Feast of Pentecost
Cycle C
June 9, 2019
Saint Mary Parish, Pylesville 4pm and 8am
Saint Matthew Parish, Baltimore 11am
Evangelization
When I was a child, my parents would sometimes take us to downtown Baltimore and I remember seeing some street preachers.
These preachers were trying to convert people to Jesus. They would shout and decry everyone’s sinfulness and threaten damnation if people didn’t listen.
This is my earliest recollection of what is called evangelization. We hear this word used a lot today even by Pope Francis.
The word comes directly from the Latin word that means gospel or good news. So, evangelization means that we bring the gospel or good news of Jesus to the world around us.
As I look back, I wasn’t hearing much good news from those street preachers when I was a child. It felt so scary and negative.
Naming Grace
Recently I came across an insightful way to understand evangelization here in the twenty-first century.
One of our Catholic theologians says that evangelization is first of all about naming grace – naming grace. It is not really about bringing God to people, as though God were not already there.
Instead, when we evangelize, we name or identify or point out how God is already present. As I have come to see it, this means that our human experiences can speak to us of God.
So, evangelizing first requires us to be interpreters of everyday human experience. We are to look at life with the eyes of faith and help each other see life as touched by God.
It is looking at the human and everyday and seeing the divine right there. I think this insight is excellent and must be the first step of evangelization in this century and culture.
Examples of Naming Grace
So, for example, a child is born. And we stand in awe of this new life from God.
Or, we forgive someone, even though we feel that we ourselves gain nothing from this. And we know that the power to do this had to come from God.
Or, we sacrifice for another person, for a daughter to go off to college or for a person in need whom we never even meet. And we are aware of a spirit within us that moves us to do this.
Or, we are taken by the magnificence of a sunset. And we wonder about the something, or Someone – spelled with a capital S – that is behind all of this.
Or, we find ourselves really loving someone. And we sense that there is mystery to this that transcends human explanation.
Naming Jesus
So, we need to name the grace of God in ways like these.
That, I believe, must be the first step of evangelization in this century and culture. We point out and identify God’s presence, already in our midst.
And that presence, my friends, is the Holy Spirit. It is who the Holy Spirit is and what the Holy Spirit is about.
And then, with this naming done, we can proceed to the next step. We can proceed to lifting up the wonderful way of Jesus and inviting others to that.
So, we name grace and make that a conscious experience. And then we name Jesus and make his way a conscious invitation.
And, in both steps, we are positive. We are not like the street preachers I remember as a child and some preachers I hear today, whom I find to be very negative.
We are not condemning or labeling others as in mortal sin. We are not threatening others with damnation and manipulating them with fear.
Instead, we are positive, naming the grace that is already present and then naming the way of Jesus. And in doing this, we are living his way, the way of love and respect for others, no matter what.
Conclusion
This, I believe, is the way to celebrate and grow the presence of the Holy Spirit.
