Today begins the Catholic Church’s Year of Faith, proclaimed by Pope Benedict as “a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the world.” It’s a time for the study and teaching of the Christian faith and for dedication to the New Evangelization. I invite all believers to join me in these aims, and non-believers to seek and ask questions (even critically). I know I have a lot to learn, too; and I am looking forward to a year committed to delving deeper and deeper into the faith.
Pope Benedict’s apostolic letter proclaiming the Year of Faith, Porta fidei, is a wonderfully edifying and uplifting read. This section in particular stood out to me:
During this time we will need to keep our gaze fixed upon Jesus Christ, the ‘pioneer and perfecter of our faith’ (Hebrews 12:2): in him, all the anguish and all the longing of the human heart finds fulfilment. The joy of love, the answer to the drama of suffering and pain, the power of forgiveness in the face of an offence received and the victory of life over the emptiness of death: all this finds fulfilment in the mystery of his Incarnation, in his becoming man, in his sharing our human weakness so as to transform it by the power of his resurrection. In him who died and rose again for our salvation, the examples of faith that have marked these two thousand years of our salvation history are brought into the fullness of light.
Very happy to join in my friend. My question is what are we doing to reach out to those outside of our church?
Oh, I’ve been meaning to reply to this, Jessica. In short: some people and arms of the Catholic Church are doing more than others, but there’s little well-organized evangelical effort. That’s what the bishops’ discussion at this Synod of the New Evangelization is all about — plans and strategies. I am not sure immediately what to expect. There is a lot of Catholic humanitarian and philanthropic work with the poor and with world missions that spreads the Gospel through our works of charity, but as far as evangelization in the evangelical sense — I think there are local and diocesan and individual efforts in some places. I’m not sure anybody wants or expects Catholics to go around proselytizing like evangelicals do — but certainly we are all encouraged to live our faith daily and publicly and share the Gospel with others through that. I consider this blog a missionary effort in a lot of ways.
I think your blog a fine example of what an individual can do 🙂
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