How Many Times Can You Say Yes?
Spirituality Reflection by Deacon Bill Boyd
(Matthew 28:16-20)
At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, we are given the great commission as Jesus tells us that He wants us to live the Gospel and to proclaim the Gospel. He wants us to love Him and He wants us to lead others to His love. As Vincentians, this is our call-this is our mission-this is the New Evangelization.
Pope St. John Paul II reminds us that evangelization must be based on our accompaniment with others. The more we contemplate the words of Pope St. John Paul II, the more we see that he was drawing from the wisdom of the Church Fathers, who understood evangelization not as a transaction-where we offer an idea to someone and they either buy it or don’t buy it-but rather as a divine romance played out over the course of a lifetime in the devotional life in our unconditional love for our Lord and our neighbors.
This vision of evangelization is a threefold process of falling in love, committing to love, and growing in love is what Pope St. John Paul II described in his document on the teaching of the faith. He explained how Evangelization must be based on Christ. Christ is the source and summit of the Christian life. He propels us through the stages of evangelization and the catechesis to the Supper of the Lamb. Christ empowers us to grow in love and faith every day of our lives, compelling us to share that faith with others. When we understand that, we understand the scope of the New Evangelization. We see the faith we are tasked to share, and we see the fullness of the relationship to which we are called.
Are we in love with Christ? Every day, in the ordinary circumstances of our lives and in our Vincentian vocation, Christ calls us to Himself. There isn’t one call, there are many calls. One yes, does not a disciple make.
The Vincentian life is a perpetual yes-yes to God’s law, yes to God’s will, yes to God’s grace. The more yes’s we give, the more our love grows. And the more our love grows, the more we find ourselves living our Vincentian vocation, sharing the faith with our neighbors, proclaiming God’s love.
Vincentians, God calls us to be faithful, not successful. When we focus on success only, we develop a mind set where we see our success as “our” success. Another problem of pursuing only our success is that it sets us up for disappointment in our call to Evangelization. Pope Benedict XVI wrote of Jesus: He died almost abandoned. He was condemned on account of His preaching. The response to His message was not the great Yes but the Cross. His success comes about through the Cross and is always found under that sign.
Fidelity is what God wants from us. He wants us to live the Gospel, and He wants us to proclaim it. He wants us to love Him, and He wants us to lead others to His love. That is what He calls us to do. As Vincentians, we are called to love and serve our neighbors.
As Vincentians, that is what we believe. It is about how we live, how we love, how we journey with our neighbors and the crosses that come our way. We celebrate our love of Christ, and we share this love when we evangelize. We evangelize not just through words, but through deeds. Not just through what we say, but through how we live. Not just through what we share with our neighbors, but through our accompaniment with our neighbors.
This is our call. This is our mission. This is the New Evangelization. Amen
