Who, me? Accepting the Call to Evangelize

Sunday, February 9, 2025

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Is 6:1-2a, 3-8/1 Cor 15:1-11 or 15:3-8, 11/Lk 5:1-11 (Lectionary 75)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/010925.cfm

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Inventory 

Do you feel called to evangelize? Have you an awareness of being called personally, by Jesus himself? Do you think you are not good enough for this?

Input

The Entrance Antiphon calls us to “worship,” to “bow down in the presence of our maker, for he is the Lord our God.” We will see both Isaiah and Peter taking this stance in the readings. But they didn’t stay there. God said they were sent out to do his work. Adoration shouldn’t paralyze; it should empower.

In the Opening Prayer(s) we ask God to “watch over’ us as his “family.” We declare our “hope” in him, based on “faith and love” (alternate prayer). Our faith tells us God is not just “the Lord our God.” He is our Father. This changes the kind of hope and love we have. We are members of God’s family. We feel at home with him. When we are in “our Father’s house” we go about “our Father’s business” (alternate translation of Luke 2:49) as his children. We are not servants or guests.

In the Prayer over the Gifts we ask our Father for “daily bread” that doesn’t just nourish our life on earth, but gives us “eternal life.” Our real “daily bread” is Jesus himself, the Bread of Life. Eucharist is our family table.

In the Prayer after Communion we recognize that God calls us to himself to send us out to others. We ask that Eucharist will “help us to bring your salvation and joy to all the world.” When God calls us to worship he sends us out to evangelize.

Touched Lips

Isaiah 6: 1-8 takes away a common excuse people use for not evangelizing. Like Isaiah, we feel we just aren’t holy enough. God couldn’t be calling us.

Isaiah used a thought-provoking image: “I am a man of unclean lips.” Jesus will cast some light on its meaning: “Good people produce good out of the good treasure of the heart, and evil people out of their evil [hearts] produce evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart….”  (Luke 6:45; Matthew 15:18).

It is not only through our lips that we express ourselvcs. Everything we do, every element of our lifestyle, every decision we make says something about who we are. Every “word” of choice creates us. Our “what,” our human nature, is something God created. But our “who,” which identifies us as persons, is something we are constantly creating by our free choices. In this we are like God. In creation, when God said, “Let there be… there was” (Genesis 1:1-25).

By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth (Psalm 33:6).

This is also true of us as we form our personalities, our souls. By every word of free decision we are choosing to “be” in some particular way. And what we “say” in our choices is what we are.

Most of us don’t feel we are doing a perfect job of it. When Isaiah thought this, God’s answer was to send an angel to touch his mouth with a live coal: “Now that this has touched your lips… your sin is blotted out.”

Our own sins were, not just “forgiven,” but “blotted out” when Jesus baptized us “with the Holy Spirit and fire.” He “erased” our words of evil choice and made us a “new creation,” not just by touching our lips, but by incorporating our whole selves into his own body on the cross and washing away — that is, annihilating — our sins by his blood, by taking them down to the grave with him in death (Luke 3:16; Colossians 2:14; 2Corinthians 5:17; Romans 6:3-4).

This frees us to sing with the angels, “Holy, holy, holy! In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord” (Responsorial Psalm: 138:1) and still go out to proclaim him as evangelists — with the lips of Christ.

 “From now on…”

In Luke 5: 1-11 Simon, who wasn’t a “rock” yet, had an “Isaiah moment.” Isaiah had seen angels crying out “Holy, holy, holy, Lord… heaven and earth are full of your glory.” Simon saw Jesus fill his nets by miracle when he had “fished all night and caught nothing.” Both had the same reaction: they felt they were in the presence of someone too holy for them to be around. They were both moved to “worship and bow down” knowing they were “in the presence of… the Lord God.” But they were afraid. Peter said, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

A basic human problem. If we know how holy God is and how sinful we are — both good insights — it keeps us from drawing near to him! But if we realize that the Most Pure chooses to be purifying, the Most Holy to be healing, and that transcendent Sanctity has become our incarnate Savior, we will not be afraid to “put out into the deep water” with Jesus and let him work with us, in us and through us to “catch people.” We will evangelize.

Not I but Christ

In 1Corinthians 15: 1-11 Paul caught on. He admitted, “ I am unfit to be called an apostle,” but added: “by the grace of God I am what I am…. It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” And so he evangelized. Or as he put it, “Not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

Insight

When you judge yourself unworthy of evangelizing, what are you forgetting?

Initiative:

Make an inventory of what you know about the Good News that you can share.

