Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: witness

  • The Ascension of the Lord

    The Ascension of the Lord

    Today’s readings

    For the early Apostles and disciples, today’s feast had to be a kind of “now what?” experience for them. Think about what they’ve been through. Their Lord had been betrayed by one of their friends, he had been through a farce of a trial and put to death in a horrible, ignoble way, they had been hiding in fear thinking they might be next, they had questioned what they were supposed to do without their Lord, and then they witness the Resurrection: Christ walks among them for a time, appearing to them and making himself known. They had seen redemption of a way of life they almost had abandoned, and now, on this feast of the Ascension, their Lord is leaving them again. In our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, you can almost feel the amazement and desperation they are experiencing as they stare up into the heavens, incredulous that their Lord is gone, again.

    So once again, God sends two messengers, two men in white garments, to set them straight. God had sent two men in dazzling garments to the women at the tomb on the day of the Resurrection as well. That time, the men reassured the women that the Lord had not been moved or stolen, but had risen from the dead. This time, the men appear to the Apostles, assuring them that the Lord would return in the same way as he had just departed from their sight. Both times, it was the same kind of messengers, with the same kind of hopeful message. Go forward, don’t worry, God is in control.

    One of the great themes of Catholic theology is the idea of “already, and not yet.” Basically, that means that we disciples of Christ already have a share in the life of God and the promise of heaven, but we are not yet there. So we who believe in Jesus and live our faith every day have the hope of heaven before us, even if we are not home yet. And this hope isn’t just some “iffy” kind of thing: it’s not “I hope I’ll go to heaven one day.” No, it’s the promise that because of the salvation we have in Christ, we who are faithful will one day live and reign with him. This gives us hope in the midst of the sorrows that we experience in this world.

    Another great theme of Catholic theology is that our God is transcendent, but also immanent. Transcendent means that our God is higher than the heavens, more lofty than our thoughts and dreams, beyond anything we can imagine. Whatever we say about God, like “God is love” or “God is good” – those things only begin to scratch the surface of who God is, because God is transcendent beyond anything our limited words can describe. But our God is also immanent. God is not some far off entity that has brought the world into existence and set the events of our lives in motion and then drops back to observe things from afar. No, our God is one who walks among us and knows our sorrow and our pain and celebrates our joy. Saint Augustine said that God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. Our God may indeed be mysterious and beyond us, but he is also the one we can reach out and touch. If that weren’t so, the Eucharist would be pretty meaningless.

    As you can see, Catholic theology is generally speaking not exclusive. We are not either already sharing in the promise or not yet sharing in it, but we are “already and not yet.” Our God is not either transcendent or immanent, but both transcendent and immanent. These two great theological themes come to a kind of crossroads here on this feast of the Ascension.

    Today, as Christ ascends into heaven, our share in the life of God and the promise of heaven is sealed. We have hope of eternal life because our Lord has gone before us to prepare a place for us. If he had not gone, we could never have shared in this life. So, although Jesus has left the apostles yet again, they can rejoice because they know that the promise is coming to fulfillment. We do not possess it yet, because we are not home yet, but we share in it already, because Christ is our promise.

    Today, as Christ ascends into heaven, he once again, with the Father, is transcendent, because we, along with the Apostles, can no longer see him. But he remains immanent by his promise to be with us always. Again, I will quote St. Augustine who said of Christ that “He did not leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went up again into heaven. The fact that he was in heaven even while he was on earth is borne out by his own statement: No one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.” St. Augustine teaches that the notion of time is that everything is present to God all at once. This explains how our celebration of the Eucharist in a few minutes brings us to Calvary at the moment when Jesus gave his life for us. And it explains how Jesus can ascend into heaven and yet remain among us. Time is a limitation for us humans, but not for God who created time in the first place.

    All of this theology can be heady stuff, but what it boils down to is this: because Jesus died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, we now have the hope of heaven and of sharing in the very life of God. Even though we do not possess heaven yet, we know that it belongs to all who have faith in Christ and live that faith every day. And even though we do not see Jesus walking among us, he is still absolutely present among us and promises to be with us forever. The preface to the Eucharistic prayer which I will sing in a few minutes makes this very clear; it says:

    Mediator between God and man,
    judge of the world and Lord of hosts,
    he ascended not to distance himself from our lowly state
    but that we, his members, might be confident of following
    where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.

