Kindling the Faith with new light

Catechesis begins at home
 
“We live in a gospel-hardened, post-Christian culture. … So there is pressure from without. But the greatest challenge is lethargy from within,” said Marcellino D’Ambrosio, theologian, speaker, and founder of the Crossroads Initiative, which introduces Catholics to the riches of the faith through content and pilgrimages.
 
Scott Hahn, renowned theologian and author, agreed: “The wider society is increasingly secularized and hostile. Our own people have been worn down by these circumstances, and few Catholics are fully practicing the faith. … Some of our own Catholic leaders seem dispirited.”
 
Both Hahn and D’Ambrosio say that the first step to converting others is to be converted ourselves. 

“We need to renovate our interior before we can hope to change another person, never mind the world,” said Hahn.
 
“You can’t be the light of the world unless you are on fire,” agreed D’Ambrosio. “While there is still an obligation to fight the increasing secularization of our culture, the primary goal that we must employ is to help Sunday Catholics ‘catch fire.’ We need to look more redeemed if we want people to believe in our Redeemer.”
 
EVANGELIZING THROUGH BEAUTY
 
One way to kindle the flame is through the rich artistic tradition of the Catholic Church.
 
D’Ambrosio recently launched a catechetical program titled What We Believe: The Beauty of the Catholic Faith, with Ascension Press.
 
The book and video program “focuses on just what its title indicates: the resplendent beauty of Christ and His Church,” said D’Ambrosio.
 
“Instead of lecturing, [the instructors] walk through the city of Rome, a visual embodiment of the beauty and richness of Catholic faith, and we have an ongoing conversation,” D’Ambrosio explained. “Our animated conversations begin with what we believe and then proceed to how we can fruitfully, joyfully, live it out.”
 
But most Catholics can encounter the beauty of the Church — if they get to encounter it at all — through the art and music at their local parish during Mass, according to Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who leads the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
 
 “[T]he primary catechesis for Catholics is the liturgy,” Archbishop Cordileone wrote in a published commentary earlier this year. “[I]t is what is classically Catholic that works — works today as it has worked for generations before.”
 
Greater attention to the Mass as a vehicle for communicating the faith is critical to the new evangelization, he stated in a recent interview.
 
 “More beauty and reverence in the liturgy is needed, for that is what, in the first place, qualifies as fitting for the worship of the one, true God,” the archbishop said. “I am convinced it is also central to the key problem we are confronting nowadays, namely, that so many Mass-going Catholics don’t understand or experience the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.”
 
When the outward form of the liturgy doesn’t correspond to the reality of the Mass, he added, “people have trouble understanding and experiencing Jesus Christ in the Mass.”
 
In 2018, Archbishop Cordileone commissioned a new Mass setting, the Mass of the Americas, through the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship. The music incorporates elements of traditional Gregorian chant as well as Mexican Catholic folk hymns. Composed by Frank La Rocca, the Mass honors the Virgin Mary as the Immaculate Conception, patroness of the United States, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of Mexico and the Americas — the 1531 apparition that sparked the conversion of the native people of Mexico to Catholicism.
 
“The Mass of the Americas speaks profoundly to the power of our Mother to unite her children,” said Archbishop Cordileone in a 2019 homily. “She stands there in every generation of the Church, interceding to her Son for her children, actively leading them to Him, united as one in Him.”
 
AUTHENTIC RELATIONSHIPS
 
Of course, the purpose of evangelizing is to draw people into friendship with God, through communion with the Church. In a time when over a third of Americans — and over half of teenagers and young adults — report feeling lonely, an authentic community is attractive.
 
In the introduction to What We Believe, D’Ambrosio and co-author Andrew Swafford emphasize that Christianity is not simply a belief system, but “the story of a relationship.”
 
Where previous evangelization resources might have emphasized the Church’s teaching authority or historical pedigree first, D’Ambrosio and Swafford start by calling the Church “a family” and “a mysterious fellowship intended by God to satisfy the deep longing of our hearts.” 

Hahn also stressed the need for authentic personal relationships: “Your neighbors and family need your immediate attention. And they need your attention not just with arguments, but primarily with friendship. Honest, authentic friendship.
 
“This is how the Roman Empire was won — one soul, one household at a time,” said Hahn.
 
This pathway for evangelization starts with our own authentic relationship with God, he noted.
 
“Spend time with the Scriptures every day, not just now and then. And read good, reliable materials that will help you assimilate what you’re reading,” recommended Hahn, president of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, a research institute that promotes Scripture study. “Your presentation of the Gospel will flow, then, from what you believe and what you know, not just what you’ve memorized for the sake of winning an argument.”
 
He emphasized that the most powerful witness is personal holiness.
 
“Pray, pray, pray, and then pray more,” Hahn said. “[Evangelization] is not about programs. It’s not about arguments. It’s not about media. It’s about you and me becoming saints. If we succeed at that, we’ll make the faith attractive to others.”

RACHEL HOOVER is a contributing writer for Legatus magazine.