Evangelists of past teach lessons for today

The apostolic mission of the Church, given by Christ to the Apostles and ultimately to all the baptized (in different ways according to station in life), is to "go and teach all nations, baptizing them" into the life of the Triune God and into the Body of Christ, His Church. This mission is an unchangeable foundation for the life of the Church at all times and in all places.

The "aggiornamento" of Vatican II cannot disregard this apostolic mission in a rush to embrace the world. For a Christian, no embrace of the world is truly possible, only an embrace of Christ. Yet, the world is not wholly alien to Christ; and, embracing Christ, the Christian must also embrace those parts of the world that are in Christ, and thereby reach out to those parts of the world that are not in Christ. This is the true thrust of the Second Vatican Council, as all five popes since 1962 have repeatedly taught. This is precisely the New Evangelization: bringing Christ to the modern world effectively, so that the world may return to Christ.

The deafness of the modern world to Christ is in some ways quite distinct from that of past eras. There is a depth of despair, of nihilism, that hardly existed before the 19th century. The saturation of culture with visual images (pictures, television, movies) carefully constructed to sell an idea or a commodity is unprecendented. The hypercriticism of all ideas taught as "education" in most schools goes far beyond mere skepticism.

Yet the nature of human beings, of sin and grace, of discipline and idolatry, have not changed at all. The forms of rejecting Christ are new in the modern world, but not the substance of it. And so, in the New Evangelization, the forms of preaching Christ's love and salvation may need to be new, but not the substance of it. The great evangelists of the past still teach us clearly how to evangelize.

Consider, for example, the trajectory of two of our more dramatic missionaries in the early Church. Saints Peter and Paul both preached the Good News in Rome, the "melting pot" of the world, then at the height of its power and "multi-ethnic" sprawl. In 54 A.D., Claudius Nero became Emperor. He ruled for fourteen years, and is remembered as the most famously debauched, cruel, and paranoid ruler until the twentieth century. Among his victims were the first Christian martyrs of Rome.

Rome in the first century had perhaps a million people and a thousand different gods. There was a shrine or a prophet or a fortune-teller, literally on every street corner. Every single one of them offered something to each passerby, from the sober morality of the Stoic teachers, to the tight-knit communal pageantry of the neighborhood sodalities, to the bacchantic revelries of the newer mysteries imported from the far corners of the Empire.

In this cauldron of lust, hatred, and fear, ruled over by such a man as Nero, one would not expect the unbelievable news of the Resurrection to cause much excitement. Yet by the end of Nero's reign, the preaching of Paul and Peter had been successful enough to build up a distinct community of Christians. We know this was true because Nero picked the Christians as the scapegoats when he was widely accused of burning down a great swathe of Rome so that he could buy up the land for his new palace.

In a city as full of wealth and power as our own cities today, where every worldly pleasure and vice was bought and sold daily, why would the preaching of these saints make such an impression? How could they have been so successful so quickly?

The answer is the radical novelty of the apostles' preaching. Peter and Paul, like the prophets of the Covenant before them, and like every good evangelist since them, offered the people of the world what the world could not offer. They were a "sign of contradiction."

In the midst of the noisy pursuits of the world, they offered the silence of the Eucharist. In the midst of fear and betrayal, they offered the Spirit's consolation. In the midst of material wealth and spiritual poverty, they offered the wealth and the simplicity of Christian virtue. They did not conform themselves to the world, but demanded that the world conform itself to Christ. This is never easy, and it cost them their lives when they were killed by Nero's persecution in 67 A.D. And yet, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.."

The Catholic Church today should still be such a "sign of contradiction." In the face of the constant alluring blandishments of the devil, we are all still called to live humble, chaste, holy lives. "Do you reject Satan and all his ways? Do you reject the glamour of evil?" Yes, we proclaim each Easter, when we renew our baptismal vows. Do we actually live up to that promise? Do we make even small efforts to deny the Prince of Lies?

Jesus teaches those who follow him to be "salt and light" for the world. The reason for being in the world as a Christian is to transform it, to conform it to Christ. The substance of evangelizing has never changed: living holy lives recognizably committed to Christ and empowered by his Eucharist, the "bread of life" and the "water of eternal life."

We can only truly transform the world if we live this holy life in every facet of our existence - at home, at work, in the public square, in private recreation, whatever we are doing and whomever we are with.

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