by Seth Evangelho

Last week's tip was about the inner transition from "evangelization to immanuelization," our personal becoming of God's presence in the world. The reality of baptism is that our lives have been taken up into God's mission, and this is experienced by those around us when God's love is encountered through the authenticity of our own love, through our being truly present in such a way that those around us know they are loved.

This week we must ask the question, How? How do I become God's presence? To answer this most critical of questions, I turn once again to Frank Mercadante's new book:

Engaging a New Generation: A Vision for Reaching Catholic Teens

Obviously we don't just "become God's presence." This is a work of supernatural grace and a total gift on God's part that we should be so fully a part of his mission in this world. But it's a gift he wants to give us... and humility is the secret. Mercadante puts it this way:

"The immanuelizer wins hearts by selflessness, rather than spiritual or ecclesial stardom. Evangelistic credibility is the result of respecting others, rather than demanding respect because of positions or titles. Like Jesus, the immanuelizer's authority and power comes via humility and powerlessness" (p. 112-113).

What is the humility of love? I define it as living with 'eucharistic' anticipation. In my day to day interactions with people, opportunities arise constantly in which I can give myself as a gift. It's often in small ways, even in ways that go unnoticed, but through these little 'acts of love' my heart is opening to the life of Christ, and I'm becoming his presence.

Living with 'eucharistic' anticipation is a habit, and developing it is twofold. Lest we be tempted to love by our own strength and fail, it begins first in our reception of Holy Communion. As Catholics we can so easily get into the habit of receiving Jesus with an almost indifferent attitude towards what is happening. Are we really letting him love us? Are we receiving him as openly as we can? And are we truly giving ourselves back in communion? Each time we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, we're forming a habit, good or bad. It's either a conscious cultivation of openness to his love, to his power in our life, or a (more unconscious) habit of hardness and indifference to his love.

The more we cultivate this openness in our reception of the Eucharist, the more Jesus begins to live through us when we leave the church building. That's the first movement of 'eucharistic' anticipation. We anticipate his love for us as we approach the altar. The second movement, now that we're filled, is outward. We now have the divine strength necessary to "let love be genuine and hate what is evil," to "hold fast to what is good and to love one another with brotherly affection," to "anticipate one another in showing honor" (Romans 12:9-10).

The humility of love begins with the humility of God. That he would want to dwell in me shatters the darkness of my hardened heart and opens it to receive him. Having received him, I can now become him in small ways throughout the day. Because "it is no longer I who live but Christ in me" (Galatians 2:20),  I really can give myself in the humility of Eucharistic love.

The season of Lent has begun. Having been reminded of the need to repent of our sins, and marked with ashes on our foreheads, we enter into six weeks of penitence and prayer; preparing for the celebration of our redemption at Easter. As the snow seems to keep piling up endlessly, the bitter cold sets in (as I write this the temperature in Laconia seems to be plummeting by the minute), the joyful notes of "Gloria in excelsis Deo" and "Alleliuas" no longer resound in our churches, the flowers have been taken away, and violet seems to cover everything, it is easy to become gloomy and depressed. But Lent is not a time of gloom and doom; it is a time of JOYFUL anticipation. While we now walk with our Lord in his passion and crucifixion, we look forward to his resurrection in glory at Easter.

Lest we be tempted to gloom and depression the Church in her wisdom has given us the Gospel for Ash Wednesday to remind us of how we are to give alms, to pray, and to fast. 

MT 6:1-6, 16-18 reads:

Having now celebrated the First Sunday of Lent our penitential Lenten observance is in full swing. Normally I would post the audio of my homily, but alas technology has failed me, as for some reason my iPhone stopped recording after about 7 seconds into reading the Gospel. So instead of the audio of my homily, I present to you the text of my homily. Maybe this is a little more penitential—it is for me since I had to actually type it up today, as I don't normally preach from a full text. 

What is Pelagianism?
Pelagianism is a late 4th Century heresy that was propagated by the Celtic monk, Pelagius who lived in North Africa. He taught that God’s grace was NOT necessary for salvation since human nature was not TRULY corrupted by sin. Thus human weakness was due to the environment in which one lived, or to bad example. This meant that God’s favor was to be obtained by moral rigorism and extreme ascetic practice alone—outside of God’s grace. This was in direct opposition to St. Augustine, his contemporary, who taught of the supremacy of God’s grace over free-will.