    Jesus, having explained the Scriptures to his Apostles yet again, tells them “You are witnesses of these things.” And so they don’t have the luxury of just standing there, staring up into the sky for hours, dejected and crushed because the One who had been their hope had disappeared. No, as the Gospel tells us today, they “returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God.” They are witnesses, “clothed with power from on high,” and they must be filled with the hope and joy of the resurrection and ascension of the Lord.

    We disciples are witnesses of these things too. We must witness to a world filled with violence and oppression and sadness that our God promises life without end for all those who believe in him. And we have that hope already, even though not yet. We must witness to a world languishing in the vapidity of relativism and individualism and New Age Oprah and Dr. Phil philosophy that it is Jesus Christ, the Lord of All, who is one with us in heaven, and present among us on earth, who fulfills our hopes and longings and will never leave us. We must be witnesses to all these things, living with great joy, continually praising God because Christ’s ascension is our exaltation. We too might hear those men in dazzling white garments speak God’s words of hope to us: go forward, don’t worry, God is in control.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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  • Friday in the Sixth Week of Easter

    Friday in the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Petty jealousy is a pernicious thing. Paul experienced it, directed against him by those Jews who were jealous of Paul’s effective preaching and suspicious of the Christian Way. In their fear and jealousy, they appeal to Gallio, a Roman official, complaining that Paul stirred up the people to worship God contrary to the law. What they were trying to do was get Paul and the others arrested for worshiping God at all, in violation of Roman law, even though they do the same thing. But Gallio sees through their very thinly veiled patriotism and throws them all out, turning a blind eye as they beat a synagogue official who was a supporter of Paul.

    Neither those troublemakers nor Gallio were at all virtuous. The troublemakers weren’t so much concerned about the laws of the land as they were quibbling about following Jesus. And Gallio wasn’t so concerned about defending the Christians as much as he wanted them all to go away and leave him alone. Through it all, Paul was able to see the fulfillment of God’s promise in the vision he had: “Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack and harm you.” And that’s exactly what Paul did.

    It is up to us to witness to our faith courageously too. We might face opposition, and even petty jealousy. But the message is too important to bury for fear of what might happen. We must trust that the Lord will preserve us too, in the same way he guarded Paul in his efforts to proclaim the Gospel.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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  • Thursday of the Fifth Week in Easter

    Thursday of the Fifth Week in Easter

    Today’s readings

    In our first reading this morning, Saint Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles, tells us about a very important, defining moment for the early Church. In these days, the Apostles were really trying to figure out how the Church was supposed to work, because there wasn’t a rule book or a roadmap on how to make a Church happen. But Jesus did tell them to make disciples of all the nations, and that’s what’s at stake in today’s reading. The Gentile nations didn’t observe all the laws that the Jews did, that wasn’t their culture or custom. And so admitting non-Jews to the Church meant deciding whether they had to be circumcised, and whether they had to observe all the other laws of the Old Testament, as they had.

    So they held this little meeting that we hear about in our first reading today. During that meeting, the Apostles were swayed by the great stories of Paul and Barnabas, hearing all the wondrous deeds that God was doing among them. So they realized that the Holy Spirit could call anyone God wanted to be disciples, and they decided that they shouldn’t get in the way. So they decide to impose very little upon the non-Jews, just requiring them to avoid idol worship and unlawful marriage.

    And then what we sang in the responsorial psalm, “Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations” was a prophecy that came to pass. Think about it: because the disciples agreed to allow the Gentiles to come to Christianity in their own way, the spread of the Gospel was put into warp speed. If it weren’t for this little meeting, we very well might not be Christians today. Praise God for the movement of the Spirit!

