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You Might Be the Only Homily They Ever Hear

You Might Be the Only Homily They Ever Hear

Last updated on: September 16, 2014 at 5:30 pm by Pete Socks

You Might Be the Only Homily They Ever Hear 2014-09-15T18:28:32-05:00 Pete Socks

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Today I’m hosting a special guest post. As you have read here previously I recently coordinated a conference locally with Dr. Scott Hahn as the speaker. It was by all accounts a huge success for our parish and the Diocese of Harrisburg as a whole with nearly 1000 in attendance. This past week our Diocesan newspaper The Catholic Witness ran a story on the event. In cooperation with managing editor and author of this piece, Jen Reed, I am sharing that article here at The Catholic Book Blogger.

‘You Might Be the Only Homily They Ever Hear’

Dr. Scott Hahn Encourages Evangelization with Friendship, Joy

By Jen Reed

The Catholic Witness

Sharing our love for the Church and our relationship with Christ should be as easy as telling friends about a film or a meal we’ve enjoyed, international speaker and author Dr. Scott Hahn told nearly 1,000 people during a presentation on the New Evangelization.

“It’s not difficult to take part in the New Evangelization,” he told the crowd gathered at New Oxford High School Aug. 30 for a daylong conference, hosted by Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish.

“You’re at work on Monday morning, standing by the water cooler,” he said. “How do think a coworker is going to respond if you say, ‘Friday night, I went to this movie, and it was incredible. I really recommend it.’

“Is your coworker going to say, ‘Who do you think you are to impose your theatrical taste on the rest of us?’

He continued: “If you say, ‘I took my wife to dinner at this restaurant and the cuisine was excellent. I really recommend this dish,’ nobody is going to say, ‘Who do you think you are to shove your culinary taste down our throats?’”

The same applies to sharing our love for the Lord and the Church, Dr. Hahn expressed.

“Sharing is what friends do. It’s what friends expect,” he said. “It’s okay to say, ‘I grew up Catholic and took it for granted, but lately I’ve discovered that the faith is true and beautiful.’

“Share your faith as a friend, and maybe someone will ask you to talk more about it,” he suggested.

Dr. Hahn is Professor of Theology and Scripture and Chair of Biblical Theology and the New Evangelization at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. Through speaking engagements and books on Scripture and the Church, he has helped motivate Catholics in their embrace of the faith.

Dr. Hahn’s three-workshop conference – which also included talks on the early Church and angels and saints – was an event hosted by Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in New Oxford. It was the second such conference hosted by the parish, which last year brought author and speaker Mike Aquilina to the diocese.

Conference coordinator Pete Socks told The Catholic Witness that the parish hopes to make the event an annual one. On May 2, 2015, the parish will bring in EWTN host and author Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle, and next August will host Matt Leonard, Executive Director of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, founded by Dr. Hahn.

The conferences have had the support of former pastor Father Steven Fauser and current administrator Father Michael Letteer.

Mr. Socks considers his role as conference coordinator as a way of giving back to the parish, the Adams Deanery and the Diocese of Harrisburg. His blog, The Catholic Book Blogger (www.catholicbookblogger.com) has enabled him to connect with Catholic authors to invite to the conferences.

“My hope is attendees learn more about the richness of their Catholic faith,” Mr. Socks said. “Our faith is like a beach. A beach is composed of many grains of sand, so much so that you could never pick up and examine each of those grains. Like those grains of sand, there is so much we can learn about our faith if only we take the time to do it. In fact, there is so much to learn you could never cover it all.

“These events are an effort to provide people with an opportunity to hear some of the best author-speakers out there today,” he continued. “Each of them has their own area of focus in the faith, and this will allow attendees to hear a wide variety of topics and hopefully share what they have learned with others. By sharing what they have learned, they are evangelizing and thus fulfilling what the laity is called to do in the New Evangelization.”

In his opening address, Dr. Hahn defined the New Evangelization as “re-evangelizing the de-Christianized.” Some 30-40 percent of Catholics in the United States have stopped practicing, he pointed out.

Evangelization is our mission as members of the Church, he said, reiterating the words of Pope Paul VI in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi in 1975:

“Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ’s sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of His death and glorious resurrection.”

Dr. Hahn also recalled the words of St. John Paul II in Redemptoris Missio – on the permanent validity of the Church’s missionary mandate – in 1990:

“I sense that the moment has come to commit all of the Church’s energies to a new evangelization and to the mission ad gentes. No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid the supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples.”

Despite these “marching orders,” Catholics often find themselves reluctant to share their faith, preferring it instead to be a private matter, or to let their good deeds – instead of their words – be a witness.

“A Catholic who is faithful is not only going to take in the faith and keep it, he is going to spread it. You can’t keep the faith unless you share it, and you don’t really learn the faith until you teach it…. We need to talk the talk, and walk the walk,” Dr. Hahn said.

Participating in the New Evangelization doesn’t necessarily mean reciting Scripture on street corners or handing out Bibles. It means sharing the faith wherever you are in life, Dr. Hahn said.

“If you are a husband or wife, if you work in a factory or in an office, your state in life will define how it is that you share the Gospel,” he said.

He said our efforts in the New Evangelization require two things: friendship and joy.

“Be the best friend that you can be, and then be bold enough to share your experience of the Catholic faith,” he said. “You may be the only homily they ever hear. The way you present the faith might be the one bridge built to get them home to the family of God.”

We’re out to bring people to Christ, not to win arguments, he said. One of the best ways to attract people to the faith is with joy.

“Not every Catholic can explain every doctrine of the Church’s teaching. Not everybody can answer all the common objections about Mary, the pope, the saints and the sacraments,” Dr. Hahn said, “but the one thing that each and every one of us can do and should do is enjoy being Catholic.”

(Read Evangelii Nuntiandi at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_p-vi_exh_19751208_evangelii-nuntiandi_en.html

Read Redemptoris Missio at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_07121990_redemptoris-missio_en.html)

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