The Evangelization Equation: The Who, What, and How by Wehner Rev. James A

Author:Wehner, Rev. James A. [Wehner, Rev. James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9781931018692
Publisher: Emmaus Road Publishing
Published: 2011-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Creating Communion

God is a family, a communion of three Persons giving themselves to one another in love. Man, made in God’s image, longs for that same experience of communion. Each of us longs for friendship, for love, for community. Spouses, children, friends, and co-workers fulfill that long-ing to a certain extent, but they can’t fulfill it entirely. That’s because our supernatural longing for communion runs deeper than our natural longing. The natural longings, in fact, only point the way to the supernatural one, and only a relationship with Christ can fulfill that longing. Again, we understand that God has implanted this hunger into our souls; we are thirsting for a real sense of communion. Evangelization is not concerned about creating in man a need for communion, for that need already exists. Rather, evangelization responds to that supernatural longing by drawing believers together into a community that Christ inaugurated at the Last Supper—“do this in memory of me.”

The Church, as Christ’s Body on earth, gives all believers a real experience of supernatural communion. She gives us Christ in the Eucharist and she gives us a foretaste of heaven, when all the saints gather around God’s altar. She helps forge in the here and now the supernatural bonds of unity that will reach their fullness in heaven.

Those bonds are attractive and powerful. People want them, and the possibility of attaining them is a compelling reason to enter into the life of the Church. That’s why communio, the communion of believers in the life of grace, is an effective source of evangelization. When we show the world what the communion of faith looks like, we are show-ing them a glimpse of God Himself. For when we are gathered, He is with us. Like the song exclaims, “they will know we are Christians by our love” —our love for one another and our love for God. When we live the law of love, we give people a compelling reason to believe and to reorder their lives around the Gospel.

Creating an authentic Christian humanism, a civilization of love, requires that the Church visibly and clearly manifests communio. “Contemporary society is questioning and observing the Church, demanding consistency and daring in the faith,” Pope Benedict reminded us.14 I sometimes think American Catholics are bashful about wanting others to see how we function as a faith community. We are still influenced by the thinking that our relationship with God is only personal and private. Maybe our spirituality has a personal component, but our relationship with God is a communal event. When the world sees us gathered by the millions with our Holy Father, when a city sees thousands of people gathered with their bishop, when a local community sees hundreds of people gathered with their pastor, when a platoon sees a few soldiers with their chaplain, when the inmates see other inmates at Sunday Mass—what is seen is a community gathered by God. There is no other experience of communio that the world could possible ever offer.

In order for the Church to fulfill her mission, the unity we profess as one Church we must also guard.

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