Evangelization is the new buzzword in many Catholic
communities today. An increasing number of parishes can
pick and choose their way through numerous evangelization
programs that purport efficacious, contemporary methods
for bringing the Good News of the Gospel to all. It is
not my intention to endorse any particular evangelization
program, but simply to point out that any truly effective
approach to evangelization should be comprehensive. In
other words, Catholics should take a "comprehensive
Christianization" approach to evangelization, which is
"full evangelization involving catechetical instruction,
moral doctrine, and the social teaching of the Church"
(Avery Cardinal Dulles 1995, 32).
A comprehensive Christianization approach to
evangelization, rooted in the Eucharist--which is
the definitive sign of our unity in Christ--"will
penetrate deeply into the social, cultural, economic
and political order," and in our parish communities
as well, where "total evangelization will naturally
have as its highest point an intense liturgical life
that will make parishes living ecclesial communities"
(Ibid.). Our own African American bishops affirm this:
"The celebration of the Sacred Mysteries is that moment
when the Church is most fully actualized and most clearly
revealed . . . It is a moment of profound expression; not
a flight from reality, but an experience of God's power
and love" (What We Have Seen and Heard, 30).
Evangelization can only be productive and effective
if it is supported by sound doctrine, which is faithfully
presented by the sacred pastors, theologians, and those
who hold ecclesiastical office in the Church.
Likewise, a comprehensive Christianization approach must
also be subjectively appropriated and enthusiastically
implemented by the faithful who, for their part, must be
staunchly devoted to the truths of the faith. The
dissemination of truth to the world must not be reduced
to mere trite sentimentality. On the contrary, as followers
of Christ who are nourished and strengthened by his Body and
Blood, we are called by him to become living witnesses to,
and true examples of, the Christian faith in our everyday
lives. Evangelization is rendered meaningless if our faith
is not an integral component of who we are, how we live, and
how we worship. The Father's plan for our salvation, and our
response to that plan in the obedience of faith, calls us to
holiness and challenges us to "go and make disciples" within
our homes, workplaces, and leisure activities. As Black Catholics,
"we have a privileged position to gain access to the hearts
and minds of the African American community. We have a
solemn responsibility to take the lead in the Church's
work within the Black community" (What We Have Seen and Heard, 19).
Evangelization, in the vision of Vatican II, must engender
"constant conversion and renewal in order to evangelize
the world with credibility" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, no.15).
This means that the three pillars upon which the Church
rests, namely, Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium,
together with a deep and abiding love for the Eucharist,
must be the catalysts for evangelization efforts, since
it is through obedience to revealed truth that we experience
authentic conversion and through the reception of the
Eucharistic Christ that we have life in him (cf. John 6:53-58).
The inundation and influence of secular ideology on
Christian values demonstrate clear and present dangers
to both Catholic spirituality and African American communities.
These include obvious threats, such as contraception, abortion,
and agnosticism, but also secular humanism, moral relativism,
callous indifferentism, pantheism, and a number of
pseudo-spiritualities idiosyncratic to the "New Age"
movement (enneagrams, crystals, and labyrinths).
In the African American community in particular,
the continuing problems of drug and alcohol abuse,
crime, fornication, pornography, and the degradation
of family life present serious affronts to our Christian
convictions and hinder evangelization efforts.
Comprehensive Christianization will allow us
to identify and combat the major obstacles to full
implementation of the new evangelization. These
obstacles--which deteriorate our Catholic spirituality
and erode our African American communities--cause us to
be "diffident about current Catholic doctrine and practices,"
and have a negative effect on evangelization in that we
often fail to proclaim our faith with confidence
(Dulles, 33). The Church's mission to evangelize--to
go and make disciples for Christ who is the Way, the
Truth, and the Life (John 14:6)--comes face to face
with a philosophical system that claims there is no
objective truth that exists independent of human
subjectivity and reasoning. Consequently, those
who engage in evangelization activity are perceived
by society to be a dangerous threat to the supreme
good of enlightened modernism, namely, tolerance and freedom.
In the face of this adversity, the Holy Father
encourages evangelization by asking, "how can we
remain silent about the religious indifference which
causes many people today to live as if God did not exist,
or to be content with a vague religiosity, incapable of
coming to grips with the question of truth and the requirement
of consistency?" (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, no.36). Current
evangelization efforts must recapture both a sense of truth and
"the sense of having a message that is urgently needed for
the redemption of the world" (Dulles, 33). The Eucharist must
be at the center of our evangelization efforts because it
is Christ himself who, with the Father and the Spirit,
gathers his people as one Body, who gives us the grace,
perseverance, and faith necessary to live as his disciples,
and who bestows upon us the courage to spread the Good News
to the ends of the Earth:
It is an essential truth, not only of doctrine but
also of life, that the Eucharist builds the Church,
building it as the authentic community of the People of God,
as the assembly of the faithful, bearing the same mark of
unity that was shared by the apostles and the first disciples
of the Lord. The Eucharist builds ever anew this community and
unity, ever building and regenerating it on the basis of the
sacrifice of Christ, since it commemorates His death on the
cross the price by which He redeemed us (Redemptor Hominis, no.20).
