Pope Francis insists that the call to evangelization demands a complete retooling and re-visioning of the way parishes and other church institutions function. All are to become completely mission-oriented. “In all its activities the parish encourages and trains its members to be evangelizers.”12 From now on “we ‘cannot passively and calmly wait in our church buildings’; we need to move ‘from a pastoral ministry of mere conservation to a decidedly missionary pastoral ministry.’”13
It would be hard to imagine stronger exhortations from the Church’s pastors. Yet it must be admitted that the New Evangelization has yet to take hold in a truly radical way. While many parishes and dioceses have made diligent efforts in responding to the call, often these efforts have resulted in relatively meager fruit. In some areas, the faithful do not yet know what the “New Evangelization” is. In others, it has become simply the latest catchphrase. Evangelization is sometimes interpreted to mean simply “everything we’re already doing,” and New Evangelization means simply “more of the same.” In many areas of the western world, the number of practicing Catholics continues in rapid decline.
Clearly, something is missing; something more is needed to awaken the Catholic Church. What will light a fire of evangelistic fervor in the hearts and minds of Catholics of the twenty-first century and enable them to proclaim the good news in a convincing way to the people of our time?
The First Evangelization
This question can only be answered adequately by taking a closer look at the first evangelization — the explosion of Christianity in the ancient world — and learning how it was that a tiny, ragtag band of Christians “turned the world upside down” for Christ (as was literally said of Christians in Acts 17:6). How did this little community of former fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes, slaves, and ordinary people, while being subjected to waves of violent state persecution, so convince the world of the gospel that by the time Christianity finally became legal, and thus safe, in the early fourth century, Christians were already nearly a quarter of the population of the Roman Empire?14
The beginnings of this first evangelization are recounted in the New Testament, especially in the Gospels and Acts. These books give us the divinely inspired account of what the Church’s mission is meant to look like. The New Testament is not only a source of doctrine or of interesting historical data about early Christianity, but also the blueprint for the life and mission of the Church today. The apostolic Church contains the DNA, so to speak, for the Church in every age. Awakening Catholics to their evangelistic mission today therefore means taking a closer look at what Scripture itself reveals about that first evangelization.
Another reason the apostolic Church merits closer attention is that today we find ourselves in a cultural situation that is in some respects more like that faced by the early Christians than it has been at any time since. There is growing hostility to Christianity and intense social pressure to keep our faith to ourselves and stay out of the public square. Vast numbers of people are living an essentially pagan, hedonistic lifestyle. Many are completely ignorant of the gospel. This fact was vividly brought home to a religious sister I know who walked into a drugstore one day wearing her crucifix. Seeing it, the girl behind the counter innocently asked, “Oh, who’s the man hanging on that bar? My grandmother had one of those.”
In some ways we face an even more challenging situation than the early Christians did. Many people today have been exposed to just enough Christianity to be inoculated against it. They think they know essentially everything there is to know about Jesus and the Church. They have been influenced by a constant media barrage of references to Christian violence, colonialism, hypocrisy, hostility to science, and sexual crimes — some accurate, and many exaggerated or false. They rarely hear anything about the vast amount of good Christians do. People formed in these circumstances are far more difficult to reach than those who have never heard of Jesus.
In the biblical account of the first evangelization, one factor that is immediately obvious is the prominent role played by healings and other miraculous works of God. For Jesus and his first followers, the preaching of the good news was inseparable from the signs and wonders by which God himself corroborated the spoken message and convinced the hearers of its truth. As the letter to the Hebrews puts it, while Christians preached the word, “God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his own will” (Heb 2:4). Through these miracles done through faith in the name of Jesus, countless people personally witnessed Christ’s power and came to believe in him.
Are people today any less in need of an encounter with God than the people of the first century? In a world that has lost a sense of the transcendent, healings and miracles are all the more needed to demonstrate that God is the living God who acts in history and in human lives. They are a balm for the gaping spiritual wound in contemporary society: the wound of the absence of God. Healings convince even the most hardened and broken hearts that God has not left us orphans but is present and active and rich in mercy toward us. At the same time, they remind believers that evangelization relies less on human resources than on the Holy Spirit, the principal agent of evangelization.15 Healings are part of God’s providential answer to the spiritual darkness of our times.
Prayer for Healing
Most Catholics are used to praying for the sick. We do so at the liturgy, at special events, and in private whenever we hear of someone who is ill or injured.
But it is something else to pray with and over a sick person, confidently asking the Lord to heal him or her. That is outside the box for many Catholics. Many are not sure whether it is even legitimate to do so. Isn’t it prideful to expect God to work a healing at my request? I’m not worthy to be used like that. I don’t pray enough. I’m not virtuous enough. I fail too often. I can barely get through the day, much less live up to the holiness of the saints.
This hesitation is understandable, but it is based on a serious misconception. The truth is that God pours out his gifts, including the gift of healing, freely. He desires to give this gift far more abundantly than we think. He is not limited by our abilities, but only by our faith and our desire to be used by him. “By the power at work within us [he] is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Eph 3:20).
As someone who grew up Catholic, I too have prayed for the sick all my life. For nearly thirty years I have also often prayed with people for healing, sometimes with the laying on of hands. Only rarely did I witness even a slight improvement — a stomach feeling better or a headache gradually disappearing. But in the last three years, after observing and learning from those who have great faith for healing, especially Randy Clark and Damian Stayne,16 I have begun to see people healed on a regular basis, sometimes in amazing ways. The difference is that I pray now with greater faith that the Lord really does want to heal, and loves to heal, his children who are broken and hurting. I also offer to pray with people much more often than before. I have become convinced that miraculous healing is not meant to be something rare but ordinary in the life of the Church, and that the Lord does not want to use only spiritual superstars with special gifts, but every “little ole’ me,” as Randy Clark puts it.
In this book I share what I have learned from studying what Scripture, theology, and Church history have to tell us about healing, as well as my own experience and that of friends and co-laborers in the Lord’s vineyard. My hope is that you too will gain confidence to pray with others with expectant faith for healing, even in the most unexpected times and places, as Andrew did on the beach. As we pursue the daunting task of evangelizing the people of the twenty-first century, the Church needs the full endowment of supernatural gifts given to her by her living Lord. The Lord longs to lavish these gifts on his children so they in turn can lavish his mercy on the world. Obtaining these gifts is not complicated, but simple. “Ask, and it will be given you” (Matt 7:7).
Chapter Two
The Kingdom