Going to a Catholic youth event can be a surprising time. We meet new friends ,talk easily to people we have just met and take an interest in things we might think boring. Sometimes faith comes alive too. We might think, ‘I don’t want to let all this drop after I come home’. But we’re not sure how to follow it up.
The disciples who saw that Jesus had risen from the dead shared the same feelings. Everything had changed. So what could they do? Jesus told them. They were to proclaim the Good News.
Proclaiming the Gospel can suggest odd images. We imagine wild-eyed men preaching on street corners, spouting Scripture and warning that judgement is coming. Or we imagine people who talk constantly about the Church and church services, as if these were the only things that interest God. We are certainly not interested.
Nor should we be. These images are not about the Good News. Good news makes people come alive when they hear it. So proclaiming the Good News is about bringing people alive at every point of their lives. In this Explorations, we will look at what proclaiming the Gospel means, and at the ways that some young people go about it. That might suggest some ways that we can deepen and bring to life what we have discovered in our own faith journey.
What makes Good News?
In the gospels, Jesus does good news first. Only then does he speak about it. His good news touches every area of people’s lives. When people are hungry he feeds them. When they are blind, lame, deaf or tormented he cures them. If they are dissatisfied with their lives as fishermen, tax collectors, farmers, he invites them to come with him to discover a larger world. When they are isolated or excluded, like lepers or prostitutes, he welcomes them and brings them back into society.
Jesus is good news for the people whom he meets. When he meets their urgent needs they begin to ask larger questions about where their lives and their world are going. Jesus helps them to find this meaning in a God who loves them deeply in the painful and happy places of their lives. He lets them see a God who wants to bring them together with his people. He speaks to them of faith and invites them to live faithfully by coming together to be good news to their own world.
Today, too, spreading the Good News has as many faces as people have needs. At the most basic level we all need food, shelter, security and good health. When we have met these needs, we can attend to our deeper need to develop has human beings – to learn, to find work that has meaning and to nurture our gifts. We also need to develop socially by making friendships, working with other people and joining groups.
But even if these needs are met, we may still be dissatisfied. We look for deeper meaning in our lives. Some people are satisfied by material goods, by work and by good personal relationships. But most of us ask sometimes if there is not more to life than this. Christian faith offers the ‘more’ of a God who loves each of us enough to join us and even die for us.
Young people who spread the Good News
If we think as broadly about this about spreading the Good News, we can see that many large organisations as well as individuals do it. The Salvos, the Vinnies, the Red Cross, Caritas and Oxfam, for example, help meet people’s basic needs for food and shelter.
Large organisations and small groups rely heavily on volunteers. Many young people, for example, join the Young Vinnies, and visit needy people in their areas. Most of the volunteers on the city soup vans, too, are young people.
Of course Australia is a rich nation, and there are more very needy people overseas than here. Many Catholic schools and organisations run immersion programs to introduce young people to needy and resilient people in other cultures. The programs often change the lives of the participants. They may return later to work as youth ambassadors or with small missions.
Apart from food and shelter, people need education. In Australia many adults and children, particularly immigrants and refugees, need help outside of school. Young people are often the best tutors because they can come close to the children. Many schools encourage their students to help by joining tutoring and homework groups.
Some of the best and most effective organisations have been started by students. Some years ago, for example, a university student was asked to help three Sudanese children with their English. It worked well; demand grew from both children and adults; she involved her friends. After seven years the program is still coordinated by students. It has over three hundred tutors in many centres helping as many Sudanese. Although it is not faith-based, this group has been extraordinarily good news for the Sudanese community. The best news has been the affection, generosity and interest shown in the Sudanese students.
One of the saddest human experiences is to be disconnected and isolated. We all know people who are lonely and don’t fit in. They are in our classrooms and among our friends. Sometimes other people exclude them. Sometimes they lack the confidence or skills to relate easily to other people. If we show interest in them, make them feel at home and valued, we shall bring them very good news.
Young people, too, often have a special gift for helping isolated people connect with other people. You only need to watch to see how old people in a nursing home come alive when school students come to chat and to sing with them. Their young visitors bring back memories of their own youth and of their own children.
Many young people, too, visit juvenile justice centres. They also staff the camps for children run. For example, by the Edmund Rice communities, the Salesians and the Young Vinnies. For the children who take part it is tremendous good news to make contact with such kind and friendly people. It is equally good news for the volunteers.
