Evangelization

Today, the churches sit mostly empty except on Christmas, Easter, and during the village fiesta.  This is not happening only on Guam, but everywhere. Asia and Africa are the only two continents where one sees a rise in Catholicism. Europe has shown a sharp decline.  While many Catholics stayed at home or joined other Christian denominations, very little was being done to entice or encourage them back to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. 

Christ entrusted all of us with the mission to go out and spread the Gospel to the ends of the world.  This mission is not given to the priests and bishops alone.  The Charismatic Catholic Renewal is making much headway in Latin America in bringing fallen away Catholics back to the Church.  According to one report:

In the last century, Pew reports, the percentage of the world's Catholics in Latin America and the Caribbean has risen from 24 percent to 39 percent, with an estimated 425 million of the world's nearly 1.1 billion Catholics residing in the region in 2010. 

And part of that Catholic growth in recent decades has come from the rise of Catholic charismatic groups, which from their origins in the late 1960s now attract an estimated more than 70 million followers in Latin America, according to scholars such as Jakob Thorsen of Aarhus University in Denmark. 

 And those followers, unlike many nominal Catholics on the continent are active and committed.

The Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement has led to an internal revival that has seen Mass attendance rise and some of new converts “or reconverts,” Catholics returning to their faith, according to religion scholar Carlos Frederico Barboza de Souza of the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais. 

Like the Charismatic Catholic Renewal, the Neocatechumenal Way have also brought people back to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Worldwide, the NCW consist of some former atheists, fallen away Catholics, and non-Catholics. The goal of the NCW is to bring people closer to Jesus Christ in which they come to know Him intimately. 

Christ is the mediator between God and His Church.  And His Church is the mediator between Christ and the rest of humanity.  In other words, it is the duty of the Church to bring all humanity to Christ.  This is not the duty of the bishops and priests alone.  Thus, the NCW has mission families, itinerants, and mission communities traveling in small groups and in two by twos.  As shown in the photo below, sometimes the priest evangelizes with the laity.     

To evangelize means to go out of the church building.  The message of Pope Francis to the Church:

“But in order to evangelize: ‘Get up and go!’ One doesn’t say: ‘Stay seated, calm, in your house’: No! In order to be faithful to the Lord, the Church should always be on its feet and on the journey: ‘Get up and go.’ A Church that does not rise up, that is not on the journey, is sick.” 

“All men, all women have a restlessness in their hearts – [they may be] good or bad, but there is a restlessness. Listen to that restlessness. It’s not saying: ‘Go out and proselytise.’ No, no! ‘Go and listen.’ Listening is the second step. The first: ‘Get up and go’; the second: ‘Listen.’ That ability to listen: What do people feel? What does the heart of the people feel? What does it think? But do they think mistaken things? But I want to hear these mistaken things, in order to understand where the restlessness is. We all have this restlessness within. The second step for the Church is to find the restlessness of the people.” 

This message is not only to the laity, but to the priests and bishops as well.  Unfortunately, some priests prefer the comforts of their home inside the church building, waiting for the lost sheep to come to them, while others take to the Internet and social media to evangelize.  While technology has its good usage, this is not the proper way to evangelize.  Face to face human contact is the only way for the second step to take place. The second step is to listen to the people. You cannot know the restlessness within the people unless you meet with them. 

 
.