Tag: Evangelization in the world today

By Patrick Schmadeke
Evangelization in the World Today

When Papa Francesco was elected pope, I was 22 years old, about to graduate college, and was in the midst of making faith my own as a young adult discovering his way in the world. The last 12 years have been formative years for me and I’m grateful that Pope Francis was our shepherd during this time. I’d like to share here the contours of my gratitude for how Francis enlivened my religious imagination.

Francis was a shepherd who smelled like the flock. There is the oft-referenced humility of his first balcony appearance as pope and his asking those gathered to pray for him. This, and his immediate eschewing of ostentatious regalia were mere prelude to a humble papacy. In public appearances, Francis was known for his spontaneity. From his tender embrace of those with intense physical ailments and consoling those in mourning to stopping to visit with just about anybody, his papal visits would make an improv teacher as proud as his security detail was frustrated. He regularly visited countries with little technological, economic or political value. He accompanied Juan Carlos Cruz Chellew, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse. He spoke on the phone regularly with a Catholic parish in war-torn Palestine. He lived out the Holy Thursday foot washing ritual uniquely by including women, inmates and non-Christians. In these, and other ways, he was a pope of solidarity and healing. He embodied the lesson he taught in “Fratelli Tutti,” that no one is saved alone.

One of the titles of the pope, “Pontifex Maximus,” colloquially translated as “chief bridge builder,” reflects the pope’s roles of preserving and building unity. Francis did this in a global Church, balancing diverse and sometimes diverging sensibilities within our Catholic communion. The College of Cardinals, for example, is more globally representative than it has ever been. Francis also built bridges in the wider human family. His attentiveness to ecumenical work with the Orthodox Church sought to heal centuries-old divisions. His collaboration with other Christian leaders, be they Anglican or non-denominational, was a balm to deep wounds. Often, he directed his addresses not only to Catholics but also to all people of good will.

Within the first year of his papacy, Francis’ publication of “Evangelii Gaudium” spurred us onward to focus not on ourselves but on our mission. With dramatic shifts in culture and technology underfoot, “Evangelii Gaudium” was a timely text, calling us to live outwardly from the joy of encountering the risen Lord in sacraments and daily living. Two other publications reflect his desire to integrate our evangelizing mission. Published in 2020, “The Pastoral Conversion of the Parish Community in the Service of the Evangelising Mission of the Church” gave a pathway for parishes to better integrate evangelization. In 2022, “Praedicate Evangelium” reconfigured the Roman curia through the lens of evangelization.

After his 12-year papacy, I wish there wasn’t so much work yet to be done. Each of the above documents on evangelization, for my generation, was but a seed that is in the early stages of sprouting. His call to care for creation and the marginalized in the face of greed and consumerism was resounding but has often been ignored. So too has his call for a politics ordered to the common good. Where he was perceived to create division or confusion, it could be that he was inviting us towards a unity in the Spirit that we did not yet recognize. The Synod on Synodality was a summons to better integrate communal discernment of the Holy Spirit at every level of the Church. Francis was not a perfect man or a perfect pope. His legacy will and should be evaluated, as he himself would want, in the bright and purifying light of the Gospel. But I do not doubt that he was an authentic pope — a pope of the Spirit and a pope of the people. His joy in the crucified and risen Lord was palpable. A wellspring of hope flowed from him. That wellspring has a name: Jesus; and I have found myself nourished by those life-giving waters. For that I am grateful and inspired.

(Patrick Schmadeke is director of evangelization for the Diocese of Davenport.)

By Patrick Schmadeke
Evangelization in the World Today

I have been wondering if we take baptism for granted. Maybe because it’s a sacrament we give to infants. Or maybe because it requires so little effort to receive. That could be the un-Christian American in me talking: the greater the effort, the more valuable the thing.  Our daughter Jose­phine is going to be 15 months old soon. For me, the experience and memory of her baptism last year prompts more questions than answers, more tensions than resolutions and more ponderings than insights. I’ve wanted to sort out some ideas about baptism in light of this and, through on-again-off-again reflection, the following contours have come into focus.

First are the three munera (duty, obligation) of baptism. In baptism we are joined to Christ as priest, prophet, and king. I have wondered with some frequency: “What does it mean for Josephine to be a priest, prophet, and king?” I have never arrived at what felt like an adequate description but I have a sense of when these identities are neglected.

