20260828 EVANGELISATION AND CATECHESIS THROUGH WORD AND SACRAMENTS
28 August 2026, Friday, 21st Week in Ordinary Time
First reading |
1 Corinthians 1:17-25 |
We preach a crucified Christ, the power and wisdom of God
Christ did not send me to baptise, but to preach the Good News, and not to preach that in the terms of philosophy in which the crucifixion of Christ cannot be expressed. The language of the cross may be illogical to those who are not on the way to salvation, but those of us who are on the way see it as God’s power to save. As scripture says: I shall destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing all the learning of the learned. Where are the philosophers now? Where are the scribes? Where are any of our thinkers today? Do you see now how God has shown up the foolishness of human wisdom? If it was God’s wisdom that human wisdom should not know God, it was because God wanted to save those who have faith through the foolishness of the message that we preach. And so, while the Jews demand miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom, here are we preaching a crucified Christ; to the Jews an obstacle that they cannot get over, to the pagans madness, but to those who have been called, whether they are Jews or Greeks, a Christ who is the power and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
Responsorial Psalm |
Psalm 32(33):1-2,4-5,10-11 |
The Lord fills the earth with his love.
Ring out your joy to the Lord, O you just;
for praise is fitting for loyal hearts.
Give thanks to the Lord upon the harp,
with a ten-stringed lute sing him songs.
The Lord fills the earth with his love.
For the word of the Lord is faithful
and all his works to be trusted.
The Lord loves justice and right
and fills the earth with his love.
The Lord fills the earth with his love.
He frustrates the designs of the nations,
he defeats the plans of the peoples.
His own designs shall stand for ever,
the plans of his heart from age to age.
The Lord fills the earth with his love.
Gospel Acclamation | cf.Ps129:5 |
Alleluia, alleluia!
My soul is waiting for the Lord,
I count on his word.
Alleluia!
Gospel | Matthew 25:1-13 |
The wise and foolish virgins
Jesus told this parable to his disciples: ‘The kingdom of heaven will be like this: Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were sensible: the foolish ones did take their lamps, but they brought no oil, whereas the sensible ones took flasks of oil as well as their lamps. The bridegroom was late, and they all grew drowsy and fell asleep. But at midnight there was a cry, “The bridegroom is here! Go out and meet him.” At this, all those bridesmaids woke up and trimmed their lamps, and the foolish ones said to the sensible ones, “Give us some of your oil: our lamps are going out.” But they replied, “There may not be enough for us and for you; you had better go to those who sell it and buy some for yourselves.” They had gone off to buy it when the bridegroom arrived. Those who were ready went in with him to the wedding hall and the door was closed. The other bridesmaids arrived later. “Lord, Lord,” they said “open the door for us.” But he replied, “I tell you solemnly, I do not know you.” So stay awake, because you do not know either the day or the hour.’
EVANGELISATION AND CATECHESIS THROUGH WORD AND SACRAMENTS
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [1 Cor 1:17-25; Ps 33:1-2,4-5,10-11; Mt 25:1-13]
In the first reading, St. Paul said, “Christ did not send me to baptise, but to preach the Good News.” St. Paul made it clear that his primary calling was to proclaim the Gospel, as is true also for the other apostles. After all, what does it mean to be an apostle of Christ if not to be an ambassador of our Lord by announcing the Good News? This also explains why the primary task of a bishop is to teach before ministering and administering. He, too, like St. Paul, is called to be a teacher of the faith and a herald of the Gospel. This is not to belittle the importance of the Sacraments or of the pastoral care of the people of God. Indeed, it is equally true that the command given to the apostles was to go “and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” (Mt 28:19f)
However, baptism and pastoral care are the consequences of faith in the Gospel. Baptism and the other Sacraments require faith, and that presupposes preaching. St. Paul said, “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.” (Rom 10:17) Therefore, priority is given to the preaching of the Gospel, which was what St. Paul did. He left to others the work of baptism and pastoral care. This explains why St. Paul did not stay for long in a place where he preached. His intention was to begin a community of faith and then appoint pastors after him to continue to provide the people with pastoral care and ongoing formation in the faith. He stated his ambition in no uncertain terms: “I make it my ambition to proclaim the good news, not where Christ has already been named, so that I do not build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, ‘Those who have never been told of him shall see, and those who have never heard of him shall understand.'” (Rom 15:20f)
But lest we misunderstand that there is an opposition between evangelisation and sacramentalisation, as some theologians suggest, we must make it clear that in Christian catechesis, evangelisation and sacramentalisation are mutually interdependent. In other words, the Word and the Sacraments complete the work of evangelisation. For what is the meaning of evangelisation, if not to encounter the Good News not just in words, but in person? The goal of evangelisation is to bring every person into a deep encounter with our Lord Jesus Christ through the hearing of the Gospel and through the reception of the Sacraments. We remember what Pope Benedict wrote in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, that “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”
