Later today the six members of SPES St Patrick's Evangelisation School are arriving in Brighto to tramp the streets of my parish to invite people to come to the life changing Easter Mysteries.We clergy talk a lot about Evangelisation, I often think its a bit of an excuse not to do it. It is the Sir Humphrey thing, "Yes Prime Minister, we'll set up a Royal Commission", which will talk and talk and produce a lot of paper, make people feel good but achieve nothing.
We are taking the Holy Father seriously and going out onto the streets -the peripheries- and to talking about God.
There are actually seven in the team, Fr Alexander's dog is coming down too (dog pictures to follow).
Pray for the SPES team, pray this little burst of evangelisation is fruitful, pray for my parish, pray for the people who SPES will talk to.
Somehow the Church needs to undergo a conversion from seeing itself as centred on offering Mass for those already safely inside the Church to offering baptism to those outside but then we need to be convinced by Jesus' words, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God". These words precede, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink".
Evangelisation leads to Baptism and Baptism leads to the Eucharist and eternal life - we need to be convinced that the ultimate act of charity is giving Jesus Christ, because no-one can come to the Father except through him.
8 comments:
Never had you down as a Who fan, Father.
My prayers, for what they're worth, are with you. May God bless you in your endeavours
Who?
"Go into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in that my house may be full". They are doing the Lord's work.
“Somehow the Church needs to undergo a conversion from seeing itself as centred on offering Mass for those already safely inside the Church to offering baptism to those outside.”
That’s classic.
It’s quite incredible to think that it’s at least 24 years since the start of the new evangelisation (Redemptoris Missio) or even 39 if you take Evengelii Nuntiandi as the starting point and the Church at large seems to have got little beyond talking about the new evangelisation to itself. Bravo to SPES for getting beyond the talking. And actually doing the doing.
One source of ideas of achieving the conversion Fr Blake speaks of is, “From Maintenance to Mission: Evangelization and revitalisation of the Parish” by Fr Robert Rivers CSP.
Father: The rock group called The Who had a 60s hit called "Pinball Wizard". A line from the song goes "From Soho down to Brighton I must have played them all".
I will pray from my heart that you and your evangelistik squad will be the extraordinary surprise of Gods love in a dark place.. God blesses your mission.. Thankyou
Count on my prayers from Ireland that this effort bears rich fruit.
Just as an aside, I'm surprised you haven't had a reply from Tommy yet, Father, but then again I fear he might not be able to read your blog.
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