The Deacon and Evangelization

Evangelization begins with the recognition that the gospel is good news and that a culture or church that ignores that fact is dull and asleep and needs to be awakened.

Father John Hurley in his recent talks spoke of us the command of Jesus

"To go out and making disciples of all nations"

And he joked that what part of "GO" is it that we might not understand.

There are three elements to evangelization:

Turning toward god

A turning that effects both individuals, and the society and culture

A turning that is ultimately caused by the power of the gospel and the holy spirit.

Evangelization has to happen at three levels:

The renewal of the evangelizers themselves

A calling back of those who have heard the gospel, but among whom it has not taken hold or has been lost in some way

A calling of those who have not yet heard the gospel.

We need to begin our proclamation with what lies at the center of our faith,namely, that Jesus Christ has died and has a risen. Jesus is the icon of the invisible god, gods pattern of being In the world.

Our evangelization must be predicated on this insight : In the old order of things we believed that violence and evil come into the world and they are to be often rid of by a morally superior violence. But I

In the new order of things, in Jesus, justice and peace are restored not through violence but through empathy and forgiveness. We kill god, but god returns in forgiving love and this is what opens up a new world

We may not continue to keep our faith private. Evangelization must show itself public ally- like the medieval pilgrimages and processions in todays world youth days. Faith must be expressed publicly and in colorful and romantic ways. We must stop building "beige churches" and build churches that build public faith.

We are drowning in individuality, especially as it pertains to sustaining and passing on faith. To sustain a faith life today involves more than a vague human connection; it must be supported in a real human connection- church,family, community.

Jesus offers us the model; he tries to move us from one state to another: we are asleep and he tries to wake us.

We are deaf and he tries to open our ears;

We are dumb, and he tries to open our mouth to speech and praise;

We are narrow, and he tries to widen our perspective;

We are blind, and he tries to open our eyes;

We are lost, and he tries to find us;

We are dead, and he tries to resurrect us. This must be our model of evangelization to a secularized world.

The seed falls in then soil and we are, each one of us, all four kinds of soil.

We are the soil by the side of the road- where the birds eat the red before it has a chance to root. This Refers to our failure of attention.

We are rocky ground- we receive the word with great joy but don't have the depth to sustain it, especially in time of persecution and trial.

We lose the word through our failure to be able to handle contradiction.

We are the soil where the seed grows together with the thorns which eventually choke out the seed. The seed has to transform the thorns and not simply grow along side them.

We are finally also the good soil.

We need to pray, minister, and live out our evangelization with more imagination, namely, with more originality, more evoking of gods presence beneath then surface of hints, more risk, more commitment to the justice of wholeness, more daring to embrace what is human, more traveling to sin and guilt and lingering there.