    And now, friends, the command comes to us: we have to be the ones to proclaim God’s deeds to everyone, and not to marginalize other people. God’s will is not fulfilled until every heart has the opportunity to respond to his love. So we who have been learning about Jesus, now need to help others to know Jesus. When we learn about Jesus, when we learn about our faith, it’s not just so that we know some good facts and can recite them. We have to go beyond what we know in our head and bring it to our heart, so that we can love other people the way he has loved us. Remember, the only Jesus people see today might be Jesus in you or Jesus in me. We have to encourage others to be disciples just by the way we live when we are disciples. If we are loving, if we are joyful, then others can see that in us and want to be like that too. That’s the easiest way to preach the Gospel, and in many ways, the most effective way to preach the Gospel. It’s something all of us can do. When others experience God’s love in us, they will be attracted to come to know about God too.

    That’s how it happened in the early Church. That’s why Paul and the others were so successful. That’s why the Gentiles couldn’t get enough of the faith. We can reignite that fire in our world today if we bring what we have learned in our school classrooms, and take it from our head to our heart.

    Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

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  • Friday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings
    Mass for the School Children.

    There’s an old joke that one day, Jesus returned to earth, and was walking around the Vatican square talking to people. Some of the Cardinals noticed and they got together and decided they should probably tell the Pope what was going on. So they went to the Pope’s office in the Vatican and said to him, “Your holiness! Our Lord has returned to earth and he is walking around Saint Peter’s square talking to people! What should we do?” Without even thinking, the Pope said, “Look busy!”

    That joke came to mind when I was thinking about today’s readings. In our first reading, Saint Paul is talking about the people in the Christian community who aren’t living as Christians. They are doing whatever they want, getting right at other people’s expense, and doing all sorts of immoral, earthly things. He tells them the need to get busy about remembering that their true home is in heaven and that they need to live in such a way as to get there.

    In the parable that Jesus tells in the Gospel reading today, the steward thinks that he’s busy about all the right things, making money for himself, until the day he finds out he’s about to be fired because someone has reported him for squandering the rich man’s property. It’s a confusing parable, but we have to remember that in the parable, God is the rich man, and we are the steward who is about to be fired. We need to be smart about remembering that we are children of light, and that light is God. We have to be smart about remembering where we are truly going, and that is to the joy of heaven. We have to be smart about what giving ourselves fully to the right person is all about, and that person is to Jesus.

    And we have to get busy about doing all this because it’s urgent. Time is running short. The days are shorter now and the end of the year is coming. This reminds us that time as a whole is always running shorter, and the time for Jesus to really return and take us with him is getting nearer all the time. We want to go with Jesus, so we don’t dare squander our time doing all the wrong things and being loyal to the wrong sort of people who don’t care anything about our spiritual well-being. We have to do the things that get us closer to Jesus: taking up our crosses, spending time with him in prayer, reading about him in Scripture, serving him by serving others, loving him by loving all the people he puts in our lives.

    When Jesus finds us busy doing all the right things, he can lead us to the place we all want to go one day, and that is to the kingdom of his Heavenly Father. We can’t be distracted though, we need to be focused on where he is taking us.

    This can be hard work sometimes, I know. And that reminds me of a real story about a real pope that I once heard. This is about Pope Saint John XXIII. He was an old man when he was elected pope, but he didn’t waste any time getting things done for the Lord. He was always busy about making the Church better so that people could come to know the Lord. And, at the end of the day, when he was very tired, he would say to Jesus: “Okay Lord. I’m tired and it’s your Church. Take care of it while I sleep.” And Jesus did.

    So, today, let’s all look busy. Knowing that Jesus wants to take us to his Heavenly Father, and it could be time to do that any time. We don’t want to waste our time: we want to be ready.

  • Friday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Friday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    If we think simply obeying God’s call will make life much easier for us, today’s readings give us a, shall we say, different perspective. Sure not complicating our lives with sin and being certain to do what God asks of us is a good thing, and it does make life easier to an extent, but it does not guarantee a life without struggle or conflict.

    Certainly both Jeremiah and Jesus can attest to that. Jeremiah had the dangerous job of being a prophet to a people who wanted to do what they wanted to do. Evil was a way of life for them, and they certainly didn’t want to hear about their way of life coming to an end, and so our first reading ends with the people of Israel ominously surrounding Jeremiah in the house of the Lord. Jesus gets similar treatment from the people of his own native town. They took offense at one of them, the son of a laborer no less, working miracles and preaching with wisdom. And sadly, their lack of acceptance and lack of faith led to him not working many mighty deeds there.

