The Call for an Evangelization Initiative
Issued June, 2003*
By Archbishop Harry Flynn

"I think this is one of the most important things that any one of us can do. To be able to articulate our love for Jesus Christ and what attracts us to Jesus Christ. And this is what evangelization is all about....

"Every once in a while we need to stop and we need to say, "What are we about?" We are about making the name of Jesus Christ known and loved and having the effects of making that name known take place within our society in reaching out to our brothers and sisters.

"We are about coming to know Jesus Christ ourselves and being able to speak of Jesus Christ in our lives and what Jesus Christ means to us and then sharing that in any kind of a community and how Jesus Christ is working in my life, encouraging then others to do the same, to be able to speak the name without apologies or shame or anything else.

"And that is my hope for this archdiocese. That we will enflame ourselves with a new faith, a new evangelization, a new awareness of how important it is for all of us to know Jesus Christ personally. To spend time with Jesus Christ. To penetrate the beauty of the scriptures so that we'll come to know Jesus Christ, remembering what Jerome said, "Ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Jesus Christ," and then speaking that name to others.

"And then I would envision marvelous things happening throughout our whole diocese. I would envision that each one of us would then become enflamed ourselves. And I would envision that the effects in the realm of social justice, the effects in the realm of accepting the beauty of others of different nationalities and different races, I would expect that those effects will be far reaching throughout the archdiocese because we never keep Jesus Christ to ourselves. For whenever we know Jesus Christ, in some way we have to pour that out to another…. This is the most important thrust of the Church, because we are nothing unless we are evangelizers in making that name known and loved."

* Transcription of comments before the Evangelization Initiative Pilot Parish representatives