Pelagianism has often reared its ugly head since being condemned at the Councils of Carthage in 418 AD, and Ephesus in 431 AD, but usually in its less obvious form, semi-pelagianism. Semi-pelagianism basically teaches that God meets us half-way. I take a step toward him, and he takes a step toward me. While that seems harmless enough, and kind of appealing (as heresies often are), it is still wrong. St. Paul says, “It is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Phil 2:13) The desire for holiness--to draw close to God--is already a result of God’s work in our life

Pelagiansim, semi-pelagianism, neo-pelagianism?—thats a mouthful. Neo-pelagianism is just a modern form of the same old heresy. Its basically the belief that I am justified by own actions. We see it in the very common pop-religious belief that niceness ("I'm a nice guy"), or being "a good person" somehow can guarantee admission to heaven. This erroneous belief leads to a culture of minimalism. I'll just punch the card, check the box, do the bare minimum I need to do in order to slide in. The result of this attitude is an inability to know the sheer audacity of God’s mercy. A person who believes this can’t grasp fully the "Good News" of salvation, and thus can’t know or communicate the JOY of the Christian life. The proclamation of the "Good News", the Gospel, has to be part of EVERYTHING we do. Proclamation is not just about teaching WHAT Jesus did, or about him, but WHO Jesus is, and actually introducing people to him. Jesus is a person, not an idea.

There is a great word in Greek for this kind of proclamation; Kerygma. Kerygma is used nine times in the New Testament. Pope St. John Paul II defined it as “the initial ardent proclamation by which a person is one day overwhelmed and brought to the decision to entrust himself to Jesus Christ by faith.” (Catechesi Tradendae) In other words, kerygma is preaching an encounter with Jesus Christ. Pope St. John Paul II also said in “Mission of the Redeemer” that, “a renewed kerygmatic proclamation of Jesus Christ crucified and risen has a power and a special anointing which comes from the Holy Spirit and which cannot be minimized or overlooked in the missionary enterprise.”

"The prayers of the Church on earth establish a communion of mutual service and goodness which reaches up into the sight of God. Together with the saints who have found their fulfillment in God, we form part of that communion in which indifference is conquered by love. The Church in heaven is not triumphant because she has turned her back on the sufferings of the world and rejoices in splendid isolation. Rather, the saints already joyfully contemplate the fact that, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, they have triumphed once and for all over indifference, hardness of heart and hatred.” (Lenten Message, Pope Francis, 2015)

He also tells us:
"Every Christian community is called to go out of itself and to be engaged in the life of the greater society of which it is a part, especially with the poor and those who are far away. The Church is missionary by her very nature; she is not self-enclosed but sent out to every nation and people.”

The Ark of Noah served as a refuge for the peace and order of creation, preserved so that the light contained within could re-enter the world after the flood. This prefigures the Church, which bears the light of Christ. After the storm had subsided and the flood was over Noah opened the windows and doors of the Ark in order to let that light out into the world. Do we not do the same each time we come together for Mass? The priest says, "Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life," or something similar. In Latin its, "Ite missa est"—"Go you are sent." The light of Christ in the Church is meant to flood the world and transform it. Let us then repent of self-referential indifferentism, and be the missionary disciples we are called to be.

Pope Francis is calling on us to engage in a formation of the heart this Lent. Turning away from the self-sufficiency of neo-pelagianism and the sin of indifferentism means we have to have strong yet merciful hearts—closed to the evil one, yet open to God. I think it is appropriate to end with Pope Francis' very own conclusion of his lenten message:

"During this Lent, then, brothers and sisters, let us all ask the Lord: “Fac cor nostrum secundum cor tuum”: Make our hearts like yours (Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus). In this way we will receive a heart which is firm and merciful, attentive and generous, a heart which is not closed, indifferent or prey to the globalization of indifference."

Have a blessed and fruitful Lent!
- Fr. Jeff

p.s. If you have some questions about Lent, what to do for penance, etc... pop over to our Lenten resource page. 

by Seth Evangelho

What does this mean? It means that if we want people to encounter Christ, if we want to evangelize effectively, it's going to have to be through us; through our words and, maybe most importantly, through our actions.

