No ordinary people, no mere mortals!

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities… that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” - C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

My dear friend Bert Ghezzi quoted this section of C.S. Lewis’ sermon in one of his books and it has had a profound and lasting impact on with me. In fact I carry a copy of it in my wallet and another inside the cover of my prayer journal. I do that to remind myself daily of the reality of what happens in my interactions with others and especially to re-read at times when I am tempted to be less than loving with others. I am called to relate in the love of Christ towards all I encounter. To relate to others as if Jesus were living my life and relating to them through me.

This can mean exercising patience at times, say with a grumpy customer service representative. Or being a truth teller with a friend who is veering into sin in her sharing about a mutual friend. In all our interactions with others it calls us to bear in mind the truth that I cannot be neutral in attitude towards anyone. No “ordinary” people. No mere mortals. Everyone is on the way to heaven or hell – no exceptions. Everything that I say or do can help or hinder them.
That is a real reason for seeing all that we do as evangelizing others to the love of God.

“Father, open our eyes to see people as you do and as they really are, created for eternity. Through Christ our Lord we pray, Amen! “

Are we evangelizing in our parishes?

Recently a man who had seen a TV episode of The Choices We Face, on which I talked about evangelization, contacted me. As a result he called me for support and clarification on some of what he was experiencing. He had formerly been an evangelical Christian, was now a Roman Catholic, and wanted to continue to evangelize people to Christ within the context of his parish. His parish was the diocesan Cathedral, so he wrote his Bishop asking how do ‘we’ evangelize
people to Christ in our parish? He understood the place of RCIA and had been through it himself, but was asking, what else do we do? He was simply trying to understand how the parish evangelized. After respectfully writing three times and receiving no response he decided he had apparently gotten his response.

I have often heard this type of concern voiced by Catholics regarding their parishes or (arch)dioceses.The questions raised go like this: What are the steps we are taking to make evangelization our priority mission? What is our evangelization plan and process for my parish? Does anyone know the evangelization game plan in our parish so that we are all know what is expected of us and how we can support it? If evangelization is really a priority to us as Catholics, why isn't it reflected in the budget? Do we know that it is the universal calling, privilege and responsibility of every baptized Christian? Do we as Catholics realize this incredible calling given to each of us isn’t intended to be some abstract, irrelevant educational exercise we hear and vaguely remember, but rather is the power of the Gospel that can change the lives of people we encounter who desperately need good news! Is anybody being taught how to personally evangelize in our seminaries or parishes?

There are many Catholics (clergy, religious and laity), who are life long Catholics, who are raising these questions about evangelization, in addition to brothers and sisters who were formerly from other Christian traditions. I for one being a committed ‘cradle Catholic,’ would like to publicly express my gratitude for those of us who have come from other Christian backgrounds and have a deep personal commitment to evangelization. Thank God for their zeal! Oh that all Catholics would be so concerned for those around us to know the love of Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior!

The fact is we have Catholics who want to evangelize and don’t find the necessary support or means to do it as parishes. The Church teaches that the laity are intended to be in the front lines of evangelization in our neighborhoods and in the market place. The laity are crucial in the new evangelization and they need the support of their priests to get out into the harvest fields and spread the good news! Evangelization is after all not an isolated act: it is ecclesial. (See Pope Paul VI’s, EN, 60).

This issue of parish evangelization is a very serious pastoral challenge for the Church here in the United States. Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, speaking recently at a conference held in Rome on "The Parish and the New Evangelization," stated: "The Church exists only if it evangelizes, and the same is true for the parish. If a parish does not evangelize, it is only a building." Read the full article

The Magesterium teaches that evangelization is “the reason the Church exists.”(EN, 14) The universal mission of the Church we are taught is to be lived out at every level, in all institutions and in the lives of every baptized Christian (Mission of the Redeemer, 3). The US Conference of Bishops stated in “Go Make Disciples,” A National Plan and Strategy for Catholic Evangelization, that the Bishops want “to make evangelization a natural and normal part of Catholic life and to give evangelizers the tools and support they need to carry out this ministry today.”

The bishops evangelization plan was written back in November 1992. It is worth asking ourselves as parishes how we are doing with evangelization becoming a natural and normal part of Catholic life in 2008? Since the place where the rubber meets the road for most people in terms of their Catholic life is the parish, what are we doing?

Three Steps parishes can take

I would like to offer three practical steps that we can take as parishes that can help us move forward in making evangelization the essential mission. I am not going to develop these points here, we do that in our Building Evangelizing Eucharistic Communities seminar. I am simply pointing out three practical areas worth parish staffs and councils discussing and considering in order to take some steps to move forward.

