The Evangelical Moment

Ten thousand years ago when I began seminary formation, I took a course titled "Catechesis and Catechetical Method" taught by a wonderful lay professor.  Among the things she shared with us was to be on the lookout for the catechetical moment, that is, an opportunity in which we could explain this or that aspect of the Catholic Christian faith.

The idea of the "catechetical moment" never left me.

When my dear Mother went home to the Lord, I had many catechetical moments when my family asked me all sorts of questions about death, the afterlife, salvation, and the End of All Things, which I tried to answer to the best of my knowledge.  Or, when my own Deaf community asks me questions about the sign CHRISTIAN and how Protestants are "Christians" but we Catholics are not, I use that opening to explain that, as Catholics, we are Christians too, in fact the "original" Christian community (though, please God, save us from that ugly sin of 'Catholic triumphalism'!).

I have also seen catechetical moments left unseized, opportunities to explain this or that aspect of the Christian faith squandered for more interesting conversations.

In recent years, something analogous has been brewing in my mind, something that our Protestant friends are better at doing than we are because, as Catholics, we're more fixated on "maintaining" our numbers than "growing" them:  The evangelical moment.

Before I explain the evangelical moment, an anecdote.

Recently, a document came across my desk lamenting, rightly, the sin of racism.  It was issued by a certain network of Catholics working in one area of the secular order--you'll forgive me for being intentionally vague as to whom I talking about, as finger-pointing is not here my, well, point.

In the course of this document, I noticed two glaring omissions:  Racism was not decried as a "sin," nor was the "Gospel" offered as a way out.

In other words, an "evangelical moment" was lost.

It is utterly baffling to me, after Vatican II's ad Gentes on the Church's missionary identity, after St Paul VI's Evangelii nuntiandi, after St John Paul the Great's Redemptor hominis and Redemptoris missio--to say nothing of his letters bringing us to the Third Millennium of Christianity--after the XIIIth Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelisation in 2012, after Pope Francis' Evangelii gaudium, it remains utterly baffling to me that the wider Church still hasn't caught on that our fundamental task is to win souls for Christ.

It is even more baffling still that the Gospel is too infrequently offered as the only solution to the world's problems.  That is what we mean by the evangelical moment:  That, when an "opening" presents itself, to declare the inescapable need for Jesus Christ and the Gift of the Holy Spirit.

Friends, the world is in chaos, and Christians are at fault.

Going back to that document I mentioned:  That would have been a golden 'evangelical moment.'  That would have been an ideal opportunity to explain that what's "systemic" about racialism is that it is part and parcel of "systemic" sin that the whole world is under the power of:

[F]or I [= St Paul] have already charged that all men [and women], both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written:  "None is righteous, no, not one: / no one understands, no one seeks for God. / All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong; / no one does good, not even one."  / "Their throat is an open grave, / they use their tongues to deceive."  / "The venom of asps is under their lips."  / "Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness."  / "Their feet are swift to shed blood, / and the way of peace they do not know."  / "There is no fear of God before their eyes" (Rom 3:9-18).

The impression that is easily given--not only by the document that came across my desk, but by the talk of many Christian leaders--is that we can simply pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and become equitable and just by our own moxie.

No, we can't.  The Church condemned the idea of self-made righteousness at the Second Synod of Orange in 529 and again at the Council of Trent in 1547--to say nothing of the scores of theologians who've dismantled that fantasy in the meantime and since.  Often--not always, but often--talk about "social justice" leaves aside the problem of sin and often--not always, but often--it tries to apply natural Pelagian remedies to the preternatural problem of gracelessness.

Which brings me to a second, related 'evangelical moment' that was lost by this document:  Jesus Christ and the Gift of the Holy Spirit was never mentioned as a solution, let alone as the only solution to racialism.

Isn't it odd that Christians often try to find every solution to a problem other than Jesus Christ and the Gift of the Holy Spirit?

Any Christian worth his or her salt knows that St Paul, as the "Apostle to the Nations," was fixated on this point in the Gospel:  That is is offered to all peoples, and in being offered to all peoples, ethnic and social animosities begin to dissolve.  For example:

For by one Spirit we were all baptised into one Body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and all were made to drink of one Spirit" (1 Cor 12:13).

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you all are one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28).

 For He [= Christ] is our peace, Who has made us both [= Jews and Gentiles] one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility... (Eph 2:14).

In the Acts of the Apostles, the Lord Jesus said something that the Apostles were slow to catch on:

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8).

As Acts unfolded, the Gospel was proclaimed in the power of the Holy Spirit for the first time on Pentecost morning to the people in Jerusalem (cf Acts 2:14); the Gospel was expanded in the "Samaritan Pentecost" (Acts 8:14-17).  In Acts 10:34-48, the Gentiles, for the first time, received the Gospel and were filled with the Holy Spirit.  The mandate to preach to non-Jews became "dogmatic" with the Jerusalem Conference in Acts 15:1-35.  Finally, the Gospel reached the "end of the earth" when St Paul arrived at the Caput mundi--the "Capital of the World":

And he [= St Paul] lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, preaching the Kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly and unhindered (Acts 28:30-31).

More than that, St Paul tells us--almost like a broken record--that the indwelling Holy Spirit in Christians unites all believers together (1 Cor12:12-27; Eph 2:18, 4:4-5; Acts 2:45-46).  In fact, Old Testament prophecies about "Mount Zion" were, really, an allusion to that first Pentecost, because the "Upper Room" where the Holy Spirit was outpoured on the first Christians was right there on Mount Zion:

It shall come to pass in the latter days / that the mountain of the house of the Lord / shall be established as the highest of the mountains, / and shall be raised above the hills; / and all the nations shall flow to it, / and many peoples shall come and say:  / "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, / to the house of the God of Jacob; / that he may teach us his ways / and that we may walk in his paths."  / For out of Zion shall go forth the law, / and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Is 2:2-3).

The Lord Jesus told us:  "And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed My voice.  So there shall be one flock, one shepherd" (Jn 10:16).  It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that the peoples of all nations are gathered together under the Lordship of Jesus.

As I'm sure you've seen before, "No Jesus, no peace; Know Jesus, know peace."

This is a beautiful Biblical truth, is it not?

Yet many Christians are silent on this, and an "evangelical moment" thus lost.

Why are so many in the Body of Christ keeping quiet on the only true solution to the problem of racialism?  Why are so many believers enthusiastic about every other possibility, except the one that Jesus gave us?  Why are so many members of the Church Johnny-on-the-spot about worldly answers to spiritual problems?

G. K. Chesterton said it best:  "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

The Lord has not given us an option.  He has given us a choice to disobey, yes; but He has not given us an option to do so, because to follow Jesus is to obey Him.  Jesus gave us the Great Commission not once, or twice, but three times:  First in Galilee (Mt 28:19-20), as He "sat at table" with the Eleven (Mk 16:14-18), and finally just before His Ascension (Acts 1:8).  Each time He commanded us to evangelise, He made a point of saying that the Gospel is for all peoples:  "...to the end of the earth" in Luke, to the "whole creation" in Mark, to "all nations" in Matthew.  He couldn't be clearer.  The Great Commission is not the Great Suggestion.

Sadly, the document that came across my desk decrying racialism failed to summon Christians to deeper repentance; sadder still, that same document encouraged us to defeat racialism without showing us that the Gospel is the only way to do so.

As my own Archbishop once said, "Jesus Christ is the answer to the question that is every human life."

Make no mistake:  When we withhold Jesus from others, we multiplying the world's chaos.