Enlarge the Place of Your Tent, Hold Not Back

Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; hold not back, lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your descendants will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities (Isaiah 54:2, 3).

This is the Church’s destiny, Her calling: To bear witness to the Revelation of God and to unite God’s children, scattered throughout the world.

This has been the Church’s mission since the beginning. But the cold heart of modernity has given birth to many challenges, crippling this mission in a sense, barring old methods of evangelization, and quelling hope in what’s left of Christian communities.

In his work, “On First Principles,” Origen addressed the nature of such obstacles. He wrote:

…when we are shut out and hurled back, it calls us back to the beginning of another way, so that by gaining a higher and loftier road through entering a narrow footpath it may open for us the immense breadth of divine knowledge.

Now the early church theologian was discussing Scripture rather than culture. But there is a connection here, which helps us to understand the upcoming Synod on the New Evangelization.

The Lineamenta for the Synod was introduced here, so that we could see the task at hand and experience an invitation to participate in this Church-wide discernment.  With one week left until the Synod begins, we will look through the Instrumentum Laboris, which serves as a summary of responses to the Lineamenta and the working document for the council.

The main expectation for the Synod on the New Evangelization is that it will “be not only a source of encouragement but also the place to compare experiences and share observations on situations and approaches for action.” Lay groups, religious orders, and churches have long been responding to the disoriented world today, and they are excited to come together and explore what others are doing.

“Responses to the Lineamenta reported a need to restate the core of the Christian faith which is unknown by many Christians,” and a need for renewed spirituality among the faithful, a re-connection with Christ who was the first and greatest evangelizer and a fulfillment of all that is promised to us. Responses also indicated that most Christians do not understand their duty to boldly proclaim the Good News, to share it with those throughout the world who deserve to hear it.

In sum, the members of Christ’s body must be reminded, as Pope Benedict XVI puts it:

Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. [...] Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere 'command'; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us."

So how will the Church respond? We will explore this more concretely next week. Until then, please continue to ask the Holy Spirit to guide and direct our Church in this New Evangelization.