New Evangelisation and the Universal Call to Holiness

Ireland, like many other Western countries that once had strong and vibrant Christian communities, is now in need of evangelisation. The Universal Church has put New Evangelisation at the core of her concerns and actions. Pope Francis states, ‘In fidelity to the example of the Master, it is vitally important for the Church today to go forth and preach the Gospel to all: to all places, on all occasions, without hesitation, reluctance or fear. The joy of the Gospel is for all people: no one can be excluded’ (Evangelii Gaudium 23). In stating this, the Pope is giving strong and clear leadership to our Church regarding evangelisation. He is not allowing us to stay in our own comfort zone and leave large sections of society untouched by the Gospel. It is also important to note what the Holy Father said in relation to Church: ‘Being Church means being God’s people, in accordance with the great plan of his fatherly love. […] It means proclaiming and bringing God’s salvation into our world, which often goes astray and needs to be encouraged, given hope and strengthened on the way. The Church must be a place of mercy freely given, where everyone can feel welcomed, loved, forgiven and encouraged to live the good life of the Gospel’ (Evangelii Gaudium 114). What a beautiful and wonderful vision is contained in those words. The task of all missionary disciples, but in particular, members of the Union of Catholic Apostolate, is to help everyone we encounter to experience and be part of the community that is this Church. However, if this vision is to be realised, a transformation must take place so that authentic humility and contemplation will be the outstanding attributes of God’s people.

It is also important to acknowledge, at all times, that our transformation or conversion can only happen with the help of the Holy Spirit. It is by the grace of God that we respond to the love that God has lavished upon us. We are called to proclaim the Word and to sow seeds, but it is the Spirit who acts once the seed is sown (Mk 4:26-29). To quote Pope Francis, ‘God’s word is unpredictable in its power. […] The Church has to accept this unruly freedom of the word, which accomplishes what it wills in ways that surpass our calculations and ways of thinking’ (Evangelii Gaudium 22). In order to allow God to surprise us and to be open to his work, in ourselves and in others, we need to prepare our own hearts by becoming closer to Jesus and to his Word.

We must not allow the sheer enormity of the task to paralyse us into inaction. Rather, all big ideas are accomplished by a series of small steps right down to the power of one of these. I believe that this is how God’s plan for us is worked out over time. The mission of the Universal Church is also the mission of the local and domestic Church. The task of evangelisation is not confined to bishops, priests and religious. It is the work of the whole church, the whole People of God.

The Universal Call to Holiness

Our God is a good and generous God as we see in the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard (Mt 20:3-4): “Going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the market place and said to them ‘You go into my vineyard too’. This call is as vibrant today as it was 2,000 years ago, and was re-echoed by Vatican Council II and again in Christifideles Laici. It is addressed not only to the clergy and religious but to every baptised person. Each one of us receives from God a vocation and a mission to enter into collaboration for the good of the Church and of the whole world. In founding the Union of Catholic Apostolate, St. Vincent Pallotti realised the necessity of a structure to facilitate such collaboration in order to revive faith and re-kindle charity in our Church and in the world.

The first reaction of many lay people, myself included, when asked to become involved in evangelisation is to say, ‘I am not worthy or I am not holy enough to do this work’. But Jesus came to heal sinners and we are all sinners. We are all human; we disappoint ourselves and others in many areas of life; we often fail to reach our potential; yet God always offers us another chance.

Reflecting on the life of St. Peter helps illumine God’s work in us and offers great encouragement to all. Peter was a layman whose first reaction to God’s call was, ‘Leave me, Lord; I am a sinful man’. But Jesus said ‘Do not be afraid’ (Lk 5:8-10). Peter shows his determination when he attempts to walk on water, but immediately falls back once more into fear (Mt 14:8-32). Later on, Jesus tells him that he is an obstacle to God’s plan of salvation, because he fails to understand that suffering is part of Christ’s mission (Mt 16:23). Peter is also challenged by the infinite mercy of God and the call to imitate him in his boundless forgiveness (Mt 18:21-22) as he tries to get to grips with the far-reaching implications of being a follower of Jesus.

