RBWords

     I belong to a generation in the United States that was thoroughly "catechized."  This means we were expected to know the responses to the questions in the Baltimore Catechism.  (The word, "evangelization," was not one that I heard until after I entered religious life in 1964.)  I went to a Catholic elementary school and a Catholic high school in my small hometown in Northwest Louisiana.  We Catholics were a significant minority in the town.  Outside the town was mission territory.  While we were truly "catechized," I wonder if we were truly "evangelized,"  I knew next to nothing about scripture, even if I knew the minutiae of serving Mass as an altar boy.  There was a type of Catholic culture that surrounded us and protected us.  I did learn a kind of "ecumenism" long before that word showed up because much of my extended family was Protestant.  My mother was Presbyterian till I was 13 years old.

 

     All of this comes to mind as I reflect on Jesus' words in today's gospel in the light of what has been promoted by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI [and probably Pope Francis, too] under the title of "New Evangelization."  It does not mean trying to convert pagan lands or our Protestant or Jewish or Moslem or Buddhist or Hindu brothers and sisters.  It means trying to convert those who are already Catholics!  We are being urged to go after the "lost sheep" of our own tradition! 

 

     My experience in many years of campus ministry demonstrated clearly to me that I could not assume that students had been "catechized."  To some extent, they had been evangelized because there was definitely faith in their lives.  But there was not a sufficient understanding of the vast treasure of revelation and understanding of Christ and the church to sustain that faith in the face of all the temptations and trials of college life!  There is a tension between "catechesis" and "evangelization."  The first means imparting the content of the faith.  The second means giving people a reason to believe in the first place!  I know I am oversimplifying subjects that convoke vast "religious education congresses" but I think my experience is not unique.  Jesus' instructions were and are simple ones.  Each of us who have received baptism should read those instructions and ask ourselves before we go out if we have been sufficiently "evangelized" or "catechized."  If not, what can we do about it?  The Kingdom of heaven is at hand!  That should be reason enough!   AMEN