The Spirit of the new evangelization, initiated at the
Second Vatican Council, and concretized in the teaching of
Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, has provided the Church
with the moral, intellectual, and spiritual armaments requisite
for battle with secular culture. As evangelizing Christians,
we sincerely hope and pray that through our witness of
faith--most especially in our witness to and great love
for the Holy Eucharist, the source of spiritual unity--Christ
may become a "living, energetic reality [who] will take over
the direction" of modern society (Dulles, 37).
In order to combat the challenges of contemporary
society and culture, we must rediscover and build upon
the solid foundation of our faith; a faith that forms
the heart and soul of our spiritual identity as Black
Catholics. "Inasmuch as all people are called to a life
of holiness, we as black people faithful to the Holy Spirit
and our Church's teachings, must seek to pray and work in
the spirit of our ancestors in the Faith" (NBCC Congress IX,
Spirituality Principle). We must respond with courage,
conviction, and unwavering faith to our baptismal call
to holiness, to answer Christ's challenge to "be perfect
as the heavenly Father is perfect": to "shoulder the
responsibility laid upon us by our Baptism into the
Body of Christ. This responsibility is to proclaim
our faith and to take an active part in building up
the Church" (What We Have Seen and Heard, 18). In
short, we must nurture and cultivate a deep and abiding
love for our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist:
We cannot separate our lives from the Eucharist . . .
Jesus has made Himself the Bread of Life to give us life.
Night and day, He is there. If you really want to grow in
love, come back to the Eucharist, come back to that Adoration
(Mother Teresa of Calcutta).
The reality of Christ's presence in the Eucharist, as
Mother Teresa so beautifully reminds us, is at the core
of Catholic spirituality. For African American Catholics,
our spirituality is expressed in a special way through
liturgical worship, which reflects the unique gift of
our rich and diverse cultural heritage (our Blackness)
without subjugating the primacy of the Mass as a sacrifice
(our Catholicity). "What makes our worship genuinely
Catholic is that the community of believers gathers at
the table of the Lord, which is both the table of God's
Word and the table of Christ's Body and Blood, a table at
which God's people are nourished by Holy Word and Sacred
Meal" (Rev. J-Glenn Murray, 1987).
For most of us who strive to imbibe a eucharistic
spirituality into our daily lives, we are confronted by
an increasingly disbelieving world: a world steeped in
radical individualism and moral relativism; a world that
denies the supernatural, transcendent reality of the
Paschal Mystery in favor of the transient, corporeal
truths of earthly life. The power of the Eucharistic
Christ--present at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and
in Adoration--gives us the strength and fortitude to
stand up to the convictions and truths of our faith:
to be the disciples that Christ calls us to be. "The
deepest goals of evangelization are achieved primarily
through what occurs mysteriously upon the altar and in
the praying community, by means of the words of the priest
and their conscious reception by the participant (who in
this moment above all fulfills his role as a priestly people).
'In the Eucharist, the Christian has the experience of
being not only a faithful hearer of the Word, but also
an active participant in what is the table of the Lord--
and capable, therefore, of witnessing to the Gospel'"
(Edouard Cardinal Gagnon).
The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist has
always been the constant teaching of the Church and
an integral part of her spirituality. This doctrine
is rooted in the Gospels (especially John 6 and the
Last Supper narratives) and in the Epistles. St.
Paul, in fact, warns that "whoever eats the bread
or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner
will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the
Lord" (1 Corinthians 11:27). Furthermore, "anyone who
eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and
drinks judgment upon himself" (1 Corinthians 11:29).
This has also been the teaching of the Church Fathers:
When [Christ] gave the bread he did not say, 'This is
the symbol of my body', but, 'This is my body'. In the
same way, when he gave the cup of his blood he did not
say, 'This is the symbol of my blood', but, 'This is
my blood'; for he wanted us to look upon the
[Eucharistic elements] after their reception of grace
and the coming of the Holy Spirit not according to their
nature, but receive them as they are, the body and
blood of our Lord. We ought . . . not regard [the elements]
merely as bread and cup, but as the body and blood of the
Lord, into which they were transformed by the descent of
the Holy Spirit (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Catechetical
Homilies 5:1, A.D. 405).
The Eucharist is the sacrament par excellence, the
sacrament of sacraments, where Christ gives us not only
his Divine grace, but his very self. It is a "sacrament
of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity" in which
we remember the salvific action of Christ's death and
resurrection (Sacrosanctum Concilium, no.47). In the
Eucharist, "we unite ourselves to Christ, who makes us
sharers in his Body and Blood to form a single body"
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.1331). This is
possible because, in the Eucharist, Christ is "truly,
really and substantially" present (CCC, no.1374).
