Evangelization Is Your Fulfillment
Peter Buckley and Mark O'Donnell continue their series on Pope Francis's Joy of the Gospel, taking up the claim that the Church's call to evangelize is the source of authentic personal fulfillment rather than an extra religious duty. Mark contrasts the 10,000-hour gospel of work, sport, and retirement planning with the parables of the wedding feast and the rich fool, arguing that joy — and therefore evangelization — comes only after we stop idolizing the work of our hands, put on the wedding garment of obedience, and follow a concrete plan of prayer, the sacraments, and holiness, with St. John the Baptist as intercessor.
Notes
- Pope Francis, in the introduction to Joy of the Gospel, says that when the Church summons Christians to evangelize, she is pointing to the source of authentic personal fulfillment — not adding an extra religious chore.
- Most people treat apostolate as something for the religiously inclined. The Pope is saying it is how all of us actually become fulfilled.
- We must live a balanced life. Once something gives us joy, we double down on it and call it our mission, then the returns diminish because it only fulfills a portion of who we are. Hours spent funding a comfortable retirement miss the point: we are building for eternity. The parable of the rich fool reminds us of this.
- Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours do not appear in the Gospel. Jesus left no chairs, fences, or family mansion behind. The material work was subordinated to the mission and then it passed.
- St. John Henry Newman, on watching for Christ: our sin is idolizing the work of our hands so well that we cannot bear to part with it. The test of faith is being able to fail without disappointment.
- Work, sport, and entertainment become life-and-death struggles for self-validation. When they usurp God's role, vanity resists with demonic force — and the pathologies follow: opioids, suicide, pornography, fraud.
- An evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral. Paul VI: the world will receive the good news from ministers whose lives glow with fervor, who have first received the joy of Christ. You cannot give what you do not have.
- “God loves you the way you are” is not permission to stay with the swine. Like chemo for cancer, we undergo spiritual chemo; sainthood needs a plan of prayer, Gospel meditation, Mass, Communion, and confession. God takes the initiative — the apostles never forgot that it was about four o'clock in the afternoon. On the feast of the Passion of St. John the Baptist, Mark holds him up as intercessor for a struggle that has some violence in it.