    Maybe we have had a similar experience. Maybe we have tried to give witness to the Gospel, to what is right, to people very close to us. Many times that kind of thing is very unwelcome with those people. Maybe they are in our families, or at our job, or in our community. But like the prophet, and like Jesus, we must give witness anyway, and ask God to help them accept it. Preaching the truth in love can be dangerous, or at least ignored, at times, but it’s what we are called to do.

  • Thursday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Savior? I’m sure you’ve heard this question, perhaps someone even asked you that question. They teach that all you have to do is make that one-time decision and you’re saved. Not so fast.

    If salvation were something magical that came about as the result of just saying a simple prayer, once and for all, then why wouldn’t everyone do that? The fact is, salvation is hard work. It was purchased at an incredible price by Jesus on the cross. And for us to make it relevant in our lives, to live it in our lives, we have work to do too. Not the kind of work that earns salvation, because salvation is not earned, but the kind of work that appropriates it into our lives and makes it meaningful.

    People who are saved behave in a specific way. They are people who take the Gospel seriously and live it every day. They are people of integrity that stand up for what’s right in every situation, no matter what it personally costs. They are people of justice who will not tolerate the sexist or racist joke, let alone tolerate a lack of concern for the poor and the oppressed. They are people of deep prayer, whose lives are wrapped up in the Eucharist and the sacraments, people who confront their own sinfulness by examination of conscience and sacramental Penance. They are people who live lightly in this world, not getting caught up in its excess and distraction, knowing they are citizens of a heaven where such things have no permanence. Saved people live in a way that is often hard, but always joyful.

    Not everyone who claims Jesus as a personal Savior, not everyone who cries out “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven. That’s what Jesus tells us today. We have to build our spiritual houses on the solid rock of Jesus Christ, living as he lived, following his commandments, and clinging to him in prayer and sacrament as if our very life depended on it. Because it does. It does.

  • The Ascension of the Lord

    The Ascension of the Lord

    Today’s readings

    Have you ever been at a loss for words? Have you been in a situation that was so astounding that you were just … speechless? Hopefully it was for something astoundingly wonderful, as for the apostles as their Lord ascended to heaven. Can you imagine what was going through the disciples’ minds as they stood there watching the Ascension of the Lord? Think about all that they’ve been through. Three years following this Jesus whose words were compelling and whose miracles were amazing and whose way of life was uplifting. But still, there was something about him that they just never seemed to get. He said he was the Christ, the Anointed One, and so their strong cultural definition of the Messiah was something they projected onto Jesus, but time after time it just never fit. Then he gets arrested, tried in a farce of a proceeding, put to death like a common criminal and buried for three days. After that, he is no longer in the tomb, but has risen from the dead and appeared to them many times. Now they’re gathered forty days later, and he promises the gift of the Holy Spirit. They breathlessly ask the question that has always been on their minds, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” They’re still not understanding the mission.

    And so Jesus promises them the Holy Spirit again, and ascends into the sky. Can you imagine it? It’s like a roller coaster of emotions for them. Their heads had to be spinning, they had to be completely lost as to what to do now. First he was dead and buried, then he came back, and now he’s gone again. What on earth are they to do now? Well, the two mysterious men dressed in white garments have all the advice they’re going to get: “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.” It’s almost as if God is telling them, “You’ll see what comes next, just get on with it.” And so they do, and they’ll get more help next week on Pentecost, with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. But until then, it’s enough for them and us to be a bit speechless.

    We should be a little speechless too. Honestly, I think these stories have become so engrained in our cultural experience of our religion that we just tend to treat them as nothing special. But we should be speechless, because the Ascension, as well as the Resurrection, are game-changers for us. Nothing like that ever happened before, and it made possible our eternity; the greatest gift we’ll ever have. We should be astounded!

