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Issue #50 --- Fall 2011
The New Evangelization
Now, after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the Gospel of God and saying: ‘The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe in the Gospel’. With these words Mark describes the beginning of Jesus’ public activity. Matthew, too, sums up Jesus public activity in similar terms: ‘And he went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom.’
The word “Gospel” is the English translation of the Greek word “evangelion”, which is usually rendered as ‘good news’. That sounds attractive, but it falls far short of the order of magnitude of what it actually meant.
The word “evangelion” was in the vocabulary of the Roman Emperors, who understood themselves as lords, saviors, redeemers of the world. The messages issued by the emperors were called in Latin ‘Evangelium’, regardless of whether their content was particularly cheerful and pleasant. The idea was that what comes from the emperor is a saving message, that it is not just a piece of news, but a change of the world for the better.
When the Evangelists adopt the word, and it thereby becomes the generic name for their writings, what they mean to tell us is this: What the emperors who pretend to be gods claim, really occurs here: a message endowed with plenary authority, a message that is not just talk, but reality. … Mark speaks of the Gospel of God, the point being that it is not the emperor who can save the world, but God. And it is here that God’s word, which is at once word and deed, appears. Here it is that the real Lord of the world, the living God, goes into action.
The content of the Gospel is this: The Kingdom of God is at hand. A milestone is setup in the flow of time, something new takes place. And an answer to this gift is demanded of man: conversion and faith. The center of this announcement is the message that the kingdom of God is at hand. This announcement is the actual core of Jesus’ words and works. The phrase ‘Kingdom of God’ occurs 122 times in the New Testament’.
What is the Kingdom of God? The Fathers of the Church, staring with Origen. “Kingdom” is better translated as “Lordship”, the Lordship of the Lord. The kingdom is not a thing, nor is it a geographical dominion like worldly kingdoms. The kingdom is a person, Jesus Christ himself. By the way Jesus speaks of the kingdom of God he leads men to realize the fact that in him God himself is present among them, that he is God’s presence.
What is the Kingdom of God? Origen again. Man’s interiority is the essential location of the kingdom of God. Those who pray for the coming of the kingdom of God, pray, without any doubt, for the kingdom of God that they contain in themselves; they pray that the kingdom might bear fruit and attain its fullness. For in every holy man it is God who reigns. If we want God to reign in us, that his kingdom be in us, then sin must not be allowed to rein in our body in any way. Then, let God stroll at leisure in us as in a spiritual paradise, and rule in us with his Christ. The kingdom of God in located in man’s inner being; it grows outward from that inner space.
Other Images of the Kingdom of God. In recent times there have been a great number of interpretations about the kingdom of God. The most recent of these sees the kingdom in a world governed by peace, justice and the conservation of creation. This kingdom is said to be the goal of history. This is the real task of religions: to work together for the coming of the kingdom. All religions are, of course, free to preserve their traditions, but they must bring their respective identities to bear on the common task of building the kingdom, a world where peace, justice and respect for creation are dominant… It looks as if, at long last, Jesus’ words have gained some practical content. Through the common effort, the kingdom of God is drawing near.
On close examination, this project seems suspicious. Who is to say what justice is? How do we create peace? The main thing that leaps out of this interpretation is that God has disappeared, man is the only actor left on the stage. Religious traditions are regarded just as many sets of customs which people are allowed to keep even though in the end they count for nothing. Faith and religion are now directed towards political goals, only the organizations of the world counts…
Let us return to the Gospel, to the real Jesus. Our main criticism of the secular utopian idea of the Kingdom is that it pushes God off the stage. He is no longer needed. But when Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God, he is quite simply proclaiming God, the living God, who is able to act concretely in the world and in history, and is even now so acting. Jesus is telling us: God exists, God is really God, which means that he holds in his hands the threads of the world. Jesus is telling us that God is acting now, showing himself in history as its lord, in a way that goes beyond anything seen before. The kingdom of God means the “lordship” of God right now.
The kingdom of God is like…It is like the grain of mustard, and like the leaven which is only a small quantity in comparison with the mass of the dough; the kingdom of God is like the seed that is planted in the field of the world where it meets various fates, a rocky soil, a dry season, etc; it is also like the seed of the kingdom that is planted and grows, but an enemy comes and sows weeds in its midst.
