s People This gathering is one in a series planned for the coming year to deal with the New Evangelization. In each of the gatherings, we hope to be bringing together different categories of people, from the converted to the unchurched, to consider what New Evangelization is; to flesh out its content; and deepen people s awareness of the task at hand. Through these assemblies of committed people, we hope to expand the circles of interest for the New Evangelization, at the same time increasing awareness and enthusiasm for the mission of proposing Jesus Christ; increasing the desire to express our conviction more effectively; motivate the will to show how faith in God and joy in the Spirit is a transforming value, important for our lives as Catholics and demonstrate how and why this could also be true in the lives of people with whom we interact. The New Evangelization: Proclaiming a Value in a Changed World If Jesus Christ, if God; if Church ceases to be spoken about as a value; if it is no longer seen as relevant enough and significant enough to be personally 4 February 24-25, 2012
engaging, then the value will cease to be a value! This is what critical observation indicates has happened for so many in our Church, in our city and in our country. The value of faith has depreciated or it has never been appreciated. For some, God may still be there, but He is no longer relevant! For others, Christ may still be talked about, but who really cares? For the vast majority of baptized Catholics, the church exists, but it is ignored and becoming an empty shell and a disintegrating institution. I hear many people asking: Is this what it has all come down to? Has it all been a waste of time? Have we given ourselves to an illusion? I don t think so. Well, what must we do to turn things around? The New Evangelization: Sharing our Faith and Encountering Jesus Christ We need a resurrection experience! And such an experience of the resurrection happens when we share our faith! Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we need to overcome despair and darkness. As it was for them, so it is for us. We must encounter Christ on the road, and get beyond our inability to recognize him; we must exchange on our experience of life; we must talk about our faith, our hopes and our dreams. This is how the two disciples finally recognized the Lord and experienced the Resurrection. Their shared faith experience caused their hearts to be on fire again; the encounter and the exchange produced a turn around experience, it demonstrated what the Resurrection was about and sent them back to where it all began with a new enthusiasm for the mission and purpose of proclaiming that new life, in Christ is real and possible. This essentially is the goal of the New Evangelization. This is what the New Evangelization proposes as our needed experience and process; but it s a risk and a challenge. The risk involves 5 February 24-25, 2012
exposing ourselves to ridicule; it involves overcoming our reluctance to speak our faith and risk exposing and expressing the murmurings in our hearts and minds. The challenge is to reach out to another and trust that what s in my heart will speak to the heart of the other. Who will take up this challenge? Is our church up to the task? This is what remains to be seen. I m hoping that among us, there are enough interested persons that we can engage and embark upon this new chapter and phase of the journey of our faith. If we want to experience in our own time a new Pentecost, which is the resurrection experience, and the transformative, engaging power associated with it, then like what happened at the first Pentecost, the faith needs to be shared; it needs to be proposed, heard and received. This means sharing how, where, and when the Resurrected Christ became more than a message, but a living person who can be encountered and known; who is experienced as a source of hope; who is welcomed as the liberator from all that would imprison and shut us down; who is seen as the provider of new and abundant life possibilities. Communicating and sharing this faith is the New Evangelization. The New Evangelization: A Call to the Apostolic Ministry At the core of the New Evangelization therefore, there is the apostolic work of transmitting the faith. This transmission happens when each of us is empowered and willing to go across the barriers which separate us to connect with another; to put out for whomever is willing to receive it, the story of where, when, how and why Christ became a personally relevant, significant and decisive factor in our lives. The transmission of the faith is not just about passing on concepts or ideas; it s not primarily about implementing 6 February 24-25, 2012
catechetical programs and teaching moral standards. While all these are important, faith transmission is first and foremost about presenting and proposing Jesus Christ as Lord! The rest will follow! If we want Christ to be known, loved and served, to recall the old catechism words familiar to many of us then Christ must be presented as a person and he must be encountered personally, as the one who saves; the one who makes a difference in the way life is lived and experienced. Encountering Jesus Christ as a person and coming to know Him as Lord and Saviour; as Redeemer and Son of God, is the central and most significant piece of the New Evangelization. If we retain nothing else about the New Evangelization except this point, we will have made great strides in grasping the grace of this mission. The person of Jesus Christ and our experience of him as a living person, is what has been either lost among the membership of our church or has never been there to begin with. I recall what I read about the Quebec Church some years ago (and I must say that I also observed this directly) that the church there had become a powerful institution in Quebec society which controlled people s behaviour but which, as we discovered in the Sixties, had never managed to capture people s hearts with the heart of Christ. Cultural Catholicism has not stood the test and passing of time! This of course doesn t apply to Nova Scotia, but my point illustrates that if faith is not a personal relationship, it s only a concept and we don t give our lives to or have faith in a concept we only have faith in and give our hearts to a person! The New Evangelization: A Spiritual Revival and a New Pentecost What I am saying does not mean that the grace of knowing Christ personally was never there, ever before, because it was. Personal encounter 7 February 24-25, 2012