When we come to know people in need, we want to help them improve their lives. Often, as in the case of asylum seekers here and of many groups overseas, we need to change unjust laws. Young people are often engaged through Amnesty, Caritas, the YCS and other groups, in trying to make the world a better place. This advocacy is also part of spreading the Good News.
Finally, we need to find meaning in our lives. We all know of lively and gifted people who seem to have everything to live for, but who have a hole at the centre of their lives. Neither work, nor partying, nor shopping, nor friendship can fill it. We can also be thrown off our course when we experience failure or loss. If we are there to listen to our friends when they are searching for meaning, our presence can be the beginning of good news.
It is great good news, too, when people help us reflect on the faith we have inherited and to explore how far it satisfies our own search for meaning. Open conversations where young people can listen and speak honestly about their own faith can be very helpful. Some young people join teams to help with retreats. Their encouragement is good news to the participants.
Be simple, adventurous, conversational
The examples we have given show that spreading the Good News is not complicated. It is very simple. We are not called to do spectacular things but to be attentive to people’s needs at home, in school, in our sporting clubs, in our workplaces. Even saints like Francis Xavier, who spent the last nine years of his life spreading the Good News in Asia, began as a university student working with other students.
But spreading the Good News is also adventurous. It always invites us to go to unfamiliar places, to meet unfamiliar people. That demands a little courage. When we take an interest in someone we do not know, we often fear that we will be rejected. The first time we join a soup van or visit people in their houses, too, we are usually nervous. But as we overcome our fears we become more adventurous. Many school students, for example, become part of programs that help them enter the world of people different from themselves. The experience can change their lives. Before going to university they may take a gap year teaching children in poor villages. They come to spread the good news in ways that they could not have imagined five years earlier.
Anna, for example, finished her teaching degree and took some time off for adventure. She flew to Singapore, cycled from there through Malaysia, and then up into Northern Thailand. She then turned off the main highway and found herself in a Burmese refugee camp. She decided to help out teaching there for a few months.
Four years later she is still there, and is now the coordinator of the program. Little adventures like this are the simple way in which a lifetime of spreading the Good News begins.
Spreading the Good News is also conversational. The reason why we go out of ourselves to people in any kind of need is that we are interested in them. We take them seriously as human beings and we want to know more about them. That naturally leads to conversation.
If we are bringing homeless people food, for example, it is often not the food that they appreciate most. Certainly food helps, but they may be more delighted to find that someone cares enough to visit and chat with them. The best news is that someone cares for them.
If we get to know them better we may find ourselves in conversation about the deeper questions of life. They may want to know more about the faith that encourages us to care for them. If we find the meaning of our lives in our faith we shall not be afraid to speak about it.
We do not have to meet all people’s needs before we speak about faith. Questions about where we find meaning, about faith, can come up in conversation at any time. We are not called on to preach. Some people only ask questions so that they can tell us the answers. It is as if their good news is a commodity they can sell in bulk.
Good conversation is always question-shaped. We begin by being interested in the people we are speaking to. We want to know more about their lives and interests. If the conversation goes deeper, we will surely learn much from them. They may become interested in us and in what makes us tick. We can then speak about our good news.
Christ’s good news is always the answer to the questions of a particular person whom God loves. We share the Good News by sharing God’s deeper interest in the people with whom we speak.
Conclusion
Spreading the Gospel in this way might sound easier than wearing religious dress and preaching on street corners. But if is not. If we are to take an interest in people in need and to enter into deep conversation with them, they must see that we have found good news. If we are to connect people with others, we must ourselves be deeply connected to people of faith who support us.
To share the Good News of Christ we need to be reflective members of a church community. There we can hear the Good News and give each other confidence in following Jesus.
We tell the Good News with our hearts, hands and feet, not simply with our mouths. It takes a good heart to keep on going out to others and living adventurous lives. And we need to find friendship and support when we do. This is the challenge of proclaiming the Gospel.
Questions
1. What has been the good news in your life? What good news would you like to hear now?
2. In what ways could you spread the Good News?
3. Do you ever talk about the meaning of life with your friends? When does this kind of conversation happen?
4. What things are you involved in that could be described as bringing the good news to people?
5. Why is Christian faith the best news?
This article was originally published in the Winter 2008 edition of Australian Catholics.