Anyone with eyes to see knows that faith is sorely needed in our world. The collapse of catechesis over the last few generations in the United States has left many Catholics wandering in a desert of ignorance. What an opportunity the Year of Faith that began October 11th is to grasp the invitation to evangelize and be evangelized during this holy year. Ignorance of Scripture, St. Jerome said, is ignorance of Christ. In order to follow the imperative to "know, love, and serve God" we first need to know him through prayer and study. And there is no better teacher than Fr. John Hardon, S.J. who died in 2000. In 1992, Fr. Hardon echoed the call of Pope John Paul II for a re-evangelization of America. He described it as the responsibility of the laity from the very practical consideration that there aren't enough priests and bishops to do it:
In order to achieve this – notice – re-evangelization – the language is the Holy Father’s – to achieve this re-evangelization the laity has certain obligations: to understand their Catholic Faith, to live their Catholic Faith faithfully, to pray their Faith by a growing union with God, to share their Faith by personal – should be personal – conversation and active evangelization; and finally and crucially to suffer for their Faith by uniting their trials – physically and spiritual – in union with Christ for the conversion of sinners and the extension of Christ’s kingdom.
To read Father's article on evangelization
go here. If you study Fr. Hardon's works you can't help but grow in faith during the next year. And with the knowledge of faith and the outpouring of grace from the Holy Spirit, we can all experience a new Pentecost and go out like the apostles did to transform our world.
Recently, I came across Fr. Peter Cameron, O.P.'s keynote address at a year of faith meeting in the Raleigh Archdiocese. Fr. Cameron is a Dominican and editor of the wonderful daily prayer book, Magnificat. In the course of his address, Fr. Cameron mentioned a test given by a teacher friend to his students who often professed to be indifferent to their faith seeing it as "irrelevant." (Fr. Cameron begins discussing the test at 19:05 in the video below.) So he developed a "test" for his students -- no right or wrong answers -- it's a preference test. He instructed them to choose the answer they preferred, not what they thought or believed to be true, but which they preferred of the two options for each question.