However, neither can do without the other. Preaching can help people to receive the Sacraments with better disposition. Teaching can help people to understand the Sacraments better so that they will not treat the Sacraments as magical rituals in a superstitious manner. Vice versa, with the reception of the Sacraments such as baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, and reconciliation, they receive the graces that come from the Sacraments to help them understand the love and mercy of God better, and how they are to live out their Christian life concretely. So, the proper reception of the Sacraments helps them to appreciate the Word of God better, and with a greater understanding of the Word of God, they arrive at a deeper appreciation of the graces that the Sacraments can bring if they celebrate them with devotion, faith, and understanding. For this reason, we must avoid falling into mere routine in the administration of the Sacraments without providing a solid catechesis for the recipients and leading them to a personal relationship with the Lord. Pope Paul VI wrote, “The role of evangelisation is precisely to educate people in the faith in such a way as to lead each individual Christian to live the sacraments as true sacraments of faith–and not to receive them passively or reluctantly.” (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 47) Consequently, we must once again remind ourselves “that evangelisation does not consist only of the preaching and teaching of a doctrine. For evangelisation must touch life: the natural life to which it gives a new meaning.” (Ibid., no. 47)
Within this context, we can appreciate what St. Paul says about the preaching of the Gospel. He made it clear that the proclamation of the Gospel is not based on reasoning and intellectual discourse or arguments as to what is right or wrong. He said, “Christ did not send me to preach the Good News in the terms of philosophy in which the crucifixion of Christ cannot be expressed. The language of the cross may be illogical to those who are not on the way to salvation, but those of us who are on the way see it as God’s power to save.” The Gospel, as he said, is God’s wisdom. “Do you see now how God has shown up the foolishness of human wisdom? And so, while the Jews demanded miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom, here are we preaching a crucified Christ; to the Jews an obstacle that they cannot get over, to the pagans madness, but to those who have been called, whether they are Jews or Greeks, a Christ who is the power and the wisdom of God.”
Indeed, the Christian Gospel, although not against reason, transcends reason. It requires faith in Him, especially in God’s wisdom revealed through the cross and the resurrection. “Evangelisation will also always contain–as the foundation, centre, and at the same time, summit of its dynamism–a clear proclamation that, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, who died and rose from the dead, salvation is offered to all men, as a gift of God’s grace and mercy.” (Ibid., no. 27) Pope Paul VI also said, “to evangelise is first of all to bear witness, in a simple and direct way, to God revealed by Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit; to bear witness that in His Son God has loved the world–that in His Incarnate Word He has given being to all things and has called men to eternal life.” (Ibid., no. 26) This is the divine wisdom of God which we are all called to share in: His plan of salvation for us through Christ in the Holy Spirit.
Indeed, the heart of Christian preaching is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. To help people encounter the Lord, we need to help them contemplate the Crucified Christ. Until and unless they have entered into the mystery of God’s redemption on the cross, they will never understand or appreciate the love of God. St. John wrote, “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 Jn 4:9f) The message of Christ’s cross contains a truth that contradicts human wisdom: that God should die by surrendering Himself into the hands of violent men. This is why real conversion is not when someone who studies catechism or theology arrives at a conclusion that our faith is reasonable among all others and therefore good to accept. Rather, conversion comes only when we have interiorized within ourselves the mercy and love of God in the Crucified Christ. This is the heart of the Christian Faith.
Of course, the corollary of accepting the cross as the revelation of God’s love in Christ is the resurrection, which testifies to the truth of Jesus’ claim about Himself and the endorsement of our heavenly Father on all that Jesus said and did. The raising of a condemned criminal is God’s way of revealing to us His divine wisdom. It truly shows, as St. Paul wrote, “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” When St. Augustine reflected on Romans 8:32, “He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?”, he exclaimed: “How great was your love for us, good Father, for you did not even spare your own Son, but gave him up to save us sinners! How great was your love for us!” (Confessions X, 43)
So let us conduct ourselves not like the foolish bridesmaids who depended only on the oil in their lamps and did not carry extra oil with them to welcome the Bridegroom. The Christian life is a long journey. We cannot depend simply on the initial graces we receive at our baptism, ordination, or the Sacrament of Matrimony. We need to bring extra oil with us lest we find ourselves drowsy and sleepy while waiting for the Lord to come. Keeping the light burning means continuously sustaining, strengthening, and nurturing our personal relationship with the Lord through personal prayer, contemplation, and study.
Best Practices for Using the Daily Scripture Reflections
- Encounter God through the spirit of prayer and the scripture by reflecting and praying the Word of God daily. The purpose is to bring you to prayer and to a deeper union with the Lord on the level of the heart.
- Daily reflections when archived will lead many to accumulate all the reflections of the week and pray in one sitting. This will compromise your capacity to enter deeply into the Word of God, as the tendency is to read for knowledge rather than a prayerful reading of the Word for the purpose of developing a personal and affective relationship with the Lord.
- It is more important to pray deeply, not read widely. The current reflections of the day would be more than sufficient for anyone who wants to pray deeply and be led into an intimacy with the Lord.
Note: You may share this reflection with someone. However, please note that reflections are not archived online nor will they be available via email request.
Written by His Eminence, Cardinal William SC Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights Reserved.
