Throughout these first four weeks of Lent, we have been called to and strived for a deeper life of holiness. Holiness is another way of saying “an integrated life” — a life of integrity.
When we integrate life in holiness, we enhance and preserve what is good, and we set aside the evil and wrong that diminish us. The integration of life in holiness requires us to examine our lives, admit weaknesses and faults, and to attain a disposition directed toward God and neighbor. That is the model the Church offers us during Lent.
The Church provides us with opportunities to be more integrated in our Christian life, our relationships with people, nations, culture, and the environment in which we live. The Church does not reject what is good about our culture, i.e., respecting the freedom and integrity of people, but asks us to put aside what causes damage or brokenness in the culture.
Throughout the 10 years of his pontificate, Pope Francis, like his predecessors, has often spoken about renewal in the Church — personal and communally. This renewal, rooted in the Gospel and authentically expressed in the Second Vatican Council, helps the Church grow in life integrated in holiness. Renewal is a frequent experience in the Church’s life and history. We can see it in the founding and growth of ecclesial movements throughout that history.
Renewal was experienced with the founding of monastic orders in the early centuries of the Church, in the founding of the mendicant orders of the 13th century as well as other religious communities in the centuries that followed.
In recent history Church renewal can be seen in the work of the Schoenstatt Movement and Opus Dei, each established in the early 20th century, and in the Neocatechumenal Way and the Charismatic Movement which developed in the wake of Vatican II. Renewal, personal or organizational, is not an end in itself. It is a call to something more; it is a periodic call to renewed efforts of evangelization and an integrated life in holiness.
As evangelizers, we proclaim and demonstrate to the culture the beauty, grace and life offered by the Gospel. We meet people where they are, even going to the peripheries, as Pope Francis often reminds us. When we get there, we embrace those we meet without judgment, by not intimating that there is something wrong with them.
There may be things in their lives that need to be corrected. That is a reality for all of us. We all have weaknesses and inadequacies, areas of life that need to be purified by grace and renewed by the Holy Spirit. The starting point is to recognize people’s circumstances and to share the Gospel as the source of renewal in life and culture. That is evangelization.
All the popes since Vatican II have sought to implement the work of the council by continuing to answer the question: How does the Church express itself effectively and evangelize in the present age, in the context of the modern world, given all the global tensions and complexities, growth in technology and communications, encounters between cultures through increased migration and travel?
Throughout our history, evangelizing has been difficult for Christians. Ours is the story of countless martyrs who gave their lives in proclamation of the Gospel. It is not easier today. Godlessness, the threat of wars, self-centeredness and pride are as prevalent as ever — if not more so. Thus, evangelization can be daunting.
Yet, through spiritual renewal, individually and in our faith communities, by living a life integrated in holiness, we receive the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the grace needed to be evangelizers, those who will bring others closer to Christ.
As we strive to integrate our lives in holiness, to renew our faith in God and to answer our call to evangelize, let us reflect on the opening words of the council fathers in “Lumen Gentium”:
“Since the Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race, it desires now to unfold more fully to the faithful of the Church and to the whole world its own inner nature and universal mission….The present- day conditions of the world add greater urgency to this work of the Church so that all men, joined more closely today by various social, technical and cultural ties, might also attain fuller unity in Christ.” (1)