Share the Good News: Homily for Thursday, November 30, 2023

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Today is the Feast of Saint Andrew. He meets Jesus, places his faith in Jesus as the Messiah, and immediately tells his brother Simon Peter. It is a concrete example of being sent by the Holy Spirit to share the Good News.

Share the Good News

Andrew was the first to be called by Jesus. Imagine if Andrew had said, well there, good, I’m done. I don’t have any more responsibilities in the faith. I’ve been called by Jesus and I’ve accepted his call.

But we know he didn’t do that. He shared his faith. He went to his brother. He said, we have found the Messiah. This, ironically, is always close to the end of the year. Sometimes it actually winds up in the season of Advent.

But today we celebrate Andrew and Andrew in many ways is the patron saint for evangelization. Because Andrew is willing to share his belief in Jesus. I would say this makes Andrew really kind of a patron saint for the time in which we find ourselves.

Andrew’s influence was enough that when James and John were seen, they too were part of the new band of disciples. And we know from other instances of the gospel that there were the women who followed Jesus.

We know the women were faithful to Jesus all the way to the end of the cross. Many of the only ones, except for John, who’s called in today’s gospel, all the rest at the foot of the cross were women, faithful, believing in Jesus.

I could also say that today is a very Dominican feast because the founding of the Dominican Order by Saint Dominic really had two foundational components. The first was the first group of Dominicans that Dominic founded, the nuns, the monasteries. There’s really a distinction in Dominican life between the nuns who lived in a monastery, like our nuns, for instance, in this province in Farmington Hills, Michigan, or in Girard, Illinois.

Later, there also became Dominican sisters who gave their lives here, for example, by teaching in our school. Dominic began with the nuns because he believed that his endeavor would in no way be successful if it didn’t start with prayer. Then was the second component, sharing the good news that Jesus was the Messiah with a people whose lives were very difficult, very hard, and people who had heard little or nothing about Jesus at all.

And it’s this letter from St. Paul to the Romans that kind of forms the basis of what we understand, that primarily each of us is called to share the good news, not because we will it, not because we desire it, but because God sends us. When we are baptized, we are given a profound mission to share the good news.

And so we do what we do. We witness to this faith because we respond to the grace of God who then in turn sends us, the Holy Spirit sends us forth to proclaim this good news. In many respects, for a long time, we didn’t have to worry much about it. We didn’t have to worry really about sharing the good news because people just came.

The height of the Catholic Church in many respects in this country was in the 50s. Schools were packed, churches were big, families were large, everything. We even had a president in the White House for the first time in 1960 who was Catholic.

Will we regain the common gift that Jesus gives to each one of us by sending us forth to share the good news? If we believe that we have a gospel message that has so changed our lives that it has given us fulfillment and happiness and grace, then why would we want not to share this great gift with others whose lives are broken in a world that is difficult, in a world that suffers?

Today, recognize that each one of us have been called and sent by the Holy Spirit and let us resolve with at least one other person today that we will share the good news of our salvation.

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