and knowledge of the Risen Lord, was there at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit fell upon the people and grasped the hearts of those who heard the message. On that occasion thousands were touched by the spark of God s love and were converted from where they were, to what they became. But something happened on the way of becoming the Catholic Church in a context of Christendom. For many the heart was not there! Of course, the personal experience of Christ, as a profound moment of grace, has been present throughout the history of the church. It was there every time there has been a spiritual revival and a new beginning; it has been the conversion experience of the well known saints, but also of the unknown ones, those who make up the vast majority of our faithful ancestors in the faith; and it is an amazing grace experience of many of us today. I am counting on this to be true. Having said this, it is also clear to me that the personal encounter with Christ is not the defining experience it needs to be in our Church; Catholics are not used to speaking in such evangelical language, which calls Jesus, one s personal saviour; or to talk about meeting Jesus. The personal encounter of Jesus is not the obvious and primary note in the present self-understanding of the vast numbers who make up the Catholic Church in Western culture. In our totally secular world, if the New Evangelization is going to have an impact, this is the point which makes it new! Then follows the truth about Christ, which also has to be re-discovered; the reality of God, which has to be re-covered and the credibility of Church, which has to be re-established. This will be done when we go out and proclaim with new ardour the Gospel of Jesus Christ; when it is heard again and received for the first time by many; and as if for the first time, for many others because of the new methods which 8 February 24-25, 2012
we will put in the service of the gospel. This gospel has to be heard and received as grace and good news, in order to overcome dis-grace and bad news. This learning again happens after being touched and transformed by the power of the Resurrected Christ! As it did for St. Paul, this means that we will let go of all that is not important, all that makes up present day rubbish in order to know Christ as one s Lord. For the Church of our time, this means putting aside assumptions and illusions; it means cutting our losses and redirecting our energies, talents and resources to the primary mission. The New Evangelization: The Goal and the Process This, then, becomes the goal of the New Evangelization to facilitate the personally transforming experience of encountering Jesus Christ. It involves letting that graceful moment evolve into a life long relationship. A relationship which moves from the first encounter with the Person of Christ; to exploring the depth of that Person and move on to the discovery of the wonderful mystery of who Christ is. It means also allowing the power of Christ s grace and the changing effect of his mercy, love and forgiveness, to open up new possibilities for one s significant living; ultimately, leading to new expressions of commitment in the various states of life which make up Christian living on a daily basis. This enterprise is what you are being asked to participate in. I am inviting you to become part of this apostolic undertaking and to share in this ministry to promote and make the New Evangelization, not just a slogan or an illusive dream, but a real possibility. I would hope that as we move forward and deepen our awareness and understanding of the concepts, the vision, the mission, and the ministry involved in this apostolic work, the tasks to be done 9 February 24-25, 2012
will become more obvious, more tangible, and more doable. This weekend has been prepared as a first step in bringing together interested people, ready to consider what are the parts and pieces needed to make this evangelizing project come to fruition. Our being here is an opportunity to see and appreciate who we are as baptized and engaged Catholics; identify what the various talents are which we bring to the task; reflect on how they might fit together; and give serious consideration to how our persons, gifts and convictions can effectively be directed towards the realization of the goals and objectives of the New Evangelization. As a formative and engaging process, what we hope to do tonight is only the beginning. To form ourselves more adequately will require time, patience and good will in order to shape ourselves into an effective and efficient network of evangelizers. Do we have the desire to do this? Will we take the time to see in each other, the gift that each one of us brings to this mission? Can we be patient enough to determine what the best ways are to honor and respect each others gifts? Are we open enough to let our presence, our talents and whatever contribution we can make find the proper place it deserves in this ministry, in order for the New Evangelization to happen? I ask the questions but I don t know the answers. Time will tell. The New Evangelization: A Response to the Great Commission Even with lots of unanswered questions in mind, I hope we can initiate the shaping and forming of our apostolic team, by talking with each other, and 10 February 24-25, 2012
by allowing ourselves to be affected by the spark of the Holy Spirit which is in each of us. None of us are here, as experts but all of us are here as persons of faith, with our experience of faith. This is our primary qualification and from our shared faith, we will discern what the Spirit of God is telling the Church of Halifax-Yarmouth; what Christ is calling us to be and to become; and what concrete actions we can do. The New Evangelization is a call to take seriously the great commission - to go out, into the whole world, to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; to teach and proclaim the gospel of Christ. If we respond and accept this commission, then the Spirit of Christ will once again build up His Church in our time, with a new generation of disciples and founded on the rock of faith which gathers us together. 11 February 24-25, 2012