Finally, all of Peter’s human weaknesses and emotions come to the surface in Mt 26: 33-69. His great courage and loyalty are shown during the arrest of Jesus. His failures and weakness are demonstrated by his inability to stay awake and pray in the Garden and above all by his denial of Jesus in order to save himself. These are all very human and natural traits. Yet God used his weakness and past failures to transform Peter. In responding to the Universal Call to Holiness each one of us ought to be inspired by the extraordinary transformation of Peter, through the power of God, into the great leader and martyr that he became.

If new evangelisation is to be realised it will not be through mere words, but by the quality of our witness in our local faith communities and parishes. The process of evangelisation will happen quickly if every person we encounter in our daily lives and work feels welcomed, loved, forgiven and encouraged as Pope Francis recommends. Our task locally is to help people to become aware or more aware of God’s presence in our world. A world where many people have lost a sense of mystery – where God and religion are being pushed out. A real awakening to a sense of the sacred is necessary if new evangelisation is to succeed. A greater awareness or sense of God’s presence is needed if people are to respond to the universal call to holiness and act on their vocation.

I have often spent time with young people exploring four lines of a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

 ‘Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God,

But only he who sees takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round and pluck blackberries’

My two and half year old granddaughter’s world is full of mystery and wonder which she has no difficulty in embracing wholeheartedly. What happens to us as we get older? Do we lose our sense of mystery? Do we settle for knowing how things work without ever asking why? Do we lose that sense that there is always ‘more’? If we do, we have become berry-pickers and we are in urgent need of being awakened to a sense of having come from God and of returning to God. Richard Rohr says that we ‘cannot attain the presence of God because we are already totally in the presence of God. What is absent is awareness’ (‘Everything Belongs’). In trying to bring about an awakening to the Spirit or a greater awareness of God’s presence we may discover that actions speak louder than words. How we relate to each other may well hold the key.

This focus on relationships is important because it is through relationships that God’s love, mercy, joy and forgiveness will be encountered and experienced. This is the real challenge that Christ puts before all of his followers. ‘It is easier to immerse ourselves in doing a thousand things or getting involved in various causes, especially if we can connect them to the Gospel, than to attend to relationships; because relating to people demands a certain degree of trust, openness and vulnerability, which can cause some discomfort’ (From a talk given by Rev. Ruth Patterson). Yet this is precisely what we will have to do in order to be missionary disciples. Jesus gave us a perfect template in the way he revealed the Kingdom of God through word, action and table fellowship.

In John 4:5-30, the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well is a very good example of the Master at work. Jesus is humble and asks for a drink of water. He spends time with her, they discuss her life, he listens and he offers something of great value. It is in the dialogue that she recognises who he is. After the encounter with Jesus, the woman immediately becomes a missionary and, as a result, many Samaritans came to believe in him because of her testimony. If we are to be effective in evangelising our neighbour, we will first of all ourselves need to have encountered the risen Lord in a deeply personal and life-changing way.

If our communities, parishes and homes are truly places where God’s loving presence can be encountered, where his Word is broken open and shared, where his actions are experienced and his table fellowship is offered and real, then we can say we are wholeheartedly engaged with New Evangelisation and beginning to make the vision behind the Universal Call to Holiness a reality.

Questions for personal and/or group reflection:

• Can you remember a particular time in your life when you experienced God’s call to holiness in a more deeply personal way than before?
• How has your experience of God’s call changed over the years? And your response to that call?
• What communities of faith have helped you to nourish and deepen and   respond to that call in relationship with others? Your family? Your parish and diocesan family? The Union of Catholic Apostolate? Other groups? The Universal Church?
•  In what ways are you, in your local UAC group or another faith community, involved in discerning the signs of the times and the needs of those around you and in responding to them as apostles of the Infinite Love of God through concrete practical initiatives?

