The New Evangelization seems to be one of the biggest buzz words in Catholic circles lately. We talk a whole lot about it, but our efforts are for the most part ineffective. It’s not to say there aren’t some good people out there doing great work to proclaim the Good News, but most of us who call ourselves Catholics and even the Church as a whole is not very vivacious about our vocation.
Prioritizing the Process
There are two essential aspects of the proclamation of the Christian message, namely catechesis and evangelization. Unfortunately, we tend to turn these two on each other. Basically, catechesis is to tell people who God is, whereas evangelization is to show people who God is. Now it would seem that evangelization would take priority, but in the experience of most Catholics catechesis takes precedence. I think this is where we as Catholics are getting it wrong. We spend a lot of time, effort, and resources on catechesis and religious education programs, but fail to ever really introduce people to Christ. Non-Catholic Christians often do a great job at evangelizing, but fail to properly catechize in the even some of the most basic tenants of Christian doctrine. (Sweeping generalizations added for effect)
Even though they might know a lot about God, they’ve never actually come to know God. This is ridiculous. How can someone go through 12 years of a so-called Catholic education and never encounter God? The problem is that we’ve traded evangelization for catechesis. And as a catechist myself it pains me to see this. As the program coordinator it bothers me even more. Even in my own program I see that we spend the first half of the year talking about the rules and practices, before we even mention Jesus. (BTW, this is something I am actively working to change)
Jesus as Our Model
When we turn to the Gospels we see that people encountered Jesus, He “touched” their lives either literally or figuratively, they experienced a life-change, then they started asking questions and learning more about Him and His teachings. You see, we have it backwards. We seem to always start with the doctrine. Paul was known to “preach Christ crucified” bringing the Good News of salvation to the Jews and the Gentiles, whereas we tend to bring a long list of rules and regulations. No wonder people are confused about the Good News. The rules are important, but it usually just scares people away from a religion that they assume is just about ridding life of all it’s goodness for a promise that seems almost too far away to even matter.
Jesus Christ must come first. Always. Period. The sacraments are great, but where did they come from? Jesus instituted them. The Ten Commandments are important, but without Jesus to show us what they mean and how to live them out, what’s the point?
I’ve had the blessing of participating in evangelization retreats over the past few years and have seen the great impact that just a few days with God away from the world can have on a persons life. This should be the first step. The encounter with Jesus—just as in the Gospels—is the first step to becoming a Christian. For what good is it to call yourself a Christian if you’ve never met Jesus Christ?
Working Together
My hope is that we as Christian individuals and as the Universal Church will stop pitting catechesis and evangelization at each other and instead learn to use them together by first evangelizing—facilitating the personal encounter with Jesus Christ—then catechizing—as Jesus said “teaching them all that I have commanded you”.
Fr. Robert Barron has a great example of this process. He talks about baseball. If you want someone to become a great baseball player you don’t begin by bombarding them with the rules and regulations of the sport. No, you take them to a baseball game. You allow them to fall in love with the game, with it’s beauty, it’s excitement, it’s passion. Then little by little as they grow to love baseball, you can teach them how to be a better player.
What Fr. Barron is saying is that we have to start with Jesus. Let people meet Christ, then become Christians. As Christians they will continue the journey by growing deeper in their lived faith. Evangelization that leads to catechesis is the way we’ve got to go. Not the other way around.