The Blessed Sacrament is the source of Christian
spirituality and Black Catholic identity because the
Eucharist is Jesus Christ. It is not a symbol or
representation of Christ, but the reality of God
with whom we are in intimate relationship: a
relationship which "draws the faithful and sets
them aflame with Christ's insistent love"
(Sacrosanctum Concilium, no.10). The Eucharist,
therefore, is the wellspring from which we receive
the strength, power, and grace to seek the Lord
through spiritual perfection and charity. In
the reception of the Eucharist, we literally become
one with God in a way that is purposeful and real.
It is the alpha of Christian spirituality and "is
for the soul the most certain means of remaining
united to Jesus" (Abbot Columba Marmion, O.S.B. 1925, 261).
As African American Catholics, we share "in the
same sonship of Jesus Christ, a relationship with
God that gives an undying, eternal identity.
Membership in the Church as the body of those who,
through baptism and the Eucharist, have acquired
such an identity [is] the source of true spirituality"
(McGinn & Meyendorff 1996, 30). This identity is
grounded, sustained, and nourished by the Eucharist,
which in turn infuses and gives life to our spiritual
lives. Perfection in charity--the goal of Christian
spirituality--is concretized in the Eucharist.
As
we progress in our spiritual lives endeavoring to love
God above all else, and as that love begins to be
realized within us and in our relationships with
others, we learn to live Eucharistically. As Pope
John Paul II reminds us, "eucharistic worship
constitutes the soul of all Christian life. In fact,
Christian life is expressed in the fulfilling of the
greatest commandment, that is to say, in the love of
God and neighbor, and this love finds its source in
the Blessed Sacrament, which is commonly called the
sacrament of love" (Dominicae Cenae, 5).
The Eucharist is a deepening of the relationship
which began in Baptism and realizes a level of
intimacy that is inherently supernatural, mysterious,
and inexhaustive. In the reception of the Eucharist,
we literally become one with God in a way that is
purposeful and real. It is the fount from which flows
the definition of who we are as Christians in terms of
our intrinsic relationship with Christ. "Black
Spirituality senses the awe of God's transcendence and
the vital intimacy of his closeness. In an age of
competition and control, we have learned to surrender
to God's love and to let him work his power through us.
It is this sense of God's power in us that calls us to
work for evangelization in the modern world"
(What We Have Seen and Heard, 8). By receiving the
Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, we become
more of who we already are in Christ "who maintains
and increases the Divine life in us" (Marmion, 263).
In order to successfully conquer and permanently
annul the falsehoods promulgated by a society which
seeks to dehumanize us, "priority must be given to
continued and renewed formation in the faith as the
basis of our deepening personal relationship with
Jesus" (Disciples in Mission, 7). Therefore, personal
transformation, which is the fruit of full evangelization,
"requires instruction in sound doctrine, participation
in sacramental worship, and the acquisition of a mature
ethical and social conscience" (Dulles, 32).
The assimilation of Catholic truth, enlivened by the
power of the Holy Spirit and engendered by the Eucharist,
kindles the fires of love in our hearts and inspires us to
share the truth of Jesus Christ with others:
As Black Catholics continue to deepen their
reverence for the gift of their own blackness and
their own African American spirituality . . . it must
never be forgotten that the liturgy has an
evangelizing dimension. As the celebration of the
Faithful's reconciliation in Christ, the worship of
God in the liturgy continually challenges the community
to change their hearts, to be converted anew in Christ.
Likewise, worship impels all Catholics to bring the
message of conversion to others, especially those who
do not know Christ Jesus (In Spirit and Truth, 67-68).
"Evangelization . . . is a lifelong process of letting the
gospel permeate and transform all our ideas and attitudes" (Dulles, 1996). The
foundation of efficacious and cogent evangelization is firmly imbedded in the
bedrock of Eucharist. Eucharistic spirituality is the core of Black Catholic
identity because it conveys who we really are as Church: the Body of Christ. It
is at the center and heart of our faith precisely because it is in the Eucharist
where Christ gives himself to us completely.
The Eucharist is the most profound sacramental sign of our
intimate relationship with God and fellowship with each other, and is the
genesis of a Black Spirituality that is truly and authentically contemplative,
holistic, joyful, and communitarian. Through the Eucharist, we are continually
drawn into the heart of the Trinity and are united with one another in faith,
hope, and charity through the imperishable bond of loving and life-giving
communion instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ:
The Church's mission stands in continuity with the
mission of Christ: 'As the Father has sent me, even
so I send you' (Jn 20:21). From the perpetuation of
the sacrifice of the Cross and her communion with the
body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, the Church
draws the spiritual power needed to carry out her mission.
The Eucharist thus appears as both the source and the
summit of all evangelization, since its goal is the
communion of mankind with Christ, and in him with the
Father and the Holy Spirit (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 22).
