Evangelization Matters

A couple of months ago I gave the opening keynote address, entitled “Evangelization Matters,” at the Mid-Atlantic Congress for Pastoral Leaders in Baltimore. To begin I shared the story about Pope Francis celebrating his first Holy Thursday liturgy as pope in a juvenile detention center in Rome. For me, this is a story of the New Evangelization and why it matters. Pope Francis washed feet in a prison instead of Rome's grand Basilica of St. John Lateran. Instead of the traditional 12 priests, he washed, dried, and kissed the feet of 12 young inmates—outcasts who live on the margins of society. He went even farther—he dared to wash two young women’s feet and the feet of a Muslim. He did not have to say anything—he just did it! His simple, loving action reverberated around the world. Speaking to the young offenders, Francis said that Jesus washed the feet of his disciples on the eve of his crucifixion in a gesture of love and service. "This is a symbol, it is a sign. Washing your feet means I am at your service. Help one another. This is what Jesus teaches us," the pope said.
 
I can only wonder what this encounter with Christ through the pope’s gesture of foot washing meant to these young people. And what will this encounter with the welcoming and merciful Christ mean for their lives in the future? Yes, evangelization matters. The pope’s example at that prison was not only a living out of the indiscriminate love of Christ but a call to everyone who witnessed it to do the same. The pope was renewing the challenge we hear first from Jesus, succinctly expressed in a song of Weston Priory: “The Lord Jesus after eating with his friends washed their feet and said to them: Do you know what I your Lord have done to you, I have given example so you must also do.”
 
As the pope reminds us in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), evangelization is the joy-filled work of touching peoples' minds and hearts and lives with the saving, healing, liberating good news of Jesus Christ who came not to be served but to serve. Evangelization is bringing the joy of the Gospel to the heart of our world by making God’s reign of justice and peace a reality in all of creation. Yes, evangelization matters.
 
The unlimited love of Jesus bends before us, washes us clean, and urges us to go forth and be foot washers especially to the least among us. Jesus sends us out with the joy of the Gospel: will you go?
 
Sr. Terry is the Executive Director of RENEW International and a Dominican Sister from Blauvelt, NY.