One of my favorite stories from ministry is when I first celebrated mass in Spanish at St. Benedict Parish. I ended the mass as I normally did: “La misa es terminada podemos ir en paz.” “The mass is ended we can go in peace.” is the literal translation. One of the women sacristans came out and complained “No No, la misa no termina nunca.” [No no, the mass never ends.] She is right, the mass actually does not end. Indeed, the word mass comes from the Latin mittere which means to send out for after mass y’all are sent out to proclaim the good news. It is also where we get the root words for dismiss and the like. 

There are two things that are interesting in that story: 1) the person who corrected me is a woman and 2) she always felt bad about herself for she only had a 2nd grade education.

I want you to go back to the story of Emmaus and look what is the key word. The disciples were on their way to Emmaus and completely confused. They expected Jesus to become the Messiah, but, He dies on the cross. However, notice the words again. Now, some women of our company tell them they found the tomb empty with angels saying that He had been raised, but Him they did not see. Notice, it does not say members of our company, but specifically the women. Why? The answer is simple: “Who is going to believe the women?”

Indeed, The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that in a culture such as the Gospel times, the words of the women could easily be dismissed as idle talk. This is another ground breaking element of Jesus’ resurrection, He does not go to the experts. He goes to the people who will challenge you the most because they force you to investigate the truth.

What does this mean? We all have a calling to evangelize, and we all have a calling to listen to those who know Christ, no matter who they are.

Another of my favorite stories is the case of a presenter for one of those change the church groups. I did not attend the conference, but I was outside of the Hynes Convention Center when presenter for that group at a Catholic convention stepped out at the end of days event at the convention. She all dressed up looking professional  and the expert that she was, had the task of recruiting the clergy to seek to change the Church. It just so happened a mentally ill, homeless man approached me at the same time she did. He looked her polar opposite in his which contradicted her plastic appearance. He asked her who is Karol Wojytola? She responded with words I will never forget and almost burst out laughing after she said them, “I don’t know, but I am sure she is a woman of faith.” Karol Wojytola was Pope John Paul II. Her not knowing that revealed how Catholic this change the church group really is. Indeed, I since discovered it was a front group for one of our political parties.

Both stories reflect the truth about God’s work. If you want to learn about the gospel, do not necessarily assume you will learn it from the experts. In Jesus’ time, the experts were all those who said Jesus did not resurrect from the dead. It was that group of fisherman and the women who kept promulgating that story much to the chagrin of the experts.

What about you? If you listened to the experts on one of our local television stations you would do what makes them and the other experts happy—remain silent about your faith, that is because the experts kept telling you that Church teaching was that you are to do nothing more than pay, pray and obey. Leave preaching to the experts. Oh, please don’t.

We all, at our baptism, are missioned to become evangelizers for the Gospel, but we cannot be evangelizers if we have not encountered Christ. You and I have a call to know Christ intimately and personally and to proclaim our experience to others. We have an invitation to ask the Lord to show up in our lives as He did at Emmaus and then to spread the word.

Please don’t leave evangelizing up the experts, they were bad at it at Jesus’ time and they are bad at it today. It is the regular Joe and Jane who live are the best evangelizers and that is who you are.

One final story that is often told in theology schools. It is the wise teacher who informs his first year Theology students at the seminary and this is commonly taught that each students’ grandmothers already knows more theology than anyone will ever learn in a seminary or for that matter School of Theology in any Catholic University.

Please don’t leave evangelizing to the experts, the experts will teach you many things, but it is the regular everyday Catholic will introduce you to Jesus.

God Bless you,

Fr. Robert J Carr

You can follow him on twitter as @frbobcarr. Thoughts, comments on the homily? Let us know at Facebook