{"id":3034,"date":"2007-02-07T09:35:30","date_gmt":"2007-02-07T09:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/the-new-evangelization.html"},"modified":"2007-02-07T09:35:30","modified_gmt":"2007-02-07T09:35:30","slug":"the-new-evangelization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/the-new-evangelization.html","title":{"rendered":"The New Evangelization"},"content":{"rendered":"

Archbishop Gomez of San Antonio, in a recent address to the Conference of the New Evangelization of America (pdf format)<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s an important read, After laying out the Catholic\/Christian roots of the Americas, the contemporary obstacles to evangelization, he proceeds to offer a model:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

A Snapshot From New Mexico, February 1634<\/strong> <\/p>\n

As I see it, my friends, the obstacles we face in the new evangelization of America are cultural. <\/p>\n

The question then is what are we going to do about these things, how are we going to evangelize this culture, this new America? As we think about how to answer that question, ten years after the Synod for America, I\u2019d like to read you an excerpt from an early account of the missions in New Mexico. It was written by a Spanish Franciscan, Fray Alonso de Benavides, in February 1634. He writes:<\/p>\n

In every pueblo where a friar resides, he has schools for the teaching of praying, singing, playing musical instruments, and other interesting things. Promptly at dawn, one of the Indian singers, whose turn it is that week, goes to ring the bell for [morning prayer] . . . . [After that] the bell is rung for Mass. All go into the church, the friar says Mass and administers the sacraments. . . . Mass over . . . all kneel down by the church door and sing the Salve [Regina] in their own tongue.<\/p>\n

Fray Alonso goes on to describe how after Mass every day the friars and their Indian converts would spend time serving the poor and the sick. The missionaries oversaw schools and visited neighboring pueblos to baptize converts, hear confessions, and to offer guidance and advice. They were involved in the local economy, helping people run their farms and raise cattle and sheep.<\/p>\n

Fray Alonso says, and I quote: \u201cOne of the greatest tasks of the friars is to [mediate] the disputes of the Indians among themselves, for, since they look upon him as a father, they come to him with all their troubles, and he has to take pains to harmonize them.\u201d He concludes his report by commemorating the martyrs, saying that their work to spread the Gospel has been \u201cwatered with the blood and lives of ten of their brethren\u201d (Documents of American Catholic History, I:15\u201317).<\/p>\n

I wanted to share this little snapshot from our country\u2019s first evangelization because in it I think we can find insights for our own work of the new evangelization.<\/p>\n

What Fray Alonso is giving us, really, is a picture of how to evangelize a culture. Notice that the friars and their lay associates are involved in every area of the people\u2019s lives\u2014 education and social service, work and worship; they\u2019re also trying to shape the arts, teaching singing and music.<\/p>\n

These first evangelizers cared for the people\u2019s material and spiritual needs. One of their greatest tasks was being peacemakers, reconciling opposing factions in their communities, seeking social harmony and the common good. Notice that their days were centered on the Eucharist and prayer, and that people were taught to pray in their own language. Finally, these first evangelizers recognized that they belonged to a communion of saints\u2014they remembered the martyrs who had died to help them spread the faith. To Meet the Living God in Christ<\/p>\n

There are many lessons here for us, my friends.<\/p>\n

Like America\u2019s first evangelists, we must go fearlessly into the heart of our culture, into the heart of our people\u2019s lives\u2014bringing the Gospel into their homes, into all their many occupations, into their schools and into their arts and sciences, into the media and into the political arena.<\/p>\n

Why did the first evangelists here teach music and song to their converts? Because there is nothing truly human that is alien to the Gospel. And no authentic human culture can close itself off from God, who is the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty.<\/p>\n

So, my brothers and sisters, we must once more open our culture\u2014our poetry and literature, our music and movies, our art and all our ordinary work and conversation\u2014to the transcendent, to the mystery of God.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Archbishop Gomez of San Antonio, in a recent address to the Conference of the New Evangelization of America (pdf format) It’s an important read, After laying out the Catholic\/Christian roots of the Americas, the contemporary obstacles to evangelization, he proceeds to offer a model: A Snapshot From New Mexico, February 1634 As I see it,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe New Evangelization - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/the-new-evangelization.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The New Evangelization - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}