Her priestly identity goes unattended to when she is not invited to participate in prayer, as she is able — when prayer is more complicated than it should be, or when her presence is virtually ignored. Though only able to speak a few words, her prophetic identity is negated when we don’t hear her witness to the fragility of life. Her practical fragility and infinite dignity remind us that there are others her age whom the world treats as burdens or with contempt. When we think of kingship, we often think of leadership. A 15-month-old can center family decision-making around her needs, as we know acutely. But on the level of polity or economy, I can’t help but think that the wider world is more concerned with efficiency than with Josephine’s dignity. Polity and economy will care about Josephine to the degree that she can contribute to their own efficiency. Josephine’s life is an invitation to live in ways that recognize and nourish the baptismal dignity of all.

Second, infant baptism has been a reminder of the depth of God’s mercy. Mercy is freely offered and given; it is unearned and unconditional, inexhaustible and, in a culture governed by values such as merit, largely incomprehensible. I find myself regularly forgetting the scope of God’s mercy and living that out in day-to-day life. If we seriously attend to baptismal dignity, it may help us live out God’s mercy in our own lives, being more ready to forgive and becoming agents of reconciliation.

Third, a great and challenging result of baptism is that we are bound by our baptism to all others who are baptized. We are all family and we have to look out for each other. Through baptism, we are bound to all people and to all of creation because we are bound to God. When we cross ourselves with the baptismal holy water, we can grow in affection for all others. We can let water train us to see with the eyes of God’s mercy. In our polarized world, remembering our baptism may serve as a healing balm.

Fourth, my favorite prayer from the Rite of Baptism for one child is the Ephphetha, or prayer over the ears and mouth. The rite reads, “The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the mute speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.” In baptism, we are each given the good news and invited to share it with others. This is the root of our mission of evangelization. Pope Francis shared a similar sentiment in The Joy of the Gospel, “In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Mt 28:19). All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients.” We are each called to this according to the gifts God has given us.

To date, Josephine has been a witness to the good news through her joy and growth in relationships with others. This magnetism is at the root of evangelization. Over time, her call will develop and her evangelical life with take on different shapes and points of emphasis but her joy and relationships will hopefully remain. They are the fertile soil in which the seeds of evangelization grow.

(Patrick Schmadeke is director of evangelization for the Diocese of Davenport.)

By Patrick Schmadeke
Evangelization in the World Today

This moment feels like a new chapter in American history. People have many feelings about the new administration. I’ve seen a range of emotions: anger, confidence, confusion, fear, frustration, glibness, helplessness, joy, jubilation, numbness, self-righteousness, surprise. Few people have neutral opinions about what has transpired in the last few weeks. I would suggest that in the stew of this historical moment, there are two dominant ingredients. These are not new, freshly added, ingredients. They have been here for a long time.

In high school history class, we read the early 16th century work, “The Prince,” by Niccolo Machiavelli. A work of political advice dedicated to Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino, it is almost more of a pamphlet than a book, really. I reencountered it a few years later in 2012 in conversation with Patricia, a hotel owner in Florence, Italy — the home city of the opulently wealthy and politically powerful Medici family. Patricia was paging through “The Prince” at the lobby desk and I inquired about her reading it. She shared that she had spent the last few years slowly working her way through the book. This surprised me, since it is a short work, but her reply struck me: “Well, I have to discover if I really believe this stuff.” Her reply left me with a decade-plus-long pause in my soul: do I really believe this stuff?

The ethos of “The Prince” is the first of our two ingredients in our present moment. Perhaps the most famous lesson from “The Prince” is this: the ends justify the means. In this philosophy, if one’s end-goal is laudable or virtuous, then one may use any means necessary to achieve that goal; it becomes “ethical” to do otherwise unethical things. Another lesson from “The Prince” is this: it is better to be feared than loved. Leveraging fear mitigates public resistance, clearing the way to achieving one’s ends. The overall ethos of “The Prince,” as a style of political-social maneuvering, came to be coined as “Machiavellian.”

Machiavellianism is not new to our culture. “The Prince” was written 400 years ago; its mentalities are as old as sin and it underpins decision-making in popular stories in characters ranging from “Batman” to Shakespeare to “The Lion King.” Interestingly, both “good” and “bad” characters exhibit Machiavellian tendencies, which suggests that our culture still hasn’t figured out what genuine ethical deliberation looks like.

While these patterns are common to our culture, they are antithetical to Christ. I admire Patricia’s willingness to own the fact that some of Machiavelli’s ideas have staying power within our culture’s psyche and those ideas may have invaded us personally. She had the humility to spend years examining her life and habits through Machiavelli’s lens. In this way, she was modeling an examined life — the kind of life worth living.