Fourth Saturday in Ordinary Time

Saturday, February 8, 2025

Fourth Week of the Year

Feast of Saint Jerome Emiliani; Saint Josephine Bakhita, Virgin; BVM

Mark 6:30-34; Hebrews 13:15-21; Psalm 23:1-6 (Lectionary 328)

 https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/010825.cfm

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When the apostles returned from their mission they were really keyed up. They “gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.” So he told them to take a break: “Come away to an out-of-the-way place and rest a little.”

The good news here is that Jesus tried to give his hard-working disciples a rest. The bad news is that the crowds made it impossible. “People were coming and going in great numbers, making it impossible for them to so much as eat.” When Jesus and the disciples tried to get away in a boat, “many saw them going and hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.” So much for the day off!

As they went ashore, they found “a vast crowd” waiting for them. Stop the camera: What would most people do in a situation like that? Ask the folks to come back during office hours? Give a short token speech to be polite and then dismiss them? Mark says Jesus  “had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” And he began to teach them “at great length.”

Jesus didn’t make token gestures. He didn’t give himself half way.

Part of the reason for this is that Jesus, being God, was whole and entire in everything he did. He couldn’t love half-heartedly or give himself with reserves.

But another part is that the Good News Jesus was proclaiming is so good — so healing, so life-integrating, life-extending, life-fulfilling  — that those who have been evangelized can’t stop evangelizing others. If this was true of Paul (2Corinthians 5:14), it was certainly true of Jesus. And when we have sufficiently heard the Good News, it is true of every one of us. If we are like God we will act like God. To live God’s life is to give God’s life. That is what Jesus did. If we are his body on earth, and if his Spirit is within us, that is what we will do.

We don’t have to change jobs or give up our family life. We all have to “leave boat and father” as those did whom Jesus called (Mark 4:22) but this is an interior change, a change of focus and direction. It means that, whatever we are doing, we are intent on doing it in a way that establishes the “reign of God.”  This becomes our priority at home, at work, in our social and political life, in everything we do. When enough Christians accept this, the “new evangelization” will have begun!

Initiative: Be an evangelizer. In everything you do, ask yourself, “How should the Good News of Jesus change this? Change the way I see it? The way I do it?

Fourth Friday in Ordinary Time

Friday, February 7, 2025

Fourth Week of the Year

Mark 6:14-29. Year I: Hebrews 13:1-8; Psalm 27:1-9 (Lectionary 327) https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/010725.cfm

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Jesus’ reputation was becoming widespread —due in part, perhaps, to the mission of the Twelve. People were beginning to wonder who Jesus was.

Some said he was “Elijah,” because the Lord had said through the prophet Malachi (3:23): “I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great… day of the LORD.” Others said he was “a prophet.” By this time Herod had put John the Baptizer to death, and some were saying, “John has been raised from the dead; that is why such power is at work in him.” When Herod heard the rumors, he drew his own conclusion: “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” No one was suggesting Jesus might be the Messiah.

He got the principle right: the only explanation for the divine work taking place in the Church in any day is that Jesus is alive and working in the members of his body. Herod was just wrong in his timing and in identifying Jesus with John the Baptizer.

The truth is, when members of the Church engage in ministry, it is the risen Jesus who is present and working in them. At Baptism we gave our bodies to Christ so that he might rise from the dead in us to continue his presence and mission on earth (see Romans 12:1-2; 1Corinthians 12:1-27). Mark may be alluding to this in a vague way when he records Herod’s “near miss” explanation.

Mark inserts here the story of John’s death. His reason probably is to prepare us for the death and apparent defeat of Jesus. People were shocked that God did not protect John, who was the chosen herald of the Messiah. John himself had a problem with it (see Matthew 11:2-3). The Messiah was supposed to be a winner, and all those connected to him should have been safe. The reason for Mark’s “messianic secret” was to keep Jesus’ identity quiet until he had risen from the dead, because until then his crucifixion could not have been understood as anything except total defeat at the hands of his enemies. Mark shows people projecting John’s resurrection as the logical answer to the problem of his apparent abandonment by God. Ultimately, they were right!

The good news here is that when Jesus rose, his victory was the victory of all who would die “in him” or for him. When he rose we rose. We live in him and he lives in us. The Christ of the “end time”— “the same yesterday, today and forever” —will be John and all the rest of us risen from the dead  (see Ephesians 1:10; Hebrews 13:8). 

Initiative: See the whole picture. When “the fat lady sings” it will be pure joy.