The kingdom of God is like the treasure buried in the field, like the pearl of great price: the finder gives away everything in order to attain this good…. The kingdom of God has suffered violence and men of violence take it by force…
Luke tells us of the Pharisees asking Jesus when the kingdom of God was coming. He answered them: The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say “Lo, here it is, or, there”, for behold the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.
Another saying of Jesus: “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” It is in and through Jesus that the kingdom of God becomes present here and now, that “it is drawing near”. In Jesus, God is now the one who acts and who rules as Lord; he rules in a divine way without worldly power, through the love that reaches “to the end”, the cross. Now is the fullness of time, the time of conversion and penance as well as the time of joy. (Thoughts from “Jesus of Nazareth”, vol. 1, by Pope Benedict XVI).
The First Evangelization
In the Acts, Chapter 2, we read…
“Then Peter stood up with the other eleven apostles and in a loud voice began to speak to the crowd…. ‘Fellow Jews, and all of you who live in Jerusalem, listen to these words… Jesus of Nazareth was a man whose divine authority was clearly proven to you by all the miracles and wonders which God performed through him. You yourselves know this, for it happened here among you… You killed him, by letting sinful men crucify him…
But God raised him from death… Yes, God has raised this very Jesus from the dead, and we all are witnesses to this fact… All the people of Israel are to know for sure that the Jesus whom you crucified is the one that God has made Lord and Messiah.’
When the people heard this they were deeply troubled and said to Peter and to the others: ‘what must we do, brothers?’ Then Peter said to them: ‘each one of you must turn away from your sins…’
Peter made this appeal to them, and with many other words he urged them: ‘save yourselves from punishment…’. Many of them believed his message”.
Can the New Evangelization be different from the first?
Why So Many Atheists?
Father Robert Barron has written books of apologetics and continues to publish articles on his website. Every day his website in inundated with remarks of a sharply negative or dismissive nature from atheists, agnostics, and critics of religion. He thinks that atheists have come out of the closet rather aggressively. Following the prompts of Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Bill Maher, and many others, they have found the confidence to (excuse the word) evangelize for atheism. They consider religion dangerous and retrograde. They employ variations of the arguments of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud: that religion is a pathetic projection born of suffering, that it is an infantile illusion, de-humanizing…
How well do Christians know the theories of our intellectual enemies? Do we read the great Christian apologists: Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Ronald Knox, Fulton Sheen? In the Catholic Church we have sadly jettisoned much of our rich apologetic tradition, convinced that it would be better to reach out positively to the culture. Well, at least part of the culture has turned pretty hostile, and it is high time to recover the intellectual weapons that we set aside.
Books From Our Shelves
Catholicism, a Journey to the Heart of Faith
by Fr. Robert Barron, $29.95.
It is Fr. Barron again, this time with a whole book paired with a series of films by the same title, already available at Veritas, Catholicism, the most appropriate book for the New Evangelization. George Weigel calls it the most significant effort ever to advance John Paul II’s idea of it. Fr. Barron seeks to capture the body, the heart and the mind of the Catholic Faith in a style that is both faithful and unique.
“Catholicism, writes Fr. Barron, begins with a jest. The central claim of Christianity is that God became human. The Creator of the cosmos, who transcends any definition or concept, took to himself a nature like ours, becoming one of us. Christianity asserts that the infinite and the finite met, that the eternal and the temporal embraced, that the fashioner of the galaxies and planets became a baby too weak even to raise his head. And to make the humor even more pointed, the incarnation of God was first made manifest not in Rome, Athens, or Babylon, not in a great cultural or political capital, but in Bethlehem of Judea, a tiny outpost in the corner of the Roman Empire.
One might laugh derisively at this joke, as many have over the centuries, but, as G.K. Chesterton observed, the heart of the most skeptical person is changed even by having heard this message. Christian believers up and down the year are those who have laughed with delight at this sacred joke and have never tired of hearing it repeated, whether it is told in the sermons of Augustine, the arguments of Aquinas, the frescoes of Michelangelo, the stained glass of Chartres, the mystical poetry of Teresa of Avila, or the little way of Therese of Lisieux. Perhaps God chose to save us by making us laugh.”