1. Provide ongoing opportunities for people to encounter Christ Jesus as Lord within the context of a welcoming relational community (of the parish). As a parish we need to have regular ways of inviting people to encounter the Lord Jesus, both for parishioners and those not connected with the parish.
Courses like Alpha, Life in the Spirit seminars and ChristLife’s Discovering Christ course are effective examples of courses that are offered over several weeks.
Retreats that evangelize people like Cursillo and Light of the World are also means of evangelizing people to Christ and fuller life in the parish.
Special events. Special events such as a music concert, a film, or our Christmas and Easter liturgies. These Masses have incredible potential for lovingly welcoming our annual Catholics to the parish through par the intro to the Mass and in proclaiming clearly at the homily the reason for the celebration of the Incarnation or Resurrection of Jesus and what it means for you! Also, having some type of event, course or retreat, to invite everybody to, which the presiding priest would personally invite all attending to come to. Having extra greeters who could pass out a welcoming leaflet and invitation to whatever it is we will offer to connect them to the love of God and our parish!

2. Develop an ongoing process of initiation in the parish that includes both actual evangelization of the participants (point one above) and practical life formation/catechesis. I am not talking about RCIA here (which is essential and needs to be taught well and in an ongoing manner). But here I am talking about formation (discipleship) for daily living as a Catholic follower of the Lord, e.g., How to have a personal prayer life; how the sacraments sustain and strengthen our daily life; reading Scripture as God’s word; Christian relationships; service and evangelizing, learning to deal with the world, the flesh and the devil, etc. Here at ChristLife we are piloting a new course entitled, Following Christ, which teaches on these basics of following Christ as Catholic disciple. We also have some video courses that help in this process.

3. Foster Community as part of the process. True interior conversion, the work of the Holy Spirit, is most effective when it occurs in the content of relationships. Without authentic Christian relationships within the context of the parish it is hard to expect anyone to make the shift from being ‘conformed to this world’ (See Romans 12:2) to a transformed Christian worldview and lifestyle. To live authentic Catholic lives we need each other! We can establish small Christian communities that spontaneously develop and flow out of the two previous points above if we make it a priority to pastorally care for their development.

We would be happy to personally talk with you or someone from your parish more about evangelization in your parish, if you would like. Contact us at: info@christlife.org May we all take active concrete steps to incarnate the calling of Christ our Lord and the Church to evangelize!

Pink Flamingoes and the Pearl of Great Price

When I came to you, brethren, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power. St. Paul - I Corinthians 2:1-5

When I was a young boy my family traveled down the east coast of the U.S., from Maryland to Florida, to go on vacation. Back in those days we didn't have the interstate highways we now have and there were places where you had to travel along two lane roads that ran through small towns. I can remember in some of those areas you would see homes where the owners had decorated the yards with all kinds of things. Mirror balls, pin wheels, antique (abandoned) cars, statues of all kinds of things, dwarfs, deer, people and pink flamingo's. Now some of those lawns were so filled with 'decorative items' that it was hard to figure out how to get from the road to the house! Some home owners had gone even farther in their extravagant decorating and had affixed all kinds of things to the front porch walls. Flags, hubcaps, beware of dog signs, and other creative wall mountings! Kind a like the yard, some homes had so much stuff on the wall that you couldn't even see where the front door was!


Sometimes we as Catholic Christians feel compelled to immediately share with friends who, perhaps do not know the Lord or are not church goers, about the treasures of the Church,- Mass, the sacraments, Mary and the saints, Apostolic succession, etc. We feel the need to get it all out in front of them immediately. Sort of like the yards with the pink flamingos. By attempting to get it all out there immediately we run the risk of not establishing first things first. We can easily put the horse before the cart. We certainly want people to know all about the treasures of the Church, but we want them to know first and foremost about the Pearl of Great Price, who is the person that our faith is all about. We want them to know the reason for all of the wonders of the Church, His Body! When we share with others about the joy of knowing Jesus Christ personally as our Lord, as the center of our lives and of all creation, it puts first things first. We want them to know the way into house of God, and Jesus is that way! We want them to know the meaning of life which is found in union with the Trinity through what our Lord has done for all by his life, death and resurrection! If in fact our friends come to know the love of God in Jesus our Lord, the forgiveness of sins and, power of the Spirit given in baptism, then they will hunger to learn more and, live in the truths of the Church!

Let's growing in learning to share about the Lord Jesus, and look for opportunities to tell others why He is the pearl of great price and the joy of our lives!