Prayer:

Come Holy Spirit, burn away our selfishness and fill us with your love.
Come Holy Spirit, burn away our anxiety and fill us with your peace.
Come Holy Spirit, burn away our jealousy and fill us with your generosity.
Come Holy Spirit, burn away our anger and fill us with your forgiveness.
Come Holy Spirit, burn away our unbelief and fill us with a faith in Christ that transforms our lives.

Come Holy Spirit, burn away all that prevents us from hearing your call in the cry of the poor and from pouring out our lives in generous service of those who yearn for us to be for them living witnesses and missionary disciples of your Word, of your justice and peace, of your mercy and forgiveness, of your tenderness and compassion, of your goodness and truth, of your joy and simplicity, of your love. Amen.

(Adapted from a prayer given to me by the late Kevin Devlin RIP)

                                                              Pat Maguire,

                                                              Dublin, Ireland

____________________________________________________

Segretariato Generale, Unione dell’Apostolato Cattolico

Piazza San Vincenzo Pallotti 204, Roma, Italia    uac@uniopal.org

4th July 1976 – 4th July 2014

Friday 4th July marks the thirty-eight anniversary of the massacre of our five Pallottine confreres, Frs. Alfredo Leaden, Pedro Dufau, Alfie Kelly, and students Salvador Barbeito and Emilio Barletti. There will be several events in the Argentine to mark the anniversary.

 In Mercedes there will be a memorial service which will be held in the entrance to the parish church of San Patricio at 10.30. This service is organized by the Municipality of Mercedes, the Pallottine Community and the Municipal Commission por la Memoria (to keep alive the memory). The Municipality of Mercedes commissioned new plaques to commemorate them and they will be placed on the three streets that form part of the block in which the Church, Secondary School and Parish House are. Part of the tradition is to visit the cemetery of Mercedes for a prayer service at the graves of the three priests.

 In the parish of San Patricio, Belgrano, where the massacre occurred, a memorial concelebrated Mass will take place at 19.30.

 As a Province let us pray for our deceased confreres and accompany the members in Argentina as they commemorate another anniversary of the massacre.

Derry Murphy, SAC. Provincial Rector.

Return to Esso – Elaine Hogan

I returned to Tanzania in January to visit Esso – a parish run by the Pallottine Fathers – where I had lived before for over a year, and also to visit Malambo in the Ngorongoro conservation area where Fr. Mike O’Sullivan, a Pallottine Father from Co. Kerry, is now ministering to the Maasai tribe.

Esso is as vibrant as ever. I visited all the various “Pallotti projects” which have been set up over the past eight years and I am delighted to say that they are all thriving. The computer classroom was filled with new students, and being taught by Tanzanian teachers. The primary school now occupies six rooms in the Resource Centre. The Faraja (Joy) centre for children and adults with disabilities was being looked after by a young Tanzanian occupational therapist while Clare, the Irish lady who set it up, was home on holiday. The sports hall was packed with teenagers every afternoon and the buzz of activity around “Pallotti” is still there. The local people are now taking leadership of the projects themselves.

The new Church, built to hold 1,400 people, will be handed over to the parish for the Easter services… a credit to the locals who provided a lot of the cost through their weekly contributions. What a success story for all involved!
Fr. Noel O’Connor asked me to visit a family on his behalf to find out how they are getting on. There are seven children in the family and Fr. Noel is trying to support them by raising funds to send them to school. They lived in the changing rooms on a football field in Esso for a long time, but now they have a small plot of land in another parish and live in a wooden house – with absolutely no flooring, just mud – and the interior dividing walls are made from sheets of cardboard. They are gradually buying materials to build a brick house. The children are all doing very well in school. Their father is now working on a building site and the eldest son has found work installing solar panels. They are very happy and healthy, and each one proudly recorded a video greeting in English for me to show to Fr. Noel when I got home. I visited Fr. Mike in Malambo, an outstation of Loliondo parish. There are several outstations all around the hills and mountains of Malambo, which Fr. Mike tries to visit as often as possible. The landscape is outstanding and the peace and quiet was astounding! Fr. Mike says Malambo is “Africa’s best kept secret”.

