EVANGELIZE!

LISTEN
Give thanks to the Lord for He is good! Laying on your back in some plush green grass on a mid-summers day too look up into the sky. The clouds moving above, changing shapes and sizes with the sun's rays highlighting their edges. There's a brilliancy to those silver-edged clouds reflecting the intensity of the sun. It's almost as they are as white as light. Now imagine seeing Jesus in front of you with that same intensity and brilliant ambiance. There's Moses and Elijah with Jesus and what does St. Peter want to do...keep on laying on his back looking up at the clouds taking it all in. Are we lying flat on our backs, not doing anything about our faith or are we heading down that mountain top after experiencing the power and the glory of Jesus Christ? Or still yet, have we experienced this revelation in our lives? Has Jesus revealed His glory to us?
This will be a three part homily. Don't worry only part one will be today. We are hoping to have a group called the Evangelical Catholic put on a workshop here at St. Pius on March 7th & 8th. The point of the workshop is to further educate us as a parish community on some effective means of evangelization. First, it will educate us on what exactly it means to disciple someone into the faith. Lastly, the workshop is here to help us have a comprehensive vision of our parish. It is not another program, but a way to approach existing ministries. Although I am speaking only at a selected few Masses each weekend these next three weeks, I will be posting this series as a podcast so you can hear all three homilies. My hope is to prepare us for the workshop.
The Evangelical Catholic has three steps rooted in sacred scripture and Church teaching to form a practical way to bring others into a relationship with Christ. The first stage is to evangelize someone. Second, it is to establish someone in their faith. Lastly, it is to equip them for ministry. EVANGELIZE, ESTABLISH, & EQUIP. Today we reflect on evangelization.
Evangelization is a difficult word for us Catholics to say. We believe that evangelizing has some connotation to it that means we will force our views upon someone else. To evangelize means we have to hit someone over the head with the Bible and tell them to repent and believe in Jesus Christ or their damned to hell. However, if we relegate evangelization to these stereotypes we are selling ourselves short. To evangelize simply means to share the Good News with someone. There are multiple ways in which to do this, but evanglization is to be seen as a gift given to another, not something forced down someone's throat.
St. Peter and the disciples after seeing the glory of the Lord at the Transfiguration may have had the notion to stay up on that mountaintop. We too, as habitual Catholics tend to gravitate toward this very human behavior. We create a parish and it grows. Over the years we begin to settle into a routine and we become comfortable doing that thing we call SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). We cherish our community and find ourselves enjoying our time together up on this mountaintop. We enjoy speaking with only those we know, we become familiar with how things work and complacently approach our faith as a one hour Sunday obligation. Before we know it, our intense experience of Jesus' revelation becomes diluted and we only share it the midst of ourselves. We get comfortable and remain on this mountain. God is calling us to bust through our parish doors bringing this transformative power we've experienced out into the places we live. We've segregated our lives of parish faith life within the confines of this place rather than bringing it out to the world.
Look at Abram in our first reading! He's called by God to go forth from the land of his kinfolk. God calls us to go forth from our own kinfolk, those people we are comfortable with into a new land. Hi, “My name is Bob. Nice to meet you. I've never seen you here before. Where you from?” We must invite others to Jesus Christ.
Interestingly in today's Gospel, as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus charged them, “Do not tell the vision to anyone, until the Son of Man has been risen from the dead.” Why? Aren't we supposed to spread the Good News? Yes we are! We are called to bring the Good News to the world, but in their case, the Good News hadn't happened yet. Jesus hadn't been raised from the dead. The Good News is that death and sin have been conquered by the risen Savior—Christ the King! He shattered sin's stronghold on humanity and has been glorified giving us our only hope for embracing life in all it's fullness!
We can not evangelize unless we too have experienced a transformation of our lives. We have no Good News to share if that Good News hasn't shattered sin and death in our lives! We can't give what we don't have! A precursor to being able to evangelize is to have our own hearts changed by the Good News! It is only then that we can bring others to this same faith. It is only after we've received God's unconditional love in our lives that we would even desire to bring it out to the world. As a parish, we can ask ourselves if we come here simply out of routine or if we come here to have our lives changed. The fruit of a life changed is the desire to change the lives of others! This is at the root of evanglization. So Jesus is fully right to recognize this silence until we come to believe that He is truly risen from the dead!
Evangelization then becomes a way for us to reach out to others to give them the greatest gift imaginable...eternal life! If we don't really believe in eternal life or are even convicted beyond a doubt in its existence, how could we possible invite others to it! Evangelization won't occur unless we have been converted; unless we're on-fire! The time in our Catholic Church is for a new springtime of evangelization. Listen to John Paul the Great!
Do not be afraid to go out on the streets and into the public places, like the first Apostles who preached Christ and the Good News of salvation in the squares of cities, towns, and villages. This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel. It is the time to preach it from the rooftops. Do not be afraid to break out of comfortable and routine modes of living, in order to take up the challenge of making Christ known in the modern 'metropolis.' It is you who must 'go out into the by-roads' and invite everyone you meet to the banquet which God has prepared for his people. The Gospel must not be kept hidden because of fear or indifference. It was never meant to be hidden away in private. it has to be put on a stand so that people may see its light and give praise to our heavenly Father.
We may not be inviting others because we ourselves have not been converted! For instance, we have fish fries, fish boils, Church picnics, gatherings of different kinds, but is the sole reason for these events to evangelize or have they become some a culturally Catholic thing to do because that's just what we've done for years. At the heart of everything we do must be the desire to bring someone into a relationship with Christ. You could have gone to Church your whole life and done the entire Catholic thing, but you still could not have a relationship with HIM! Conversion is the precursor to evangelization.
St. Paul says to Timothy and to us, “Bear your hardships for the Gospel. He saved us and called us to a holy life.” We must understand that being comfortable and routine is not bearing our hardships for the Gospel. We all come to be feed each and every week at this altar and we bring so much of our live's defeats and struggles. However, we can not use these as an excuse not overcome them by opening our hearts more to Christ's great love for us. God has been made manifest through the appearance of Jesus Christ.
Next week, we'll concentrate on what it means to be established in our faith. Hopefully, this weekend we can ponder the ways Jesus is calling us to get off our backs, to be blinded by the light and come down that mountain.