First Sunday of Advent, Year C
First Reading: Jer 33:14-16
Second Reading: 1 Thes 3:12-4:2
Gospel Reading: Lk 21:25-28, 34-36
Jesus calls all the baptized to evangelize and spread the Gospel. This homily is the third in a series of three following the recent Upper Room evangelization event.
“All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or level of instruction in the faith, are called to be agents of evangelization, directed by the Holy Spirit,” said Archbishop Michael Miller CSB at the recent “Upper Room” evangelization event in Vancouver.
“Evangelize” means “proclaim the Gospel.” As I said in my last two homilies, that entails knowing and loving Jesus Christ.
Believers contribute to “the rise of atheism,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church, if they are “careless about their instruction in the faith, or present its teaching falsely, or even fail in their religious, moral, or social life.”
Two Sundays ago, I urged you to know your faith as fully as you can, perhaps by taking the course I teach: The Catholic Faith in Plain English. Last Sunday, I urged you to relate to Jesus Person-to-person through frequent prayer and participation in the Mass. In addition, of course, you must live a life that “bears witness” to your faith.
If you do, the Holy Spirit will give you the self-assurance he gave the apostles, who, as Archbishop Miller said, “did not hesitate to proclaim Jesus as the one Saviour whom God offers to the whole human race, and to call their listeners to repentance and conversion.”
“Their boldness was not a human personality trait,” he stressed, “but a result of their intimate union with Christ and their docility to the work of the Holy Spirit within them.”
“Boldness” and “self-assurance” should not frighten you. As lay persons, you are not called to teach or preach religion formally.
You are called to let the light of your faith shine in “your homes, your minivans, your soccer fields, your office cubicles, your workshops,” and “your local Starbucks or Tim Hortons,” as Archbishop Miller said.
If you know and live your faith, you will find yourself asserting with proud confidence that you believe in God, for atheism is not a reasonable alternative, and that you are a convinced Catholic, for the Catholic Church, founded by Christ, has the fullness of the truth that God has revealed.
That confidence will surface whenever you explain that a proposed appointment conflicts with Mass time, catch someone’s eye and smile after saying grace in a restaurant, tell why you have a crucifix or a statue on your desk, ask where someone’s accent originates and find it to be a Catholic country, say a prayer as you pass a roadside cross or hear a siren, choose a doctor who is pro-life, or question a politician about moral affairs.
Everywhere, today, we find people who are spiritually “wounded, alienated from God, adrift with no sense of direction or purpose,” the archbishop said. “They need healing by direct personal contact with disciples who will lead them out of their darkness to the light and life of Jesus.”
Christ’s Church is a healing Church, but many people do not know the way to the hospital, he said. Lay people are “the first responders” when “a friend or associate is struggling and needs an encouraging word,” or someone’s curiosity about Catholicism becomes a search.
They should not present the faith as a superior to an inferior, he said, but as a friend to a friend, “heart to heart.” As St. John Newman said, “the heart is commonly reached not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description.”
Nor should they present Catholicism as purely negative: “Thou shalt not.” (In my 36-session course, we leave the Commandments until Session 24.) Instead, they should concentrate on what the Church offers us – faith – and what faith offers us – eternal life, as we hear in the Rite of Baptism.
Jesus came “not to condemn the world, but to save it,” so that we “might have life, and have it to the full.”
Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English in both written and YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 11, available on YouTube Nov. 28, is “ A Place for Science in the Catholic Faith.”