The Superior of the Holy Cross District Centre for West Africa, Rev. Fr. Robert Gilmour has called on Catholics to know their faith, live it and share it with others to deepen their relationship with Christ Jesus.
That, he said, was the only way Catholics could help to fulfil the recent call by the Church on Catholics to the New Evangelization for the transmission of our faith.
Rev. Fr. Gilmour was speaking at a two-day retreat organised by the Supreme Council and the Grand Court for Office Bearers of the Knights and Ladies of Marshall at the Holy Cross Seminary at Brafoyaw in Cape Coast in the Central Region.
Speaking on the theme of the retreat; “The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Catholic Faith”, Rev. Fr. Gilmour said the new evangelization was about Jesus Christ living out the faith that draws us closer to him, and about the relationship with Christ and others.
“The new effort to evangelize people is a call to believe in the message of the gospel, a call on every Catholic to go forth and proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth and a call to all Catholics to be evangelized and to go forth to evangelize,” he said.
The call to evangelization, he said, was therefore focused on repositioning the gospel to those whose roots of Christianity were deep but were faced with powerful sources of secularism, “those who are faced with calamities as well as those whose faith is look warm to enable them to renew their relationship with the Church and with Jesus Christ.”
On how Catholics could make the new evangelization part of their lives, Rev. Fr. Gilmour reminded the Knights and Ladies of Marshall and for that matter all Catholics, that it was not enough to know the scriptures and quote them.
“It will be a waste of time if we do not live it out. There is the need to implement the teachings of the faith through words, actions and thought. Making the new evangelization as part of our lives is by taking incremental steps to live the faith and share it,” he said.
That, he said, could be done through prayer, retreats, by reading the Bible and the Catholic Compendium and making notations and using the internet to explore more about the Catholic Church.
He said there was enough information on the internet for Catholic instruction and cited the marshallan website, www.marshallan.org where a lot of information abounded on the Catholic Church.
On living the faith, he said, attendance to mass, regular confession – “a sacrament to clean and heal wounds that we have caused ourselves and others and visit as often as you can the tabernacle and sit in front of it, contemplate, listen to and tell Jesus you love him.”
SHARING THE FAITH
Rev Fr Gilmour said Catholics could also share the faith by always keeping a Holy picture of the Lord in their houses and offices.
He said it also included discussing and sharing their journey in the Catholic faith with others.
Report by RL Sis Clare Banoeng-Yakubo, Grand Court Communications Officer.