New Evangelization


New Evangelization

September 1, 2022

Because I am a Liaison in the Beacons of Light program, I received a copy of Father James Mallon’s book called: Divine Renovation. After a few days I picked it up and read the first 35 pages. I was awestruck and realized; even after more than 20 years of Catholic education, I really did not understand the Mission of the Church.

As a Liaison in the Beacons of Light program, I offer advice to my Pastor on secular not spiritual matters. That makes sense since he is an ordained priest and has a Master’s Degree in Divinity. However, as a Catholic I feel obligated to share what I learned in reading passages from Divine Renovation and offer a suggestion to my fellow Knights. You will know the Bible verses I cite but I believe this discussion will make you think more deeply about those words and your faith. I will be paraphrasing several excerpts from Father Mallon’s book.

Father opens by providing an account of the Titanic sinking. It’s a story many people have not heard. In the eighteen lifeboats that were launched, there were 472 unused spaces! After the ship disappeared under the water, there were about 1,500 people floundering in the icy waters while those in the lifeboats watched from a safe distance. Only two lifeboats decided to rescue survivors, but first they transferred passengers to other lifeboats to maximize the space they would have. It is a recorded fact that some first-class passengers complained about this terrible inconvenience. By the time the two lifeboats undertook their mission to save lives and rowed to the victims, only nine people were found alive of which three died later of hypothermia. Father then shares his thought that this is a metaphor for the Church. We exist for a purpose; we have a mission. Like Jesus, we are sent out to seek and save those who are perishing and there are plenty of seats on our boats but we sit and wait at a safe distance. We lament the loss of faith, secularization, and church and school closures, but do we pick up an oar and row?

So, what is the mission of the Church…what is its purpose and what does that mean for us as Catholics and Knights of Columbus? At the end of his gospel, Matthew discusses a meeting Jesus had with the apostles after His Resurrection. Matthew 28:18-20: Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always until the end of the age.” This instruction is called The Great Commission.

The 11 apostles were Christ’s nascent Church to which He gave four tasks: Go, Make, Baptize and Teach. Father asks which of these four verbs is the hinge; that is the heart of our purpose and the task that gives us our identity as followers of Christ? The answer is Make! How do you make disciple? Go out to all nations, baptize and teach.

The Greek word for disciple means to be a learner. The problem is we are supposed to make disciples but most of us have not yet learned to be disciples ourselves! Although the laity of our Church is more educated and professional than at any other time in history, the corresponding literacy in things of faith, theology, scripture and spiritual life lag behind.

Why aren’t we learned disciples of our Faith? In earlier generations, demographics supported our pastoral development with the birth of children and movement of migrants. We only had to build the churches and schools and the people came and filled them. Those earlier generations were not particularly good at making disciples either but obviously it was not to their detriment. As long as they opened churches, there were always communities of new migrants and babies. As long as they baptized and taught in the schools, they pumped out good “practicing” Catholics. They got away with not making disciples because the culture propped it all up.

Then came the 60s with the sexual revolution, mass media, post-modernism, materialism, social media, relativism, individualism, hedonism and every other “ism” and suddenly all the fault lines were revealed. The last 60 years can arguably be seen as the most accelerated change in human history but as we moved through several paradigm shifts in this generation; the pastoral practices of the Catholic Church remained unchanged, continuing to rely on a culture that wasn’t there to support faith and church attendance!

Today there are hundreds of thousands of faithful, believing Catholics who carry an enormous burden…their children and grandchildren have abandoned “the faith.” These faithful Catholics carry the added burden of blaming themselves, unsure of what they did wrong. Afterall, they did for their children what their parents did for them. This feeling of shame is pointless because the rules changed. We no longer have cultural props, and social current has turned against religion.

So, what is the solution? The only answer is we must return to what Jesus instructed his Church to do 2,000 years ago; to not just make believers or “practicing” Catholics but to make disciples. How do we make disciples? Something more than just going to Church must happen and that is we must have an insatiable hunger for Evangelization. To evangelize is literally to announce the good news. We must announce that in Jesus we have the very embodiment of God’s salvation; His presence, love, mercy and life. The good news is that Jesus is alive and real. In John 14:6, Jesus told Saint Thomas: “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Christ is the Way of living. We are called to live a life that glorifies God and praises Him in all things. St. Paul tells us in Galatians 4:5 that we are adopted children of God. Once baptized, Christ adopted you into His Kingdom, and God began to dwell inside you. You must strive to live as children of the Light, remembering that it is the Holy Trinity that dwells inside you; the life of God is animating your soul. As long as you remain faithful to His Word, loving Him by doing what He commands, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are within you.

Christ is the Truth, revealing the Father to us and reminding us of the intrinsic value that we have. Jesus longs to speak to you in the midst of all your pain and brokenness, bringing the infinite love of God the Father, who “gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (John 3:16). He longs to redeem you from sin and to protect you from evil. By staying close to Him, you will not be deceived by Satan, but will remember your dignity and true destiny. You have intrinsic dignity because as was written at the beginning of the Bible (Genesis 1:26) you are created in the image and likeness of God. And no matter what the sin and pain, this dignity can never be taken away. The Father is always ready to forgive you and pour His mercy on you.

Finally, Christ is the Life that each of us is called to live. At the end of his second epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes in 13:13: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Saved by Jesus Christ, who fulfilled the love of God, you are called to enter into communion, with the Holy Spirit; your being is animated by the life of the Holy Trinity inside you. This is the essence of the Christian Life. Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:16: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”

The Beacons of Light program can be a growth approach to fill our churches and schools rather than close them. That growth needs to be fueled by being committed to the New Evangelization. In the Knights of Columbus, we proudly say “Where There’s a Need, There’s a Knight.” I can’t think of any greater need in the Church than its Mission to Make Disciples. Imagine the impact if all Knights in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati began to Evangelize and make disciples.

Vivat Jesus! Pro Deo Et Patria!

Sir Knight Thomas Pedtke