United States Conference of Catholic Bishops - Go and Make Disciples: A National Plan and Strategy for Catholic Evangelization in the United States

A NATIONAL PLAN AND STRATEGY FOR CATHOLIC EVANGELIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES

UNITED STATES CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS

WASHINGTON, D.C.

F r. Alvin Illig, CSP, devoted his life to the task that Pope Paul VI called the essential mission of the Church. Touched by the Holy Spirit, he labored to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the truth of the Catholic faith before the duty to evangelize was widely accepted. He led the way for the rest of us.

Fr. Illig is best known as founding director of the Paulist National Catholic Evangelization Association. However, he also served as first executive director of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Evangelization from 1977 to 1982, doing everything in his power to ensure that the whole Church in the United States lived and preached the Good News.

It was Fr. Illigs generous support that enabled the committee to write this National Plan and Strategy. In recognition of his service to the Church and to the cause of Catholic evangelization, we hereby dedicate it to him. May it serve as a fitting memorial to one ever faithful to the Lord.

I n the mid-nineties of the last century, I gave Go and Make Disciples to the members of the Yakima (Wash.) Diocesan Pastoral Council. After wrestling with what it might mean for Catholics in central Washington state, one woman told me that she had never read such an important and inspiring document. It changed her and also changed her whole attitude toward documents from the U.S. bishops conference.

It has been nearly ten years since the U.S. bishops published Go and Make Disciples . While there is much evidence that the plan and strategy outlined in this publication have alerted Catholics to the need for evangelization and to their responsibility for it and have informed them about what it should entail, we are still only beginning to implement it in our parishes and dioceses.

The inspiring celebration of the Year of Jubilee 2000 under the leadership of the Holy Father has, I believe, readied our hearts to respond anew to the appeal with which he began his pontificate in 1978: Open wide the doors to Christ!... Help the Pope and all those who wish to serve Christ... to serve the human person and the whole of mankind (October 22, 1978). As we have celebrated the two-thousandth anniversary of the birth of Jesus, our encounter with him has deepened, and we have again been touched by the love of God brought into our lives by his Son. Two thousand years have not diminished the freshness of the truth that Jesus inaugurated. It is as enduring as ever, for Christ is the foundation and center of history; he is its meaning and ultimate goal (John Paul II, Novo Millenio Ineunte [ At the Close of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 ], no. 5).

Because we have contemplated Christ vividly in the Jubilee Year observances, we are more aware than ever that we must proclaim him. We are impelled to commit ourselves to give witness to our faith in him. To pass from jubilee to mission, we can use Go and Make Disciples . In it we have an instrument of formation and action that is even more timely today than when it first appeared. Evangelization still covers all these goals: personal conversion to Christ; sharing all his gifts in his Body, the Church; transforming society by the power of the Gospel.

More pressing than ever are the motives for evangelization. One thinks of that day on which Jesus saw the people in need of food and responded by telling his apostles, There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves (Mt 14:16). He says the same thing to us who have been made rich by his gifts of grace, truth, and eternal life. All around us people are starving for faith and love, for hope and meaning in their lives. Because the Lord Jesus has done so much for us, we cannot refuse to share the gifts we have been given.

They are gifts necessary for salvation, in this world and in the world to come. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus has won salvation for us. His was a sacrifice of perfect obedience to the will of his eternal Father. As the head of the whole human family, he suffered death for us so that we might live; yet the life he won does not work without the cooperation made possible by our participation in it. Each one of us has to accept what Christ offers us. Each one of us has to come into vital contact with the sacrifice of the Cross so that the grace of which it is the source might be imparted to us. True, God can make holiness possible in all sorts of waysin the hidden impulses of grace that move the human heart to faith, in the aspirations of other philosophies and faiths. Yet, in fact, God has given us his chosen means of obtaining salvation. He offers both the gift and the means of obtaining it. God has made clear that, in his plan, the Catholic Church and the sacraments of grace to be found in it are the ordinary necessary means of salvation. In the Church, the Gospel that awakens faith can be heard and the risen Savior who shares his life with us can be encountered. The Good News of Christ and his gifts must be brought to all strata of society, and his Church must be implanted in every place to make salvation readily available to all.

I hope that Go and Make Disciples will be taken up by all pastors and their people in the Church in the United States, by catechists, by all engaged in education in the faith and in projects of evangelization, and by those who serve in parish and diocesan ministries nationwide. It is an instrument none can afford to overlook. If we adopt its goals intelligently and wholeheartedly and follow the strategy it proposes, we shall be faithful stewards of the gifts that Jesus has given us in his Church.

May this fine document stimulate each of us to the task of evangelization in the spirit of the advice given recently by Pope John Paul II:

May Christ be the center of your lives and your mission. Strive for holiness! If you should happen, like the disciples, to spend yourselves without success (cf. Lk 5: 4-6), transform this apparently frustrating experience into a precious occasion to pray and mature spiritually. The challenges of today are many and the means at our disposal to face them do not always seem adequate. Do not let the problems, the obstacles discourage you. On the contrary, may they force you to open your hearts to divine grace so that, with the strength of the word of Christ, you can sow the joy and newness of the Gospel with your presence and your action. (September 13, 2001)

Francis Cardinal George, OMI

Archbishop of Chicago

September 29, 2001

A NATIONAL PLAN AND STRATEGY FOR CATHOLIC EVANGELIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.

(Mt 28:19-20)

I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!

(Lk 12:49)

1. Jesus set the world on fire, and that blaze goes on even today. In the Gospels there is Bartimaeus, blind and begging on the roadside; he hears of Jesus and, no matter what, will not stop shouting until Jesus stops to heal him. Once healed, he follows Jesus. Each of these people, touched by Christ Jesus, responded to him and so became part of the story of salvation.

2. We have heard these and so many other gospel stories of Jesus Sunday after Sunday at church, in our own reading and sharing of Scriptures, in the words mothers and fathers tell their children, in the private meditation of our prayer, and in the celebration of the sacraments. We have become, through the power and truth of these stories, and through the free gift of grace, disciples of Jesus.