Seventh Sunday of Year - The call to new evangelisation

Today's gospel reading is that wonderful story of the healing of the paralyzed man. We can sense the excitement as the story gets under way. Jesus is back in Capernaum; that's kind of his home base during much of his public ministry. Everyone is excited about it. They gather around the place where he is, namely, Peter's house, to listen to him. Mark tells us there is no room around the door; everybody is crowded in. Then some people bring to Jesus a paralyzed man. The crowd is so thick so they can't get him to Jesus. These are this man's friends and they desperately want Jesus to heal him. So, in their desperate enthusiasm, they climb up and open a hole in the roof.

Imagine Peter's reaction, by the way, as he watches his own home being dismantled. But that's the desperation, that's the energy and enthusiasm of these people. They lower the man down and place him at the feet of the Lord. So impressed is Jesus by their faith that he forgives the man's sins and then he says: Get up, pick up your stretcher and walk, and he walks.

I think this is a very good metaphor for our time and for our work in evangelisation. There are a lot of Catholics who are paralysed when they come to the Church. There are many reasons of this. Some people are paralyzed because of their sense of sin; some people are paralyzed because they're angry at the Church; some people are paralyzed because they've been hurt by the Church in some way; some people are paralyzed because no one is there to encourage them... Perhaps our job is to find that person and bring him/her to Jesus Christ.

I know that the very word evangelisation can seem somewhat alien to us, Catholics. We pray and attend Sunday Mass and perform works of charity and so on, but evangelisation? Isn't it something that the Protestants do? Let's face it: are we often a little bit put off by the in-your-face style of evangelical preachers? Well, here is the bottom line: we cannot avoid the demand to evangelize - to proclaim the faith. To be Catholic, is to be like a ship. Ships are safe at harbor, but that is not what ships are for. As members of the Catholic Church, we are all called to be missionaries. The Second Vatican Council could not be clearer on this. Therefore, everything we do in the Church from Liturgy to prayer, care for the poor... all of it is centred ultimately on evangelising. That's our mission. Blessed John Paul II throughout his lengthy papacy made evangelisation absolutely central, famously calling for a new evangelisation: to use new methods (e.g. World Youth Days), not to be afraid to use the media, the internet, websites, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, and other forms for digital communication. As Pope Benedict has recently put it: Among the new forms of mass communication, nowadays we need to recognize the increased role of the internet, which represents a new forum for making the Gospel heard... In the world of the internet, which enables billions of images to appear on millions of screens throughout the world, the face of Christ needs to be seen and his voice heard... (Verbum Domini 113).

So, we too have a duty, like the men carrying the paralytic, to bring others to Jesus: the spiritually blind, who cannot see their need of forgiveness; the emotionally crippled, who cannot open their hearts in love for God. I'm sure that everybody listening to me can think of somebody in your family, someone in your circle of friends who is not attending Mass or who has fallen away from the sacraments or who is just spiritually lazy. We need to carry them to Jesus. We need to carry them, certainly, in our hearts, by prayer; but also, if we can, to bring them physically into contact with Jesus, through our love, our persuasion, our example. Let them come and hear Christ's words of reconciliation, of healing, and of love.

If they will not come and hear those words in church, perhaps they will read them in the Bible. I remember one priest telling that when he was a boy, he was handed a copy of the Gospel by a man on London Paddington station. He read it, and it had a great effect on him; and he often prays for that man who took the trouble to stand on a railway station handing out copies of the Gospel. Perhaps ninety-nine per cent of them found their way into the nearest litter bin; but one at least got through. That is just one example of what we call evangelization to which we are all invited!

The homilies from the previous Sundays are stored in the Archive