    And then, like the apostles, we need to get on with it. Because the Ascension has very specific meaning for our mission. I think we get two directions in today’s feast. First, Christ promises us that he will be with us always. That’s what Jesus says to the disciples – and to us! – in the very last words of the very last verse of the very last chapter of Saint Mark’s Gospel: “But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.” This is such an essential point of faith for us to get: Jesus our Lord will be with us every day, every moment, right up to the end of the age, working with us and in us and through us. He is present in our Church today. His abiding presence is with us when we gather in his name, when we worship, hear the Word proclaimed and celebrate the sacraments. And he is with us, too, when we serve others, being those hands and feet of Jesus in a tangible way.

    And secondly, the Ascension reminds us that the Christian Mission has been entrusted to our hands. Christ has ascended into heaven, he has returned to the Father. So, yes, on this feast of the Ascension of the Lord, we are rightly struck speechless, but now it’s time for us to take up the Cross, to preach the Word in our words and actions, and to witness to the joy of Christ’s presence among us. If people are ever going to come to know Christ, if they are ever going to be challenged to grow in their faith, if they are ever going to know that there is something greater than themselves, they’re going to have to see that witness in other people, and it needs to be us. We have to be transparent in our living so that people won’t be caught up on us, but will come through us to see Jesus, to see the Father, to experience the Spirit. We are the ones commanded to “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…” The mission is entrusted to us now.

    The speechlessness has to be over. The Psalmist tells us that God mounts his throne to shouts of joy. We must be joyous in living our life as Christians, assured of God’s abiding presence until the end of time, looking forward to our heavenly reward, and living the mission for all to see. We must no longer be speechless, but instead be a blare of trumpets for the Lord!

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • The Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Twenty-ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    When a couple comes to me for marriage, one of the things I have them do is to write me letters, individually, asking to be married. I ask them to reflect on their relationship and to say something about their faith. Over the years I’ve received a lot of letters and some are very deep, some are very emotional, some are kind of surface-level. I usually find something in every letter to quote in my wedding homily. Some years ago, I celebrated the wedding of a couple that was very faith-filled. They had been raised by strong Catholic families, had gone to Catholic schools, and faith was and continued to be a big part of their lives. One of the most quotable lines in their letters came from the groom. He said, “Many people want to think of God only in times of trouble or sadness; (my fiancé) and I want to think of God all the time.”

    I think he got at what our Liturgy of the Word is teaching us today. In the Gospel, the Pharisees are at it again: they want to trap Jesus in speech so that they’ll be able to bring him to justice. And so they decide to ask him if it’s lawful to pay the census tax or not. It was a no-win argument: if he said it was not lawful, then he’s a revolutionary and should be put to death; if he said it was lawful, then he’s an idolater – putting the government over God – and should be put to death. But, as usual, Jesus answers their question with a question. “Whose image is this (on the coin) and whose inscription?” Since it was Caesar’s, his instruction is to give Caesar his due, but then, to give God what he is due.

    This then becomes a reflection on the first commandment of the Decalogue: “I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me.” This is echoed by the prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading: “I am the Lord and there is no other, there is no God besides me. It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun people may know that there is none besides me. I am the LORD, there is no other.”

    There’s a reason that this is the first commandment: it is foundational to all the others. If we get the first commandment right, the others should follow pretty easily. If we know and live that God is in charge, that God is God and we are not, then we will easily live the other nine commandments dealing with love of God and love of neighbor. The trouble is, even though it’s easy to say, it’s difficult to do.

    Modern life does everything it can to distract us. It’s hard to get to Mass because the kids have sports or dance or studies or whatever. And as wonderful as those things are, they don’t lead the children to God, so they can’t take precedence over Mass. It’s hard to take time for prayer because we are busy – we work and we have family commitments and we have things we want to do in the community. And as great as all that is, it doesn’t lead us to God, so they can’t take precedence over our prayer. It’s hard to be of service because we’re busy people, and that’s a shame because service – stemming from a love of neighbor – leads us to love of God, and we’ve said no to it again. Just like those Pharisees, we have too often allowed ourselves to be distracted from what’s really important, we’ve said no to a relationship with our God, and we have put him out of our lives and our families’ lives time and time again.

