Evangelization - Part 3 (short)

Not that I want to beat a dead horse, but I was able to sneak into a church and read the Novus Ordo readings for today.  Here is snippet from the first reading from Acts 2:14,22-33:

"On the day of Pentecost Peter stood up with the Eleven and addressed the crowd in a loud voice: ‘Men of Israel, listen to what I am going to say: Jesus the Nazarene was a man commended to you by God by the miracles and portents and signs that God worked through him when he was among you, as you all know. This man, who was put into your power by the deliberate intention and foreknowledge of God, you took and had crucified by men outside the Law. You killed him, but God raised him to life, freeing him from the pangs of Hades; for it was impossible for him to be held in its power since, as David says of him:

I saw the Lord before me always,

for with him at my right hand nothing can shake me.
So my heart was glad
and my tongue cried out with joy;
my body, too, will rest in the hope
that you will not abandon my soul to Hades
nor allow your holy one to experience corruption.
You have made known the way of life to me,
you will fill me with gladness through your presence.

 ‘Brothers, no one can deny that the patriarch David himself is dead and buried: his tomb is still with us. But since he was a prophet, and knew that God had sworn him an oath to make one of his descendants succeed him on the throne, what he foresaw and spoke about was the resurrection of the Christ: he is the one who was not abandoned to Hades, and whose body did not experience corruption. God raised this man Jesus to life, and all of us are witnesses to that. Now raised to the heights by God’s right hand, he has received from the Father the Holy Spirit, who was promised, and what you see and hear is the outpouring of that Spirit.’

Please take the time to read it if you haven't already today. 

Having no knowledge that this was the reading for the NO Mass today, I was pleasantly surprised that it touched on some of the various things that I have been writing about here.  It also gave further weight to that opinion I expressed yesterday on the fullness and centrality of evangelization for the Church. 

This passage also expressed the centrality of the Holy Spirit in the cause and activity of evangelization.  That is why, when we hesitate and pause because we might not know what to say, we must rely and lean upon the Holy Spirit for guidance to say what the person or group in front of us needs to hear in order to be brought to the fullness of understanding of Christ.  Prayer to the Holy Spirit for guidance and then the openness of heart to receive that guidance is the fuel that drives the Church. 

Always seek the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Here are a few solid prayers to the Holy Spirit and there are many more if you take the time to search.

Prayers to the Holy Spirit

This passage also happens to cast the Antipope Bergoglio in more dramatic light as someone who either doesn't have a firm understanding of the New Testament and the Divine mission of the Church or is actively teaching against it. 

I'll let you be the judge for yourself.  I have already made up my mind. 

God Bless.