A second prevailing ingredient in our world today is an ambition for a total zero-sum power. “Zero-sum” because this view interprets power in a binary fashion: one either has it or not and it is not to be shared with the powerless. “Total” because once you have it you can do whatever you want with it. “Ambition” because one is willing to sacrifice one’s own character to achieve one’s goals. This ambition and retention of power is reminiscent of Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings” — notice the distorting potency. Such power wielding is present in just about every Disney movie and it is present in stories where opponents become the faceless vanquished rather than images of God to reconcile with (notice how the “good guys” and “bad guys” view each other the same way — as worthy of destruction). Such stories may be popular, but they are ethically twisted. Ambition for a total zero-sum power is antithetical to Christ. Jesus tells a different story of power: from The Good Samaritan to The Prodigal Son to the Garden of Gethsemane — Golgotha is a prerequisite for resurrection.

In chapter two of “Fratelli Tutti” (#56-#86), Pope Francis offers a meditation on The Good Samaritan that is worth reflecting on, as Patricia did with “The Prince” — patiently, openly, honestly, as an examination of conscience. I think I’ll commit to this practice and see what comes to the surface. Surely there will be some things I would rather not see and rather not admit. But if Christ is to live within me, there can be no room for Machiavellianism or ambition for total zero-sum power. Honesty begins in the heart, and such honesty is a prerequisite for the evangelical life.

(Patrick Schmadeke is director of evangelization for the Diocese of Davenport.)

By Patrick Schmadeke
Evangelization in the World Today

If there is sin in the world it is because sin has invaded our hearts, weakening our will and clouding our judgment. The struggle for our soul is not exterior, but interior. As St. Paul wrote: “I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me” (Romans 7:19-20).

I was quite disturbed when I first read Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Greenleaf.” I read it again recently and that disruption remains. Sin is at work in the story, not like some demon creeping through the shadows to whisper into someone’s ear but like the long lethargy of a streak of August humidity. The story’s main character, Mrs. May, owns a small farm. By many accounts her life would be alright. Not without major challenges, but not without good. In her mind, her two adult sons are complete failures and her tenant (Mr. Greenleaf) is of suspect character. She thinks people are out to take advantage of her. As the story unfolds, the reader becomes aware that Mrs. May sees everything through the lens of her own brokenness.

The story draws to a close with a bull loose in the pasture. Mrs. May demands that Mr. Greenleaf chase it down and kill it. Ever smug, she waits and watches while sitting on the bumper of her car. To me, she seemed intoxicated by her self-righteousness, hypnotized by her anger, spellbound by her certainty. She does not respond to the bull charging at her from a distance. Still set in her ways, she does not move. The bull spears her abdomen and, in a moment as brief as a flash of light, she sees Mr. Greenleaf running towards her and shooting the bull. This deathbed is the only moment of self-awareness we get in the story — maybe. Nobody can control Mrs. May. Nobody can force her to see the world as it truly is. Nobody can convince her of anything. Her actions are as reactionary as a patellar tendon responding to a reflex hammer.

Mrs. May fell victim to her vision of the way of the world. She thought the people around her should share that vision. Though she is not made out to be a great sinner, sin has fractured her heart. It is a tragic vision with great collateral damage to those around her. The people in her life are the victims of her insatiable lust for lovelessness — she loves no one, not even her sons.

Flannery’s point is: we all become, or at least become subject to, what we admire, what we hold dear, what we wish were the case, and we become willing to evangelize on behalf of that vision. All too often, the vision leads to trading in idols. We mostly do not craft idols on purpose — we do not go out of our way to disorder our loves. Nor are the idols typically as obvious as a golden calf — my idols tend to be subtle shadow sides of genuine goods that creep into daily life through the door of pride. We need a rightly ordered life, so our vision must be Jesus.

This vision is not Mrs. May’s vision. Where she could only see the world through her brokenness, Jesus could only see the world through healing. Where she could only see the world through disappointment, Jesus could only see the world through relationship. Where she could only see the world through blame, Jesus could only see the world through forgiveness. I feel deep sympathy for Mrs. May — I know her and at times have been her. She is not the opposite of Christ, she is exactly who Christ came to save, to encounter, to heal. Mrs. May is who we all are called to bring good news to.

In Greenleaf, Mrs. May is unwilling to love or be loved. She is unwilling, or maybe unable, to see the love that transforms the world. That is, until the end — maybe. The reader doesn’t know for sure. She sees Mr. Greenleaf running towards her. Is her passing thought that Mr. Greenleaf seeks to aide her? Or is her thought patterned after her daily life: this is Mr. Greenleaf’s fault. In the end, we do not know where her heart is. Is it healed? Or is it still stone?

To look upon the face of Jesus is to gaze into the eyes of he who embodied the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control (Galatians 5:22). The criteria of the Christian life is to imitate his way and walking; the authenticity of our imitation is proportional to the degree that he is our friend and beloved. We must turn to no other visage than his.

