How we live in our daily lifein our personal and sexual relations, in our speech, in our social attitudes, in our use of time, in our prioritiesmust be marked by Christian, that is, saintly values.He had found that many people seemed to be waiting for Rome to issue instructions on a new kind of evangelization, different from the past, which would somehow solve the problem of evangelization.
The New Evangelization is called new because it is directed at people in once-Christian cultures. Individuals within those cultures may need to hear about Christ almost as if for the first time, but taken as a whole, we can see that these once-Christian peoples and once-Christian cultures need to be evangelized anew. But in general, this habit developed because of the weakness of the Church and the Faith in the West over the past few generations, a weakness by which programs somehow came to replace spiritual growth and commitment. I note with gratitude that our bishops are beginning to realize this. For example, when the USCCB announced its campaign of prayer and fasting for marriage and religious liberty earlier this month, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco said: Its not meant to be another program but rather part of a movement for life, marriage, and religious liberty, which engages the New Evangelization and can be incorporated into the Year of Faith. Just this week Baltimores Archbishop Lori emphasized at a conference in Rome the need for collaboration among the bishops in North, Central and South America to make evangelization effective. There is nothing objectionable in Archbishop Loris call for collaboration, especially insofar as he recommended that we all turn to Our Lady of Guadalupe. But in fact collaboration at the episcopal level has very little to do with evangelizationand will not make it effectiveunless each bishop labors to renew the faith in his own diocese. It is here that a new evangelization must begin, as each seeks to transform nominal Catholics into holy Catholics. For one of the most important aspects of authentic holiness is a sense of mission. I wish to offer ten points which will lead to authentic spiritual renewal, a keen sense of mission, and effective evangelization. ![]() But I believe all of these points must be incorporated into what we might call an effective Christian life, a life that evangelizesa life that draws others to Christ. For this purpose, concepts like faith, hope, charity and holiness come to mind, but they are perhaps too vague to be useful, so I will first focus on four ways of being which define what we want to become. It is very easy to become what we might call a Catholic by rote, that is, somebody who follows a kind of minimal set of rules, living the Christian life in an essentially prescriptive way. Such a person frequently asks, What do I need to do to at least make it to purgatory Or What does the Church require of me to be a good Catholic It is often observed that this attitude was far too widespread among the laity in the first half of the twentieth century, and that an important part of the purpose of the Second Vatican Council was to shake the Church out of this sort of complacency. In any case, our Christian life must be defined and motivated first and foremost by a personal love of Jesus Christ. ![]() All that Our Lord offers to draw men and women into union with God is made available through the Church. This is a consequence of His saving passion, death and resurrection, the fruits of which are specifically actuated by her sacraments and, in a different way, by her Magisterium, which safeguards Revelation so that we may be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4). ![]() In other words, the second point is like unto the first: Our Christian life must be defined and motivated by a deep personal love of the Church. Our moral behavior must become the behavior of a Christian, that is, of a saint.
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