EVANGELISM – BUT WHY US?

The writers of three of the four Gospels, in the period just before Our Lord ascended into heaven, have Jesus saying more or less the same thing to His Apostles and His disciples.

          The earliest to be written has it simply; ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.’

          The next to be written has ‘Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.’

          Probably the last to be written has: ‘And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his Name among all nations.’

All three of the above quotations are taken from the Gospels, in other words, written recollection of the events and sayings of Jesus.  They were written down many years after they were said, after being remembered for many years by those who heard them and passed them on orally to others. They, as part of Holy Scripture, form part of the Holy Tradition, which Jesus himself promised that the Holy Ghost would ensure that it would be kept in all truth. To believe that Jesus cannot fulfil His promise  is impossible to those who believe that He is God made Man.

We call the writers of the Gospels, Evangelists – and it is because of the passages above and similar ones that they are given this name.

The word Gospel is usually interpreted as ‘Good News’. In a very inadequate way this good news could be wrapped up in one sentence as; ‘God became man so that God could reveal Himself to Mankind; and that our sins which began with the original sin of our first ancestors could be atoned for by the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ on Calvary, thus giving us hope of reconciliation and eternal life at the second coming of Jesus Christ.’

It is thus obvious that Jesus expected that ALL His apostles and disciples would be evangelists. The writer of the Acts of the Apostles make this even more obvious when he writes that Jesus commanded those that were listening to him to ‘become witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the utmost part of the world.’. 

 We are here this morning at Sunday Mass as Catholic Christians because we believe that when Jesus at the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday commanded ‘do this in memory of me’ he was not giving us a request, an option, but a command that we were to actually, physically do something.. If we are to fulfil this commandment it is useless to do it amongst ourselves until our numbers dwindle and there is no one  remaining to fulfil the command. We can only prevent this happening if we also observe the command to become witnesses unto the utmost part of the world, that is unless we fulfil Jesus’s command that we go into the whole world and preach the Gospel in His Name.

We too must all be evangelists because as we have seen Jesus commanded His Apostles and Disciples to evangelise everywhere.                                               

 But why us?

          It is because we are the successors to those Apostles and Disciples. We are the Church, the body of Christ. If we believe as we pray, and pray as we believe then in a few minutes we shall be saying that we believe in one Church, holy, catholic and APOSTOLIC. It should be a great delight and privilege that we belong to such a Church – we were baptised into the Church hopefully by one who had the authority of his Bishop to do so, and confirmed and in some cases ordained by a Bishop. A Catholic Bishop can trace his consecration through the line of Bishops directly to those Apostles who heard Jesus command them to evangelise the whole world. Thus we are the successors to those disciples Jesus commanded to go and preach and teach all nations.

          But why us?

          Because Our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ is not present to do this for Himself, but has given us the hands, the eyes, the mouth, the speech, the intelligence to do it in his stead.

          But why us?

          Because he has promised that we will not be left alone to evangelise; he made a promise that the Holy Ghost would be there to help us. He stands beside us to helps fulfil the command to evangelise all nations, so we must never be afraid to ask His help. We were promised that if he is with us, who can be against us? The Holy Ghost is He who will give is the courage to speak and the words we need if we have the belief that He is able to do so.

          But why us?

          If we truly are the remnant of the Church that Christ founded, then who else is there to evangelise the world. Should we leave it to those who have added to Christ’s and His Church’s teachings; or those who decide to ignore some of those teachings; or to those who completely distort those teachings. I think not!

          But why us?

          Because we live in an age where it seems that everybody knows everything about everything, and yet such knowledge seems so flawed with regard to the real teachings of Jesus, that we are the only ones who can evangelise the world with the true Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So brethren, we must, without destroying our sense of community and mutual strength in our closeness in Christian love, extend ourselves whenever we have the opportunity to spread the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, our living Lord and Master, to those who have not had the opportunity to meet Him personally. We must be evangelists and join in the campaign of evangelisation.

         That is why us!  

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