Today is Home Mission Sunday, when Catholics in this country are encouraged to pray for and support the Church's evangelisation efforts. It's also the day after some of our newer members returned home from an international meeting for younger religious in Rome, convened by the Vatican as part of the Year of Consecrated Life.
The meeting included an audience with the Pope, who spoke, among other things, about evangelisation. The headline in an article by the Catholic News Agency sums it up: Pope Francis cites the core of evangelisation: a heart on fire for God. And indeed, the best evangelisers I've met aren't those who set out to convince with words, or even self-conscious deeds, but simply those who are so alive and filled with God that they cannot help radiating his love and goodness, even in the most ordinary of interactions. Long after we might forget what they say or do, we remember how they are, and that is what speaks most eloquently of God.
A few months ago I read an article - Pope Francis and the Art of Joy - in which the author asked how did a 78-year-old man with only one working lung become perhaps the most radiant, powerful and humane figure on the global stage? The answer, of course, lies not in his pronouncements, but in the interior freedom, joy and peace underpinning everything he says and does.
Let us pray that we too may be people whose hearts are on fire for God, radiant with his abundant love and his life.
The meeting included an audience with the Pope, who spoke, among other things, about evangelisation. The headline in an article by the Catholic News Agency sums it up: Pope Francis cites the core of evangelisation: a heart on fire for God. And indeed, the best evangelisers I've met aren't those who set out to convince with words, or even self-conscious deeds, but simply those who are so alive and filled with God that they cannot help radiating his love and goodness, even in the most ordinary of interactions. Long after we might forget what they say or do, we remember how they are, and that is what speaks most eloquently of God.A few months ago I read an article - Pope Francis and the Art of Joy - in which the author asked how did a 78-year-old man with only one working lung become perhaps the most radiant, powerful and humane figure on the global stage? The answer, of course, lies not in his pronouncements, but in the interior freedom, joy and peace underpinning everything he says and does.
Let us pray that we too may be people whose hearts are on fire for God, radiant with his abundant love and his life.
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