HOMILY for June 9, 2019: Feast of Pentecost, Cycle C

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Feast of Pentecost, Cycle C

Terranova Hermitage

June 9, 2019           

A New Way to Understand Evangelization

By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato 

 

Evangelization

When I was a child, my mother would often take me into NYC with her whiles she was shopping for fabrics and I remember seeing street preachers.

These preachers were trying to convert people to Jesus. They would shout and threaten damnation if people didn’t listen.

That is my earliest recollection of what is called evangelization. We hear this word used often today even by Pope Francis.  

The word comes directly from the Latin word that means Gospel or good news. So, evangelization means that we bring the Gospel or good news to the world around us. I must admit that hearing the yelling of the street preachers didn’t sound like good news at all!

Naming Grace

Recently I came across an insightful way to understand evangelization now in the twenty-first century.

One of our Catholic theologians says that evangelization is first of all about naming grace – naming grace. It is not really about bringing God to people, as though God were not already there.

Instead, when we evangelize, we do not so much make God present, but we name or identify or point out how God is already present. As I have come to understand it, this means that our human experiences can speak to us of God.

So, the calling to evangelize first requires us to be interpreters of everyday human experience. We are to help each other to see life as touched by God.

We do this by looking at life with the eyes of faith. Evangelization involves looking more deeply into the ordinary to see the Extraordinary—spelled with a capital E.

It is looking at the human and everyday and seeing the divine right there.  I think this insight is excellent and is at least the first step of evangelization in this century and culture. 

 

Examples of Naming Grace

So, for example, a child is born. And we stand in awe of this new life from God.

Or we forgive someone, even though we feel that we ourselves gain nothing from this. And we know that the power to do this has in some mysterious way come from God.

Or we sacrifice for another person, for a daughter to go off to college or for a person in need whom we never even meet. And we are aware of a spirit within us that moves us to do this.

Or we’re are taken by a magnificent sunset. And we wonder about the something, or Someone – spelled with a capital S – that is behind all of this.

Or finally, we find ourselves really loving someone. And we sense that there is a mystery to this that transcends any human explanation for it.   

Evangelization: The Way of Jesus

So, we need to name the grace of God in ways like this.

That, I believe, must be the first step of evangelization in this century and culture. We point out and identify God’s presence, already in our midst.  

And that presence, my friends, is the Holy Spirit. It is who the Holy Spirit is and what the Holy Spirit is about.

And then, with this naming done, we can proceed to the next step. We can proceed to lifting up the wonderful way that Jesus shows us and invite others to consider that way.

In sum, we name the grace and then we invite someone else to make that a conscious experience for themselves. 

And, in both steps, we are positive. We are not like the street preachers I remember as a child, as sincere as they were.  

We are not condemning or labeling someone as in mortal sin. We are not threatening others with damnation and manipulating them with fear.

Instead, we simply name grace and name the way of Jesus. And in so doing, we are living his way, the way of love and respect for others, no matter what.

Conclusion

This, I believe, is the way to celebrate and grow the presence of the Holy Spirit.

This is one way for us to understand and celebrate Pentecost today.