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well I most recent USCCB general meeting
ended with a mourning a prayer wonderful
morning a prayer with benediction and
morning prayer and so on but at the
heart of it was a sermon given by
Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle
who's been a great leader of the church
and a friend for some years and he and I
have both have a great devotion to pier
Giorgio for sáááty the wonderful Italian
Saint for the beginning of the 20th
century and he talked about him but you
know what really struck me in his
wonderful sermon was a reference to the
great Catherine of Siena and as you know
one of the most remarkable features of
this remarkable woman's life was her
real intimacy with so many of the
heavenly figures you know she had this
this intense personal dialogue
conversation with the Blessed Mother
with the Saints and with the Lord
Himself and our spirit relate a story
that her spiritual director Raymond of
Capua told that she'd be reciting the
office and walking you know up and down
a cloister but she was reciting it in in
communion with Jesus who was mystically
visible to her and they would exchange
the Psalms the way you do in a choir and
when she come to the end of the psalm as
is a liturgical custom she'd recite the
glory be but here's how she would do it
she'd say glory be to the Father and to
thee and to the Holy Spirit because she
was speaking directly to Jesus prayer
was not something abstract for her she
was not in trying to commune with some
distant power it was a very intimate
personal conversation and our special
Sartain invited us to reflect a bit on
her use of the word V now it's
interesting in her Latin she would have
said Gloria Patri at tibi and to you but
she was using the more familiar form the
more intimate form so you know a lot of
languages of Latin included the second
person personal pronoun
it has both a formal and an informal
mode you know you could say you formally
to someone you just met or with whom you
have a distant relationship or you could
say you in a more intimate way like you
know do versus Z and German you know or
to vs. vu and French etc and what he
asked it to see was the in English in
older English is that intimate form of
the second person pronoun even though in
the odd way that English has developed
at least spoken English we tend to think
of like the endowment I and I as being
very formal and kind of regal but in
fact it's just the opposite that you and
yours that was the more formal version
but V and thou and thy that's the more
intimate the way you'd speak to a child
or to a friend or someone that you were
close to and then he said remember in
our prayers we can serve this our Father
who art in heaven hallowed be thy name
thy kingdom come thy will be done
MA Hail Mary right hail Mary full of
grace the Lord is with thee blessed art
thou among women so the art thou that's
the that's the familiar form how
wonderful that in our most exalted
prayers we invoke God in this and the
Blessed Mother in this deeply personal
way well this is not just a curiosity
this is revealing something of great
moment about Christianity contrasted for
example two philosophies and mysticisms
of the ancient world platonism comes to
mind a Platini anism Gnosticism all
those systems would speak of the divine
of some great ontological source um hi
mystical principle of all things but you
never dream of addressing that power
with the intimate form
you never say thou to that source or
that power and of course the ancient of
philosophies have an echo in more
contemporary thought so go back to the
deism that was so
in the 18th century it influenced our
founding fathers they talked about you
know a first principle of the universe
or think of the pantheist mysticisms of
Friedrich Schleiermacher and and Ralph
Waldo Emerson in the 19th century and
they of course have an echo in the New
Age spirituality z' of our own time
again all those talk about the divine or
the sacred some mystical source but
you'd be hard-pressed in a sly remark
Aryan or Emersonian or new-age
perspective to address this power as now
and then there's the Bible then there's
the Bible don't tell me for example that
the Bible is is one more iteration of
the mono myth or the Bible's one more
version of the universal religious story
it is not the Bible knows all about
God's transcendence it knows all about
those are awful uncontrollable
inscrutable power of the creator of the
universe so the Bible is as no ignorant
of those great mystical Heights but at
the same time the Bible says that God is
a person who has created us individually
who loves us personally who guides us
and who draws us ultimately into his own
life not find that in Plato you will not
find that in Platanias you will not find
that in Emerson or Schleiermacher or the
New Age keep pressing it the Bible then
speaks of this personal God who pitches
his tent among us that's st. John's
beautiful language that the word became
flesh and dwelt we say but the Hebrew or
the Greek has the sense of pitching his
tent among us God becomes one of us in
such a remarkable fashion that in Jesus
he says I no longer call you slaves but
friends now see I mean let that sink in
the peculiarities of
biblical Christianity the peculiarities
of biblical Christianity that God
high God the Creator of heaven and earth
the the inscrutable uncontrollable
ineffable transcendent mystery of God
calls us friends so that we can respond
to him as thou see there's a world of
difference and in fact Christianity
turns those other mysticisms under on
their head see this matters so much I
think for our contemporary concern for
evangelization what's evangelization
it's not just sharing ideas about
Christianity as important that is I'm an
idea guy so my whole life teaching and
writing you know but evangelization is
the introduction of someone into a
friendship with Jesus Christ into a
relationship with him and as the old
adage has it named ODOT quod non hobbit
right nobody gives where he doesn't have
one of the reasons we don't evangelize
effectively I think is a lot of even
professed Christians don't walk
personally with Jesus and I'm not going
to say oh that's something that's that's
just you know kind of a born-again
Christian anything that's Christianity
simply that we walk personally with
Christ once you do that once you address
him with the word thou once you know
that you have a friendship with the Lord
then you're able to share it and that's
what real evangelization is all about
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