(Patrick Schmadeke is director of evangelization for the Diocese of Davenport.)

By Patrick Schmadeke
Evangelization in the World Today

For Christians, evangelization is our way of being in the world. Like parenting, evangelization is a learned activity. We emerge from initial fits and starts, falls and failures, offensives and defensives, and make our way into the vocation. Evan­gelization is no mean task. It is a learned, creative, relational one that unfolds in the context of our modern, post-Christian culture.

It was once the case that we lived in an enchanted world. In that view of the universe around us, spirits roamed about, angels moved the planetary bodies, earthquakes were foreboding signs from the gods; the natural world could be read like tea leaves for divine meaning. Then came the Enlightenment and scientific advancements of the last centuries. We benefit from many advances in this period: from hand soap to X-rays to air bags. Our many advances should not be overlooked. However, the miracles of science in this period were accompanied by a dogmatic fidelity to science to the exclusion of other forms of knowing. That exclusionary posture threw the “baby” of genuine religious insight out with the bathwater of religious superstition. Yes, get rid of that bathwater, but it needs to be replaced with something. In this age, as others have observed (e.g. Charles Taylor), the world is no longer enchanted. We are in need of a new enchantment. Here are two examples.

First, in a letter penned to his goddaughter, affixed as a prefatory note to “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” C.S. Lewis wrote the following: “My Dear Lucy, I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis.”

Here’s a second example. Over the holidays I rediscovered a beloved hymn from childhood. The day before visiting extended family, I found the sheet music online and practiced a few lines on the piano. The next day, in the midst of the festivities, I began to play. A mere three notes in, my brother who was walking up the stairs stopped in his tracks, turned around and came to the piano. A euphoric experience, as he put it, unfolded for him.

As with Lewis and my brother, the enchantment we need is not to be found elsewhere, in a land or sphere foreign to ourselves. It is to be found within — a belief in fairy tales and music and care for one another driven by a patience that can be measured in seasons of life.

We need to re-enchant the world or, rather, discover the ways in which it is already enchanted. We cannot go back to the world as it was once enchanted. We also need to be mindful that we not generate a new world borne of our personal nostalgia. It can be painful, but if my personal preference does not effectively communicate the joy of the Gospel to others, then I need to find a new way of expressing that joy. We must do nothing less than sound the music in the hearts of those we know. We must begin somewhere, even if we don’t have it all figured out in advance. Sometimes all it takes is three simple notes.

(Patrick Schmadeke is director of evangelization for the Diocese of Davenport.)

By Patrick Schmadeke
Evangelization in the world today

I’ve been reading “That All Shall be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation” by David Bentley Hart. Released in 2019, the book has had no shortage of critics from a variety of Christian corners. Through previous experience, Hart anticipates this criticism and pulls no punches in the book. His resourcing of Christian history, exegesis of Scripture and probing of common philosophical and theological assumptions are a delight to see as they unfold. His writing style is a true cherry on top, having achieved a perfect blend of form and function.

By creed, Hart is Greek Orthodox. By trade, he is a scholar of religion, a philosopher, writer and cultural commentator. In terms of his level of tolerance for theologies that harm people and minimize the grandeur of God — hell hath no fury.

His position in the book, in summary, is this: “if Christianity is in any way true, Christians dare not doubt the salvation of all, and that any understanding of what God accomplished in Christ that does not include the assurance of a final apokatastasis in which all things created are redeemed and joined to God is ultimately entirely incoherent and unworthy of rational faith” (66). See: no punches were pulled in the composing of that sentence.

The certainty his position holds goes beyond what is “in-bounds” for Roman Catholics. The furthest our Roman Catholicism has gone is that Christians can hope hell is empty. Hart’s certainty is different than Roman Catholicism’s hope. It is worth peeling back some layers here.

Hell has a notable history in Christian thought. Augustine (354-430) theorized that by virtue of original sin, a guilt inherited at conception, we are worthy of eternal conscious torment and the masses of humanity are consigned to this fate. The hell of Dante’s (1265-1321) “Divine Comedy” has nine circles, chock-full of the unrepentant who suffer the most unusual and gruesome of punishments. As if to not to be outdone in his depiction of hell, John Milton’s (1608-1674) “Paradise Lost” has narrative and battles so cosmic and sweeping that the plots and battles of modern comic book movies look like children’s stories. In Milton’s world, one-third of heaven’s angels were damned to hell with Satan and that same throng seeks to retake heaven by force. Fast-forward to early America and we find Jonathan Edwards’ (1703-1758) “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” — the epitome of fire and brimstone preaching.

