Well, it must be Deacon week in scripture! In today’s readings we hear about Philip … one of the seven chosen in Acts 6 and known for his preaching and evangelization.
So, expanding the theme from earlier this week that we are all called to diakonia – to minister – what insights can we draw from reflecting on our friend Phil? Two things come to mind.
The first and foremost is that we are all called to evangelize! The church has repeatedly reminded us that it is part of who we are as a people, as Catholics. Not counting the documents of Vatican II, we have other teachings like Pope Paul VI’s Exhortation on Evangelization, Evangelii Nuntiandi ; Pope John Paul II’s Redemptoris Missio ; and Pope Francis’s encyclical Evangelii Gaudium.
The call by the Catholic church for each of us to evangelize our faith is clear.
Which brings me to the second point. Evangelization is not about memorizing scripture verses and series of logical arguments with which to coerce others to our way of thinking.
Catholic evangelization is about sharing our faith. Sharing our insights into how scripture nourishes our life. Sharing how prayer and ritual helps us cope. It is about giving something of ourselves as a witness to how God is working in our life.
However, we can’t give what we don’t got.
For our sharing to be authentic, it must be real. And with all the pressures that life places on us, we often have found that we have little time (except for an hour or so on Sunday Mornings) to nourish that faith.
For some of us, this time of seclusion has provided an opportunity of extra hours in our day. Working from home means that those hours spend in traffic can now be redeployed. How about redeploying them to helping us understand our faith, our church. How about redeploying them into prayer time. How about we change our commute-time into a communion-time.
I could suggest reading the above encyclicals ….. just click on the name of the document and it should open a new window with a copy of the document from the Vatican website. A word of caution however – encyclicals are written in a certain style and can take a bit of a concerted effort to digest. I would recommend that maybe an easier way to start is to watch any of Bishop Robert Barrons postings on YouTube (just click on his name above, or google Bishop Barron YouTube to find all sorts of links).
This time of separation can become a time where we lay the groundwork for a more active role in evangelization in the future. A foundation based on prayer and reflection. Taking some of that commute-time and turning it into prayer and study time, well, I can’t think of a more appropriate – and important – way of using those new-found minutes!