Weekly Meditation

We Catholics hear the word evangelization more frequently these days.  Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have reminded us that every disciple of Jesus is called to be an evangelizer. Pope Paul VI in 1975 gave us the Apostolic Exhortation, "On Evangelization in the Modern World." Several excerpts can help us understand  better what the word means for us.

We wish to confirm once more that the task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church. It is a task and mission which the vast and profound changes of present-day society make all the more urgent. Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. (# 14)'

... the Church evangelizes when she seeks to convert, solely through the divine power of the message she proclaims, both the personal and collective consciences of people, the activities in which they engage, and the lives and concrete milieu which are theirs.(# 18)

Above all the Gospel must be proclaimed by witness...All Christians are called to this witness, and in this way they can be real evangelizers. (# 21)

During this year dedicated to St. Paul who was the great evangelizer in the beginning days of the church, some of his sharing with the Galatians (2:19b-20) can motivate us: "I have been crucified with Christ, and the life I live now is not my own; Christ is living in me. I still live my human life, but it is a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself  for me".

Bishop William R. Houck
President Emeritus, Catholic Extension