Last Pentecost, I wrote a pastoral letter outlining the mission of the Church as summed up in the Great Commission: Proclaim the Gospel and make disciples.
Tag: disciples
‘Missionary disciples’ at Jefferson school
JEFFERSON — Students and staff at St. John the Baptist School in Jefferson recently sponsored a number of events and activities that reflect the mission of the school to be the “hands and feet of Christ” for those in need.
St. John the Baptist School aims to ‘Go Make Disciples!’
JEFFERSON — Students and staff at St. John the Baptist School in Jefferson completed the first quarter of this new school year with much success despite the ongoing pandemic.
Calling those around us to discipleship
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Note: Bishop Donald J. Hying is serializing his Pastoral Letter on the new Evangelization Initiative being launched in the Diocese of Madison. This is the second part of that letter. For the complete letter, go to the Diocese of Madison and Catholic Herald websites.
We may be tempted to consider the preceding exercise in recalling God’s deep, abiding, and personal love and our own response to that, a simple thing.
Diocese launches ‘Go Make Disciples’
MADISON — The Diocese of Madison, under the leadership of Bishop Donald J. Hying, is launching a bold new initiative called “Go Make Disciples” in order to renew our commitment to the mission of evangelization.
One part of this initiative includes the addition of two new regular pages in the Catholic Herald, one dedicated to evangelization and another to catechesis (see Pages 10 and 11).
Go make disciples
The last words Jesus spoke to his apostles before leaving this earth to ascend into heaven were to go out into the whole world and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19-20).
Go forth and make disciples!
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When I became a bishop back in 2011, I attended a nine-day conference in Rome for new bishops from all over the world, put on by the Vatican.
The best part of the experience was meeting the other participants, 16 other Americans, 25 from Brazil, and one bishop from Iraq whose predecessor had been murdered by terrorists. The informal conversations were often more interesting than the scheduled talks.
Dealing with declining Church
At lunch on the third day, I sat with a newly appointed bishop from a diocese in the southern Netherlands. He told me that Mass attendance there hovered at about two percent, mostly elderly people; he had no seminarians, so there was no future for the priesthood. It wasn’t so much that the Church had collapsed as that it had evaporated!
I asked him where he was going to start in such a daunting situation. How do you begin when everything seems so hopeless? What he said did not surprise me, but it has stuck with me.
We are an Easter people!
Over Easter weekend, I watched the 2014 movie Exodus: Gods and Kings, which tells the epic story of Moses and his flight from Egypt to the promised land.
This Ridley Scott film seems to be based fairly accurately on Scripture. After seeing the movie, I did need to do some research into the actual biblical passages to find out who was who. My knowledge of the Old Testament is limited, I discovered.
I was not aware that Moses was married (his wife’s name is Zipporah) and he had one or two sons. He actually lived as a shepherd for many years before God appeared to him out of a burning bush and told him to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt.
Revisiting spiritual welfare
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In the sixth chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel, we find the account of Jesus sending out the Twelve, two by two, on mission.
The first thing he gave them, Mark tells us, was “authority over unclean spirits.” And the first pastoral act that they performed was to “drive out many demons.”
The reality of evil spirits
When I was coming of age in the ’60s and ’70s, it was common, even in seminaries, to dismiss such talk as primitive superstition — or perhaps to modernize it and make it a literary device using symbolic language evocative of the struggle with evil in the abstract.
Wanted: A synod of affirmation
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Pope Francis has called a special session of the Synod of Bishops, which will meet from October 5 to 19 and prepare the agenda for the ordinary session of the synod that is scheduled for the fall of 2015; both sessions will focus on the family.
In my view, the synod should focus on two related themes: marriage culture is in crisis throughout the world; the answer to that crisis is the Christian view of marriage as a covenant between man and woman in a communion of love, fidelity, and fruitfulness.
To focus the conversation elsewhere is to ignore a hard fact and a great opportunity.
Collapse of marriage culture
The collapse of marriage culture throughout the world is indisputable. More and more marriages end in divorce, even as increasing numbers of couples simply ignore marriage, cohabit, and procreate.
Can we watch an hour? Help preserve the holy places
It always makes me sad to read the Scripture passages telling how the apostles fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane just before Jesus’ arrest — not only once, but three times!
Jesus says to them, “Could you not watch one hour with me” (Mt. 26:40)? It doesn’t seem like much to ask of his disciples — who had traveled with him and were the primary teachers of his message — to stay awake by his side. However, the apostles were human. Jesus recognized their humanity when he added, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Unfortunately many of us aren’t always being vigilant about what is happening around us, especially when it comes to things that are impacting our faith and our Church.