    Giving to God what belongs to God is foundational. Failure to do that leads to all other kinds of sin. Today, we have in our Scriptures an examination of conscience. Have we been zealous to give to God what belongs to God? Have we taken time for prayer? Have we been of service to our brothers and sisters in need? Have we made teaching the faith to our children our primary priority? Have we been vigilant to prevent anything from getting in the way of celebrating Mass as a family? If we have fallen short in any of those ways, this is the time to reverse the course and get it right. Caesar gets what’s his one way or the other. We have to be the ones who are on fire to give to God what belongs to God.

    The whole point of our life on this earth is to travel through it and become perfected so that we can go to heaven. A huge first step in that is putting God first, giving to God what belongs to God. And he wants all of us: our hearts, our souls, our lives. He made us for himself, and as Saint Augustine said, we will be restless until we rest in him. What step do we need to make to give to God what belongs to God this week?

  • Saturday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time/Make a Difference Day

    Saturday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time/Make a Difference Day

    Today’s readings

    Anything worthwhile costs us something, most especially our faith.  If we are serious about it, if we love God and want to be caught up in his life, we’re going to have to pay for it in some way.  Jesus speaks to that in today’s Gospel.  One of the biggest costs to us, I think, is our comfort zone.  To really live the faith, we have to get out of that comfort and do what God wants of us.  In the Gospel, Jesus was telling his disciples that they would have to give witness to him.  And they understood that that would cost them something – perhaps cost them their lives.

    We disciples are also going to have to pay some price for living our faith.  Probably not something as drastic as getting dragged before synagogues, rulers and authorities, but something fairly costly for us.  For us today, perhaps that cost is giving up a Saturday to clean church pews, or make rosaries, or cleaning up the grounds on Renwick Road.

    Today, on our Make a Difference Day, we take our give strong witness to our faith in our work. As we come together to pack meals at Feed My Starving Children, spend time in adoration praying for our community, or clean up our parish grounds, our presence and concern may be the way God is using us to get someone’s attention and see his presence in her or his life.  As Saint Therese of Liseaux used to encourage her sisters, we can make a big difference by doing little things with great love.

    Jesus tells us that we will receive gifts of the Holy Spirit that enable us to speak on behalf of our faith. As we engage in whatever we have signed up to do today, that same Spirit may give us gifts that answer prayers we didn’t even know we had in our hearts, and definitely answer the prayers of others. Our work gives witness to who Christ is in our lives; Christ who loves us first and loves us best.  Sharing that love in the work we do today is a powerful way to help others know the presence of Christ in their lives.

    Living our faith is always going to cost us something and that something could well be status or popularity, or at least the wondering glance from people who aren’t ready to accept the faith.  But the volumes that we speak by living our faith anyway might just lay the groundwork for conversion and become a conduit of grace.  We are told that we don’t have to hammer out all the words we want to say; that the Holy Spirit will give us eloquence that we can only dream of.  And it’s true, if we trust God, if we live our faith when it’s popular or unpopular, we will have the Spirit and the words.  God only knows what can be accomplished in those grace-filled moments!  I pray that you see Christ everywhere as you witness today.

  • Tuesday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Twenty-sixth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    In our first reading, the prophet Zechariah proposes a very hopeful outcome for efforts at evangelization, if we take up that ministry with zeal.  Many cities, many peoples, powerful nations will look to Jerusalem and God’s people because they know God is with them.  That’s what we would want too, wouldn’t we?  We would want all people to turn away from whatever philosophy or false god they worship and come to the Lord, who is the Way to eternal life.

    Interestingly, the apostles take a different approach to evangelization.  When the people of the Samaritan village would not welcome him, because he was on the way to Jerusalem, they want to call down fire on the village.  As if they could; really it’s a rather humorous exchange.  Jesus instead decides to continue the way to Jerusalem and let them be.  He continues to foster the hope that even the Samaritans will see the truth and turn to the Lord.

    So we have to be careful about our own approach to evangelization.  We are all called to evangelize according to our vocation and state in life.  We are called to witness to the Gospel by the way we live our lives, by the words we speak, and the deeds we do.  People have to see authenticity in us so that they will be intrigued to follow Jesus and have hope of eternal life.

    Today, may we have the confidence of the Psalmist who sings, “God is with us.”  May we live that conviction so boldly that others will want to take hold of our garments and follow the Lord with us.