One Sunday, Fr. Mike said Mass in Piaya. In this rural area the community only sees a priest two or three times a year. There are no tarmac roads and it is a three-hour drive away. In Piaya we visited the home of the parish chairman who had died tragically two weeks previously (Christmas week) leaving nine children behind, the youngest being only two years old.

When we arrived, his widow welcomed us and had already prepared refreshments. She was a truly beautiful lady and an inspiration. Her attitude was to get on with things for the sake of her children. There were a lot of other children around that day and also a catechist who had been in Piaya to prepare them for the sacraments. Fr. Mike heard confessions before Mass; and during Mass there were baptisms, first communions and confirmations.

After the long Mass, we were invited back to the house where a feast had been prepared for everyone in celebration of all the sacraments received that day. On the journey home we were joined by an old Maasai man and two young boys. There are only a handful of cars in the area, so if there is the opportunity of a lift somewhere, the people will take it. The boys were on their way to a government-run boarding school for hundreds of Maasai children, and without a lift they would have to walk for two days through wide open land with lots of wild animals. 

The school year begins in January, so driving around the area at that time we saw children either running after a car asking for a lift, or running in the other direction if they thought it was a government car sent to take them to school! But some parents don’t send their children to school as they are needed at home to look after the cattle.
On that Sunday, our youngest passenger, who was about eight years old, had car sickness… and there was nothing we could do only keep on driving; we were in the middle of nowhere. Fr. Mike had arranged a meeting at another outstation on the way home as he was planning a seminar and wanted to personally invite the young people. While the meeting took place under a tree with the men of the village, the women took the sick little boy and washed him and his clothes, and by the time we left a half an hour later, the car was clean, the child was clean, his clothes were dry and the women had wrapped a plastic sick bag around his ears before allowing him back into the car again, the poor little guy!

We returned to the same village later in the week for their first catechism class. It had rained the night before, so the people who had requested the classes were out in the fields looking after their crops. We waited around for them for over an hour (no hurry in Africa). In their first class they learned how to make the sign of the cross. Then Fr. Mike spoke to the surprisingly large gathering of men, women and children.

He held up a bottle of water and explained how it would be blessed and then he would sprinkle it over them and they would be blessed. The sign of the cross and holy water: two things I take for granted every day, these people were only learning now, in the year 2014! Fr. Mike told them that he would be back again soon to bless their houses (mud huts) and their animals, and they were very happy. An elderly woman jokingly asked if she could attend the seminar for the youth: she must have been eighty years old… and she was only just learning how to make the sign of the cross! One day in Malambo we visited a woman Fr. Mike had met a few times before. She had been working in the field one day when a dust storm came and lifted her into the air with such force that when she landed she was paralysed. Now she was sitting outside on a bucket in the shade with her three toddlers playing beside her. Fr. Mike said it was the first time he had seen her sitting; she was usually in so much pain she had to lie flat on the ground. There was also a very beautiful, quiet and shy teenage girl. They all lived in a tiny mud hut, but a strong wind had blown the roof off it. Fr. Mike told her that he was making arrangements to build a small two-bedroomed house for her and her family – it would be made from brick and would have windows and doors. (At a cost of about one thousand Euro). The woman was stunned by this news: she was speechless. As we walked away Fr. Mike said “If anyone deserves a break in life, it’s that woman”.

I must mention the child who was born while I was there – whose father I had met a few days before he had died of cancer a week earlier and whose mother had died as she gave birth to him. That little boy will be raised by his relations now and I have no doubt he will be happy, but I can’t help but feel sad for him.

I could write a hundred stories about how difficult life is for the people, but I would also have to say how unbelievably happy they are despite all the hardships and poverty they face every day. And I have to take this opportunity to say a sincere “Thank You” to all who have donated towards the work of the Pallottines in Tanzania. Your donations really do go a very long way.