Each of these hells are worthy of lore in their own right. They are spectacular. Cumulatively, these and others have supplied the imagination with enough source material to yield terror. With hells so grand, one almost wonders if heaven has any chance to be heard.

With such dramatic images in our history, Hart invites the reader to be confronted once again by the Gospel. Without doubt, there are images of suffering and judgment in the Bible, but they hardly come near what later Christian narratives supply — “Paradise Lost” is a work of almost incomparable genius, and it should be read, but it is not the Gospel. These later narratives in some ways paper over the Gospel and we must let the Gospel reign in our hearts.

In the Gospel, the principle attributes of God are mercy and fidelity. This overarching meaning is reflected in parables such as the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. When the Gospel does reign in our hearts, the kind of world we make will be the kind of world that reflects heaven’s reign: a space where there is room for all. If the victory of the cross directs our gaze, we should not be surprised when we come into conflict with worldly power. We may even discover that the vision of the kingdom is beyond what we have — as of yet — been ready to conceive.

(Patrick Schmadeke is director of evangelization for the Diocese of Davenport.)

By Patrick Schmadeke
Evangelization in the world today

Awareness came over me like a flash, it was as if I heard the story for the first time in my life. I’ve encountered the story of the rich man, our Gospel reading for Oct. 13 (Mark 10:17-30), countless times. Since childhood, I have understood the passage to be about giving up worldly possessions. In our consumer-driven society, this is probably a common understanding of the passage and it’s not a bad understanding. Letting go of stuff, giving to the poor and following Jesus is a worthy path. But I realized recently, sitting in the parish hall in group conversation, that it isn’t the central point of the story at all.

To hone in on Jesus’ message, it’s helpful to remember just how scandalous he was. Sometimes the Jesus I hear about is a domesticated, sanitized, de-radicalized figure. Recalling that he claimed to be “Lord of the Sabbath,” made the Passover celebration about himself by instituting the Eucharist, expressed authority to forgive sins and claimed that he and the Father are one helps us resist the tendency to reduce him to non-scandalous status. The story of the rich man is no different. If we think all Jesus was saying was to sell one’s possessions, give to the poor and follow him, then we’ve neglected the essential element that made Jesus so offensive to his hearers that some of his contemporaries wanted him killed.

The downright shocking content of Jesus’ interaction hinges on how wealth was understood at the time of Jesus. Worldly possessions were not a barrier between oneself and God, as is commonly understood today. An abundance of possessions was a sign of one’s positive relationship with God. The rich man understood himself to be greatly blessed by God. Figures from Abraham (Genesis 13:15-17) to Job (Job 1:1-5) were blessed in the form of land, possessions and descendants and everyone in Jesus’ presence understood this. What Jesus says pulls the rug out from under everyone’s expectations.

Jesus tells the man, known to be blessed by God, to give away the visible, God-ordained social signs of his blessing. Everything the man thought he knew to be true about God is called into question. The social and cosmic order of relationships is now in doubt (this is also reflected in the disciples’ response in verses 24 and 26). Jesus turns the divine paradigm on its head. What was a sign of blessed relationship is no longer. Now, the blessing is to let go of those “blessings” and to “come, follow me” (10:21). Jesus’ assertion is nothing short of scandalous.

This realization had me wondering what an analogous scene would look like in our own time if Jesus came today. It might be something like this:

An adult Catholic has practiced the faith his or her whole life. They were baptized as an infant, raised in the faith and attended Catholic school since kindergarten. They can count on one hand the number of times they’ve missed Sunday Mass and often attend daily Mass. In junior high, this person was an altar server, choir member and even helped at the funeral luncheons when school was not in session. They go to adoration, pray the rosary and have an emerging interest in the Liturgy of the Hours. They attend Catholic conferences and go to Bible study on occasion. They wear a saint bracelet and a brown scapular and cross necklace under their shirt. They also have a Bible verse bumper sticker and wear T-shirts with quotes from saints.

Many of these practices resonate with my own faith journey. However, Scripture pushes me to imagine Jesus showing up today and saying to leave them all behind. They are not the sign of positive relationship with God that I necessarily think they are, I have to check my motivations at the door.

In his own time, Jesus took the outward signs that indicated a blessed relationship and turned them on their head. We cannot sanitize Jesus for our own convenience by supposing he would not be equally scandalous today. Jesus stripped everything down to the core by asking the rich man to follow him. Our personal discernment must have the cross and resurrection at its core. Jesus invites each of us to walk the purifying path to and beyond Golgotha. The question is the degree to which each individual faith practices helps or hinders that walking.

(Patrick Schmadeke is director of evangelization for the Diocese of Davenport.)