It’s almost Christmas, and it will help us to read this great story again, with Francis of Assisi who enacted it at Greccio. If we are searching for answers to questions about the many mysteries of the Catholic Faith, then look no further. This book is written for us.
Rediscovering Catholicism by Matthew Kelly
Regular: $19.95
This is a most timely book. It may seem to duplicate the one by Fr. Barron, but it is instead more practical, down to earth. The author has “spent hundred of hours reflecting on where we are in our journey as a church, and one thing that has become startlingly clear is that we have forgotten our story.
Consider this question: when Jesus was alive, where were the sick people? Were they in hospital?
Of course not! There were no hospitals at that time… The very essence of health care and caring for the sick emerged through the Church, through the religious orders, in direct response to the value and dignity that the Gospel assigns to each and every human life… A contemporary initiative of direct response to a glaring need is that of Mother Teresa.
It is disturbing that at a time when millions of Catholics are angry and disillusioned with the Church, there has been no significant effort to remind Catholics of who we really are, no strategic effort to raise our morale among Catholics, no organized effort to remind the world that, for the past two thousand years, wherever you find Catholics, you find a group of people making enormous contributions to the local, national and international community.
We spent more than two billion dollars settling lawsuits, but we have not spent a single dime on any special initiative to encourage Catholics to continue to explore the beauty of their faith. We have not spent a dime inspiring Catholics at a time when they are more disillusioned about their faith and the Church than perhaps ever before. That is a tragedy.
The point is: we have forgotten our story. We have allowed the world to forget us as well.” To bring our story to our attention, to live our faith with passion and purpose, the author asks very relevant questions (is Jesus still relevant?, what is the authentic life?), and then reviews the pillars of Catholic spirituality: confession, daily prayer, the Mass, the Bible, spiritual reading, the rosary. The book ends with reflections on leadership, on the necessity of a change and of a return to virtue. Do not miss this book!
Unbound by Neal Lozano. $15.95
Neal Lozano, a lay Catholic, has more than 30 years of pastoral experience helping people find freedom in Christ. The freedom he writes about is the freedom from sins, the power to resist temptations, to repent from sins, to forgive those who have harmed us, to renounce the works of the devil. Yes, the devil. Satan has plans for our lives. Through Jesus we have authority over the devil, Jesus reveals to us God’s plans over our lives and gives strength that we might fulfill our destiny.
This is not a book on exorcism, but a book on the ministry of deliverance, written for any faithful, for any committed Christian believer who lives with hidden sin, with compulsion and fear due to deception. It may not have occurred to them that they might need deliverance from evil spirits. Deliverance is a grace in the context of a normal Christian life. Ralph Martin says that Neal Lozano has helped people achieve levels of peace and freedom in their lives that they had never hoped to experience. Father Scanlan writes that this is the most helpful book he knows for dealing with evil spirits and related impairments in peoples’ lives.
Faith Maps by Michael Paul Gallagher, S.J. $16.95.
Paul Gallagher is a professor at the Gregorian in Rome, and in this book he explores the minds of the major religious thinkers of our times, beginning with John Henry Newman, and ending with Benedict XVI. All together, he encounters ten such leading thinkers, some better known than others, and representing several countries: he meets Urs Von Balthasar, Bernard Lonergan, Flannery O’Connor, etc. Questions are posed, in an imaginary dialogue, to each of them. Their thought is presented in today’s language and in non-academic terminology. For each thinker the author singles out one aspect of his work: for instance the treatment of trust, our reliance on others, the central aspect of human experience. Without trust we could not live. Trusting, believing, is what makes us human. Believing is our most ordinary way of knowing. Our human capacity for trusting others is our principal avenue to faith.
This book can be considered an introduction to contemporary theological thought, in a way that is easily accessible.
From Atheism to Catholicism by Kevin Vost. $16.95
The author had renounced his faith and become an atheist for decades. He writes how he had been attracted to the theories of atheists like Friedrich Nietzsche, Lord Bernard Russell, Elbert Ellis, Ayn Rand, Darwin, and Dawkins. He describes those theories one by one in the initial chapters of the book and explains their alluring points, but also their contradictions and deficiencies. In outlining those deficiencies he has recourse to C.S. Lewis, to Chesterton and to Blessed John Paul II: to these he dedicates the final chapters of the book.
