Roman Catholics have not been traditionally very good at getting excited about our faith. Many of us prefer to think of faith as something private, something to be cherished between God and me. However this would be the furthest thing from the image that is portrayed in the words of the prophet Zephaniah.
Saint Luke's gospel also points out the fact that the crowds who were gathering to be baptized by John were excited about something new that was happening in their midst. Tax collectors, soldiers and other people who met him were all filled with expectation and were questioning in their hearts (Lk 3:15). If the words of the prophets are true, and if John the Baptist was successful in preparing the ground so that we too might receive the great gift of faith, the next question that we need to ask is: What is this great gift of faith that has been given to us and what are we expected to do with it?
The church defines the process of sharing our faith as something called evangelization. Pope Saint Paul VI was the first to speak about the new evangelization in his Apostolic Exhortation entitled Evangelli Nuntiandi and all other popes after him have continued their encouragement for us to go out of our own comfort zones in order to share the good news of the gospel with those we meet.
If we want to teach others about our faith, we must first understand it ourselves. We need to be evangelized before we can evangelize anyone else. Many efforts have been put forward, and many programs have been tried in an effort to evangelize, but none of them so far have continued to awaken desires to learn about faith once they have drawn to a close. A few years ago, I heard about an adult faith enrichment programme called ChristLife. Although I was sceptical at first, the approach that is used has proven to be very effective at evangelization among adults of all ages.
ChristLife is different from other evangelization programs. Whereas other approaches to evangelization have seemed only to dwell at the surface level of our faith development, my experience with ChristLife is that it goes a little bit deeper. There are three components beginning with seven weeks focussed on discovering the person of Jesus. Once we have discovered the person of Jesus, the second set of sessions leads us to make a choice to follow Him. Finally, having chosen to follow Him we learn how to share our faith with others. I believe that this is what truly makes this program attractive: it actually teaches us how to let our gentleness be known to everyone, how to make our requests known to God, and how to rejoice in peace which is the gift of our God (cf Phil 4:5-7).
We are making plans at the moment for the first seven-week session of Discovering Christ to be offered in Elliot Lake beginning in February 2019. More details will be coming very soon, but even now we can begin to ask ourselves: Is there anything that excites me about my faith? Do I truly believe my faith is wonderful news worth sharing with others?
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