“This is the principal proclamation of the Church, which remains unchanged down the ages. The Christian faith, therefore, is not an ideology but a personal encounter with the Crucified and Risen Christ. From this experience, both individual and communitarian, flows a new way of thinking and acting: an existence marked by love is born, as the saints testify.”
Pope Benedict XVI, Parish of God the Merciful Father, Rome, March 26, 2006

Archbishop at Theology on Tap

On November 7th, I gathered with about 50 or 60 Young adults at a local bar to meet the new Archbishop of Baltimore. In a session of "Theology on Tap", Archbishop O'Brien gave an address to the young adults gathered. It was an informal way for young adults to meet and receive guidance from their new "shepherd". He was very passionate about young adults and gave us some great insights for growth in our faith and service to the community.


I went with a group of young adults, many of whom attend ChristLife's Following Christ course. We were all very inspired by the Archbishop's words and excited to put those words into action. One thing that really struck me was when the Archbishop commented on his belief that young adults are capable of great self-giving.

I've heard it said that 'the youth of today are to much to themselves, to tied up in their own interests, to selfish. they're not going to listen to a message like this'...and I really resent that...I've spent the last twenty two years working with young people...and I've seen kids in the seminary willing to do anything to serve that neighbor of theirs that wants to seek Christ (Archbishop O'Brien at Theology on Tap, Baltimore).

ChristLife recently podcasted a clip from the Archbishop's address and well as Q&A with the young adults present. Listen in to this latest podcast here, or click play below:

Many have never had the chance to know Christ

Dave's blog account isn't posting - so here are his latest thoughts...

“Sometimes Catholics have lost or never had the chance to experience Christ personally, not as a mere value, or paradigm, but as the living Lord, the way the truth and the life.”
- Pope John Paul II, address to US Bishops


Recently I attended a meeting (non-religious in nature) at which a woman shared how she had been raised as a Catholic, gone to Catholic schools, and yet had never come to know God personally until she had been an adult for many years. And, she went on, it was not in the Catholic Church that she learned about this loving relationship that brought her great peace and change of life. I have heard similar stories hundreds of times over the years.

This weekend I participated in one of our Discovering Christ retreats for young adults. It was a wonderful time in which there is time for prayer, teaching, fun, laughter, fellowship and explicit opportunity to ask Jesus to be the priority of their lives - the Lord and Savior of all they are. Additionally it was a time when people could ask Jesus to baptize them in the Holy Spirit. See Luke 3:16. (In theological terms, the participants were praying for renewal of the grace of the sacraments of initiation ). It was wonderful to be there and witness the work of grace among us!

Now here is the point I would like to make, many Catholics in and outside of our parishes, have never had the chance to have a personal relationship with Jesus. Many have never even been told that this was a possibility. They need to hear clearly proclaimed the person of the Jesus Christ, and the explicit invitation to personally encounter him as Lord of their lives. And they need to be told how to do this. We as Catholics - clergy, religious and laity, who have been graced with knowledge of the Lord, must take up the commission of Christ (Matthew 28:18-20) to make him known, loved and followed.

The call of the Catholic Church presently to make evangelization, once again, the essential mission of the Church, in practice and not just in theory, calls for everyone of us to pray and to take action to help the many who do not personally know him to have the opportunity that Jesus made possible by his death and resurrection.

People are hungry for God. As Catholics we have been entrusted with a missionary mandate to tell them Who is the bread that will satisfy their hunger!

Father, use us we pray! Grant us courage to be fools for Christ, not ashamed to share the Good news with others who have the right to know. Grant us the power from on high to be witnesses to Jesus, in our lives and explicitly in our words. Grant our parishes and organizations fire to move and make available the means of helping others to know, Jesus is Lord! Amen.

How does one discover Christ?

In the midst of Christlife's Discovering Christ for young adults at St. Agnes parish in Catonsville, I feel a fair question to ask is how does one come to encounter Christ? Many people go through these courses and some are influenced, while others are not. From my own limited experience of 22 years of existence, I have come to believe that one must seek humility if they are to see the truth of God's revelation in Christ. Fulton Sheen once said that Christ was born in a cave, because we must stoop in order to see him. This I believe is the great paradox of the Christian faith. It is only when we see ourselves as we truly are- broken, sinful, and evil, that we experience the liberation that Christ offers. Only when we are honest with ourselves do we find peace. And only when we are at peace with that often frightening truth do we come to life as we see that mercy is of far more importance to God than justice. That seems to be the starting point of loving God with all our hearts and our neighbor as ourselves. How this happens, I still have much more exploring and surrendering to do, but thus far it seems the true path.