This is more than a personal story. It can be described as a summary of the ideologies prevailing in our time, together with a sober discussion of their destructive power. This is a timely book; it is unique because Vost describes also the good elements in the thinking of several famous atheists, but then, also from his own experience and logic, he shows how each of those thinkers falls short. The book ends with a hymn to the REAL SUPERMAN, so superior to the one dreamed by Nietzsche!
Verbum Domini by the Synod of Bishops, 2008. $11.95
It was 1965, at the end of Vatican Council II, that the Church issued a Dogmatic Constitution DEI VERBUM, the Word of God. Then, about 40 years later, the Church felt called to further reflections on the same WORD, also in order to review the implementation of the Council’s directives and to confront the new challenges which the present times set before Christian believers. This was done through the present Apostolic Exhortation, Verbum Domini, issued by Benedict XVI at the end of the special Synod of Bishops. Synods are held regularly every three years on a variety of church issues.
This exhortation is longer than the Dogmatic Constitution of the Council, it stresses more openly the necessary relationship between the Scriptures and Tradition, and the continuing inspiration of the Holy Spirit by which the Scriptures are made better understandable. The importance of the Scriptures in the life of the Church and in the spiritual development of each believer is also treated at length.
How to Find Your Soulmate Without Losing Your Soul by Jason and Crystalina Evert
Here they are, 21 secrets for women. It’s a very frank navigation through the dating scene. Single women inevitably ask questions: how do I know when a guy really loves me? Am I too picky? Is my relationship worth keeping? Are there any decent guys left? At some point every woman needs reassurance that she, and her standards, are not the problem. This is a book for a very special audience; and it is a very special book. You may not need it, but you may know someone who will be grateful for getting it.
Lest we forget...
It is November still. It is the month for remembering the dead, and praying for them. “All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation but after death they undergo purification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of Heaven.
The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect. The tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire. (See: 2 Maccabees, 1st Corinthians, 1st Peter).
From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic Sacrifice so that, thus purified, they may enter the beatific vision of God.
(CCC.1030-1032).
Veritas AGM, Annual General Meeting
Sunday, November 20, 2:00pm
How is Veritas doing? Now, there is not one store on which to give an account, but three! The question is asked whenever a volunteer meets friends. The answer will be given, plainly and completely, at the annual general meeting.
All our friends are invited to that meeting, which usually is not very long. The meeting is intended also to create new vigor, new efforts to make the task of the bookstores more effective: the task is the New Evangelization, carried out with our personal offering of time and talent.
Following the meeting, traditionally the Veritas Christmas Party is held, with the usual Christmas cheer! Do not miss the party! Please call in to tell us you are coming, how many of you. You could bring something to share: a dish of your choice. There will be something for everybody any way, but a touch from you would be a bonus. As usual, the AGM and party are held at the store. Some friends help to move fixtures in order to make room for everyone.
I proclaim to you good news of great Joy!
(The 3rd Joyful Mystery)
“A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled…
Joseph, too, went up from Galilee… to the city of David that is called Bethlehem… to be enrolled with Mary, who was with child…
She gave birth to her first born son, she wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn…
Now there were shepherds in that region… keeping the night watch over their flocks. The Angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear.
The Angel said to them: do not be afraid, for, behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find and infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.
And suddenly there were a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest…
The shepherds said to one another: let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place… So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph and the infant lying in a manger…
When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about the child…
All who heard were amazed…
* * * * *
Visit Veritas stores and see many Nativity sets: angels, shepherds and magi, with Mary, Joseph and the Baby. Small sizes are particularly suited for the home.
At Veritas stores (Halifax, Sackville, Enfield) one can find many books and religious items that can help constructing a vision of the “great joy”: a reminder for us and for our friends when they visit.
Everyone decorates a Christmas tree at this time: we should have a Nativity set, decorated and prepared by ourselves. Do you remember ever going into the woods on a cold winter day looking for moss as a setting for the stable? Then the nativity we decorate in a corner of the living room would become planted in our mind.
Merry Christmas & Blessings in the New Year!
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