"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
You may have notice from time to time, while watching TV, usually a live event where a crowd is gathered, someone in the back ground holding up a sign with this written on it, just these numbers, "3:16". If you have not made the connection - it refers to this text of scripture, which is chosen as the gospel reading for this feast of the Most Holy Trinity.
Clearly, someone, at a grass roots level, is taking advantage of the TV exposure to evangelize. One might wonder how effective this effort might be, but if you google just the numbers "3:16" you are taken immediately to the bible passage.
No doubt there are those who consider this as an unwelcome intrusion of another's religious belief into an nonreligious public event. In other words, "... didn't ask, not interested, keep your religion to yourself". But by virtue of our baptism, we as Catholics have a mandate and responsibility to be Evangelists.
Pope John Paul II, in 1983, first exhorted the Church to undertake the mission of a New Evangelization in his encyclical, Redemptoris Missio. The Holy Father, described three situations requiring three unique approaches to Evangelization: 1. Evangelization to the nations: This is a situation where “Christ and his Gospel are not known.” 2. Evangelization of Christian communities: This is the ongoing evangelization of those “fervent in the faith.” 3. New Evangelization: “where entire groups of the baptized have lost a living sense of the faith, or even no longer consider themselves members of the Church, and live a life far removed from Christ and his Gospel. In this case what is needed is a ‘new evangelization’ or a ‘re-evangelization.’”
The new evangelization pertains to a very specific group of people: fallen-away Christians. For most Catholics in the western world, we see the need for this type of evangelization all around us. Everyone knows someone who was once baptized but who no longer practices the faith.
In a previous post on evangelization I quoted Archbishop Richard Smith, bishop of the diocese of Edmonton who described evangelization this way. It has two main components, WORD and SIGN, and both are necessary together. Word alone cannot convey the full message of the Good News, because people may not take from the words we use the same meaning that we intend to communicate. Bishop Smith gave this example. · When we use the word joy people often hear pleasure, · truth is heard as opinion, (we hear a lot about “alternate facts” these days), · conscience is heard as feeling, (morality comes from the way you feel), · justice is heard as vengeance.
But when our words are accompanied by a corresponding sign, gesture, personal witness, then what we mean to say is made clear. Remember, one who says one thing and does another is called a hypocrite.
Now in today's society the promotion of religious belief and practice is often met with intolerance and rejection. How is the evangelist to react? Saint
Gregory the Great offers this direction - with the meekness of Job. Whoever is mocked by his
friend, as I am, shall call upon God, and he shall hear him. A weak-minded
person is frequently diverted toward pursuing exterior happiness when the
breath of popular favor accompanies his good actions. So he gives up his own
personal choices, preferring to remain at the mercy of whatever he hears from
others. Thus, he rejoices not so much to become but to be called blessed. Eager
for praise, he gives up what he had begun to be; and so he is severed from God
by the very means by which he appeared to be commendable in God. But sometimes a soul
firmly strives for righteousness and yet is beset by men’s ridicule. He does
what is admirable, but he gets only mockery. He might have gone out of himself
because of man’s praise; he returns to himself when repelled by their abuse.
Finding no resting-place without, he cleaves more intensely to God within. All
his hope is fixed on his Creator, and amid all the ridicule and abuse he
invokes his interior witness alone. One who is afflicted in this way grows
closer to God the more he turns away from human popularity. He straightway
pours himself out in prayer, and, pressured from without, he is refined with a
more perfect purity to penetrate what is within. In this context, the words
apply: Whoever is mocked by his friend, as I am, shall call upon God, and he
shall hear him. (Job 12:4) For while the wicked reproach the just, they
show them whom they should look to as the witness of their actions. Thus
afflicted, the soul strengthens itself by prayer; it is united within to one
who listens from on high precisely because it is cut off externally from the
praise of men. Again, we should note how appropriately the words are inserted,
as I am. There are some people who are both oppressed by human mockery and are
yet deprived of God’s favorable hearing. For when the mockery is done to a
man’s own sin, it obviously does not produce the merit that is due to virtue.
The simplicity of the
just man is laughed to scorn. It is
the wisdom of this world to conceal the heart with stratagems, to veil one’s
thoughts with words, to make what is false appear true and what is true appear
false. On the other hand it is the wisdom of the just never to pretend anything
for show, always to use words to express one’s thoughts, to love the truth as
it is and to avoid what is false, to do what is right without reward and to be
more willing to put up with evil than to perpetrate it, not to seek revenge for
wrong, and to consider as gain any insult for truth’s sake. But this
guilelessness is laughed to scorn, for the virtue of innocence is held as
foolishness by the wise of this world. Anything that is done out of innocence,
they doubtless consider to be stupidity, and whatever truth approves of, in
practice is called folly by their earthly wisdom.
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Here is a link to Dr. Brant Pitre's video on the Trinity - LINK
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