"Immanuelization" means becoming God's presence in the world. It means evangelizing the world through God's presence in us. If we're going to convict someone of the power of the Gospel, we must do so not through rational argument but through a living witness, through the way we carry ourselves, and through the way we give ourselves. Rational argument is still very important, of course, but it's no longer the normal gateway to accepting the truth of Jesus Christ. Modern culture is saturated with neatly marketed products (and lifestyle choices), and the Gospel is being filed away as one option among many.

Immanuelization shatters this paradigm because it's "God with us" and acting - noticeably - in us. We are the Gospel! And, insofar as the people in our lives actually come to recognize the unequivocal truth of Christ through us (according to my new favorite book), this will come about in two key ways.

First, it comes through our ability to accompany people on their personal journeys of life. I've mentioned Pope Francis' call for this in earlier posts on The Art of Accompaniment and The Art of Listening, but we can never be reminded enough about this basic virtue of human relationship.

Jesus is truly and fully present to us. He became one of us. Christian charity is first about letting Jesus become flesh in us, and then it's about using that divine strength, now alive in us, to imitate Christ's love and allow our lives to become incarnate in the lives of others.

Basically, it means cultivating our ability to be truly present. Jesus is truly present to me. Am I truly and fully present to the people around me, to the person right in front of me? If I am, I do so only with Christ's help, and that means it's not just me they encounter but Christ in me.

St. Paul really brings this home for me: "God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Then there's this quote from St. John: "We love, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). In other words, Christ loves us where we are, in our brokenness, in our sin, and in our rebellion even! That's the real victory of evangelization on our part.

If our goal is numbers in the Church, we have failed to answer the call. The goal, for us, should not be the conversion of sinners. We're not actually in charge of that (that's the Holy Spirit's job). Our goal is our love, experienced. When someone knows he is loved by me, right where he is in his sinfulness (and in his separation from the Church), I am victorious in my efforts. That's what our world needs to experience from the Church: our love, right here and now, regardless of whether or not they decide to "accept Jesus as Lord and Savior." There's no ulterior motive; we actually love them for who they are.

When we come to love others "while they are yet sinners," and they experience our love as such, they are encountering God in their midst. This opens the door to deeper encounters with the Lord and, God-willing, conversion, repentance, baptism, and all the rest.

This book, Engaging a New Generation, has truly been an eye-opener for me. It's written as a solution to frustrated youth ministry programs, but it's really for anyone and everyone interested in renewing the life of their parish, beginning in their own family. Echoing the wisdom of the Church, it's calling us to authentic human relationship. 

Here's a link if you want to order it on Amazon:

We'll talk about the second secret to "immanuelization" next week...

In Sunday's gospel, Jesus heals a leper. This story from the Gospel of Mark is one of the many accounts of Jesus' healing ministry. What makes this particular story stand out is how Jesus encountered the Leper. As the first reading from the book of Leviticus indicates, lepers were outcasts in ancient society. 

GET THEE TO A CONFESSIONAL!

- Fr. Jeff

by Seth Evangelho

I'm a big fan of the catechism, and I've been reading it religiously (pun intended) for many years now, but something struck me recently, something I had never realized before. Have you ever noticed how it ends? The final section of the catechism is a line by line explanation of what we're really saying when we pray the Lord's Prayer (CCC 2759-2865). I knew this, but I experienced a kind of epiphany not to long ago. The entire body of Catholic doctrine, I realized, leads us to call God "Our Father." That's what all the teachings are for! Every doctrine is meant to draw us into this final event of faith where we unite fully with Jesus and call God "Father." 

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that, ultimately, the whole point of every teaching of the Church is to help us enter more perfectly into this father-daughter/son relationship with God. In fact, I think that's precisely what the Church is teaching us by arranging the tenants of faith in this way. It's all about cultivating "a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God" (CCC 2558). If we don't come to know him as Father, with the intimacy and affection of true sons and daughters, we've missed the point of everything Jesus came to reveal. His words and deeds, both during his earthly life and now through the life and teachings of his Church, are falling on deaf ears if we aren't coming to know the Father's love better through them. 

"In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a son" (Hebrews 1:1-2). "In giving us his Son, his only Word, he spoke everything to us at once...and he has no more to say" (St. John of the Cross, CCC 65). 

by Seth Evangelho