WHAT IS EVANGELISATION? - PART 1

Fr Billy Swan

Dear friends. I spoke during the week at the 'Hearts on Fire' conference in Belfast, hosted by the diocese of Down and Connor. Below is the first part of a three part series on my talk which was entitled 'What is Evangelisation?' Part 2 will be posted next week and part 3 the week after.

Dear friends. I am delighted to be with you here today at this ‘Hearts on Fire’ Conference in Belfast.  It is indeed an honour to contribute along with many of the inspiring speakers we heard this morning and will hear tomorrow. I thank Bishop Alan and his team for the opportunity, and I salute all the great work being done here in Down and Connor for mission and evangelisation.

I love the title of the conference: ‘Hearts on Fire’. It speaks of a warmth, an energy and missionary zeal that is shared among us and that is renewed by gatherings like these. Events like this bring us together as faith friends and like-minded people whose hearts have been enflamed by the love the Lord, who love the faith and who are passionate about sharing that gift of faith in Him.

This symbol of fire reminds us of the great feast of Pentecost that we celebrated a few weeks ago when the Spirit descended on the disciples in a way that transformed broken and fearful disciples into courageous evangelisers, witnesses and martyrs. During his life, Jesus himself used the symbol of fire to describe his whole mission when he said: ‘I have come to bring fire on the earth and how I wish it were blazing already’ (Luke 12:49). As we know, the phrase ‘hearts on fire’ comes from the Gospel episode of the disciples on the road to Emmaus whose hearts became enflamed as the risen Lord explained the Scriptures to them. On Friday we celebrate the Feast of the Sacred Heart – one of the most beautiful of the post-Easter celebrations. With the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the two symbols of fire and the heart unite in a way that expresses God’s unconditional love that burns for all humanity and that is poured out of a wounded heart that knows us better than we know ourselves.

In our faith tradition here in Ireland, the symbol of fire was used by Muirchu, the scribe who wrote the first life of St Patrick (Muirchu, Life of Patrick, I, 15) about the year 700AD. He famously described how Patrick lit the Easter fire on the hill of Slane in defiance of the pagan king. This fire symbolised the Christian faith that illuminated the darkness in Ireland at the time and once it was lit, a prophesy was made that it would never go out.

In recent decades, this fire of faith has certainly dimmed in the Irish Church for many reasons. Though it may seem at times to be reduced to embers, it still burns. Our prayer is that this conference will help fan into a flame these slumbering embers so that the faith may burn strongly once more, ignited by a New Pentecost followed by a New Evangelisation.

Evangelisation in Ireland

The topic I have been asked to speak about is: ‘What is Evangelisation?’ Before I get to that, I would like to share a few observances on the history of evangelisation in the Irish Church that can help us better understand our task today.

Well, it started with a bang. The arrival of Patrick and other Christian missionaries in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, lead to an extraordinary transformation of a previously pagan culture. Contrary to some interpretations that Patrick’s message was grafted seamlessly onto the existing culture, Patrick brought the newness of the Gospel of Christ with the same courage, boldness and conviction of St Paul. With a heart on fire, he proclaimed the kerygma or the basic tenets of the Christian faith - namely the Oneness of God, the resurrection and Lordship of Christ, the gift of the Spirit, the transformation of the Irish through faith and baptism and their unity within the universal Church. Within a few centuries, not only had the Christian faith incarnated itself into Irish culture but Irish missionaries flooded the continent of Europe, bringing the light of the Gospel that pierced the Dark Ages. Many of these missionaries came from monasteries that began to appear all over Ireland – our own St Columbanus from Bangor being a case in point.

Yet, as time went on and as Christianity began to establish itself more firmly in Ireland, a curious development emerged. While evangelisation preceded Christianity as an established religion, charismatic evangelisation began to wane as Christianity became more institutionalised. The corollary of this can also be observed in the history of the universal Church - namely that when institutional Christianity or Christendom began to wane, God raised up prophetic saints like Francis, Dominic and other evangelical movements to renew his Church, restore her prophetic edge and bring her back to her intended mission and purpose.

In the Catholic tradition, it must be admitted that a major reason for the decline of the Church’s evangelical energy was the tragic neglect of the Bible. In response to the Reformation, familiarity with the Bible began to decline which resulted in the prophetic and evangelical vocation of the Church to be eclipsed. This problem was addressed at the Second Vatican Council and major efforts have been made since then to restore the living Word of God to the centre of the Church’s life. I think of ‘Verbum Domini’ by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 and the establishment by Pope Francis of ‘Word of God Sunday’ on the third Sunday of Ordinary time. That said, I believe that here in Ireland, the task to recover the centrality of the Word of God is still a work in progress and a dream still to be fully realised.

So here is the question. Could this time of institutional decline in Ireland be an opportunity for renewal of the Irish Church? Is this time of marginalisation for the Church an opportunity to recover her prophetic voice and evangelical energy? Is the Lord bringing his Church back to a basic awareness of her mission and purpose which is to set hearts on fire with love for God and neighbour, to witness to the Gospel with conviction and gather us into the family of the Church? Now don’t get me wrong. I am not anti-institution. I know how important the Church is as an institution.  As an administrator of a large urban parish, I deal with the challenges of institutional decline every day with fewer financial, practical and human resources. What I am saying is that we are on the cusp of a new chapter of the Irish Church that calls us back to the apostolic, mystical and evangelical foundations of our faith that are there in the New Testament and that were brought to us by people like St Patrick. In 1974, Archbishop Fulton Sheen said the following:

‘We are at the end of Christendom. Not of Christianity, not of the Church, but of Christendom…But these are great and wonderful days in which to be alive…It is not a gloomy picture…Therefore live your lives in the full consciousness of this hour of testing and rally close to the heart of Christ’.

I believe that the key to the success of the renewal of Irish Christianity will be a return to her evangelical  foundations coupled with a desire to bring people to faith in Christ, rediscovering our true identity as sons and daughters of our loving God.  This invitation to return to the heart of Christ will not be the task of a few but a mandate for all the baptised as we discover, perhaps for the first time, the joy of the Gospel.

There are a number of converging signs that now is the time for a new missionary beginning for the Irish Church. During and after the Second Vatican Council, no less than six Popes have emphasised the importance of praying for a New Pentecost that would lead to a new evangelisation. While Pope St John XXIII prayed for a New Pentecost, Pope St Paul VI, Pope St John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis and now Pope Leo have all united in calling for a new evangelisation and a new boldness in proclaiming Christ and the truth of his Gospel to the world. They have encouraged all of us to reach back to the Scriptures and to our living faith tradition to re-propose faith as a life-giving gift and to engage confidently with the modern world, convinced that we have something vital to offer.

Another sign of hope comes from ecumenical dialogue where brothers and sisters from other denominations have helped us recover the prophetic, charismatic and evangelical edge to the Gospel. In the Catholic tradition, people like Bishop Robert Barron’s ‘Word on Fire’ movement has helped Catholicism recover her distinctive colours and sharpened her blunt edges to help the Church offer a real alternative that people are longing for. Another example is the American author George Weigel who wrote a book in 2013 entitled ‘Evangelical Catholicism’ in which he called for the whole of the Church’s life to be imbued with a new evangelical Spirit of courage and conviction.

PART 2 NEXT WEEK