Psalm 42:1, “Like a deer thirsting for running water,” illustrates the soul touched by the grace of God. The enthusiastic catechist needs to be confident that God is already at work in the student. However, amid the increasing isolation of youth in the secular culture, it is easy to be less than confident. The growing number of “nones” (those who identify with no formal religion) include those who have, at times, searched for the truth and found the Gospel wanting. Perhaps more typical are those youth who are less motivated to search and too ready to give a shrug and... Read more
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Articles Under: Articles from Bishops
Ample research has shown that a great majority of young people are leaving the Church before age 22 and choosing to never return. Many studies have been done on the Millennial Generation to discover their affinity (or lack thereof) to the Christian Faith. The Church’s response to this lack of faith is the New Evangelization. In 1990, Pope John Paul II issued his encyclical letter Mission of the Redeemer , in which he said, “ I sense that the moment has come to commit all of the Church’s energies to a new evangelization …. No believer in Christ, no institution... Read more
Amid the dark shadows that have at times been cast over the face of the Church, too often obscuring for our contemporaries the clear light of Christ shining from her (see Lumen Gentium n. 1), we need to focus anew on the universal call to holiness . It is very striking that, amid all the crises of the 20 th Century, the central message of the Second Vatican Council was simple, direct, and clear: that every one of us, in every state of life, is called to the fullness of the Christian life and the perfection of love; that is,... Read more
Looking back on the past and on the development of the church since the Second Vatican Council, there are two well-known and profound documents, which have brought the biblical call for evangelization into our pastoral consciousness: Evangelii nuntiandi in 1974 and Evangelii gaudium in 2013. Both apostolic letters have reflected on the manner in which the Gospel can be proclaimed and inculturated in our modern times under secular conditions. Both apostolic letters, on the one hand, are the result of a previous worldwide Synod of Bishops and, on the other, demonstrate well the contribution of the respective pontiff that wrote... Read more
In early April 2018, Pope Francis released his Apostolic Exhortation Rejoice and Be Glad , in which he invites us to respond generously to God’s invitation to holiness of life. We are called to be holy disciples of the Lord; but we need to learn from the witness of saints who have gone before us, not just officially canonized saints but also saintly people next door or in our extended family. While urging us not to fall into the trap of ego-centered self-help programs or the illusion that we can be truly spiritual apart from the Church, he outlines three... Read more
El papel de la familia como modelo catequético para el ministerio hispano Cuando tenía unos doce años de edad, fui a la casa de un compañero para visitarlo. Él había nacido en los Estados Unidos de América, pero sus papás habían nacido y se habían criado en Polonia y habían inmigrado a Chicago siendo jóvenes adultos. Esa tarde, estábamos en la planta alta jugando un juego de mesa cuando su mamá llamó desde el sótano, donde estaba terminando con el lavado de la ropa. Le llamó, “Tony! Trow me down da stairs a rag!” (“¡Tony! Lánzame escalones abajo un trapo!”)... Read more
The Role of the Family as the Catechetical Model for Hispanic Ministry To read this article in Spanish, click here. When I was about 12 years old, I visited a classmate at his home. He had been born in the United States of America, but his parents were born and raised in Poland and had immigrated to Chicago as young adults. On that afternoon, we were upstairs playing a board game when his mother called up from the basement, where she was finishing up the laundry. She called, “Tony! Trow me down da stairs a rag!” He and I looked... Read more
En efecto, el cristiano no es un profeta de desventura... La esencia de su anuncio es lo opuesto, lo opuesto a la desventura: es Jesús, muerto por amor y que Dios resucitó la mañana de Pascua. Y este es el núcleo de la fe cristiana. Si los Evangelios se parasen en la sepultura de Jesús, la historia de este profeta se sumaría a las muchas biografías de personajes heroicos que pasaron su vida por un ideal. El Evangelio sería entonces un libro edificante, también de consulta, pero no sería un anuncio de esperanza. Pero los Evangelios no se cierran con... Read more
The Christian is not a prophet of misfortune. …The essence of the Christian proclamation is the opposite, the opposite of misfortune: it is Jesus who died for love and whom God raised on Easter morning. And this is the nucleus of Christian faith. If the Gospels had ended at Jesus’ burial, the story of this prophet would have been added to the many biographies of heroic figures who expended their lives for an ideal. The Gospel would then be an edifying book, and also a comforting one, but it would not be a proclamation of hope. But the Gospels do... Read more
In this final installment, we reflect on the most essential characteristic of an effective catechist for the new evangelization: allowing Christ to transform us through holiness of life. Among all of the words spoken during the pontificate of Blessed Paul VI, there is one phrase most often repeated today that came to prominence in one of his last letters, Evangelli Nuntiandi . It was his observation that “modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses” (41). This phrase might mistakenly be used to suggest that... Read more