In recent years, I have been asked countless times: “What is the secret to Southwark’s growth?” The question is understandable. This year the diocese will receive 590 adults into the Church, a significant increase on last year’s decade high of 450. Yet my response tends to disappoint, because it does not reveal a secret programme or a clever technique. The truth is that we are simply following the pattern of apostolic times and walking the tried and tested path of mission. We are inviting people to encounter the Lord Jesus.
It is the Lord Jesus who draws us closer and calls us to him. It is the quiet and powerful action of the Holy Spirit that stirs hearts and leads people to His Church. Our mission in the Catholic Church is to cooperate with that grace and help people to encounter Christ, either for the first time or more deeply.
We know from so many examples in Scripture how an encounter with the Lord Jesus transforms people’s lives. He always offers a path to follow, a path to repentance and a path to salvation.
An encounter with Our Lord is always transformative, even if people do not accept his teaching or his call. The rich young man walked away (cf Mark 10:17-22). Many of the disciples turned away when Jesus said that his “flesh is true food” and that his “blood is true drink” (cf John 6:55-66). Even his own people in Nazareth rejected his teaching and drove him away (cf Luke 4:16-30).
In each of these scenes, Christ is not the one who rejects. Christ is not the one who changes course. He always gives those he encounters a choice. He will always leave you free to follow him, and free to walk away.
That is the astonishing thing. When God calls us through his Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the call is never revoked. We may run from it and we may not always honour it, but the Lord will never take back his call.
So how do we encourage people to encounter the Lord, to hear his call for the first time, to respond to it more deeply, or to return when they have walked away?
Invitation. It all starts with an invitation. An invitation to conversion to Christ, an invitation to know him, his truth and his friendship. That is why there is a very clear expectation in our Archdiocese that we should never tire of preaching Christ, and that we should be unafraid to speak of Jesus and his saving Gospel.
We nurture this expectation through a programme called Some Definite Service, which is our approach to parish growth in evangelisation, catechesis and formation. It is built on local people and prayer, but its primary purpose is to ensure that whenever someone encounters the Church in our Archdiocese, they encounter a community that is inviting and proud to proclaim Jesus as its Saviour.
You can never underestimate the difference that empowering people to invite others to know the Lord will make. There is a beautiful example of this from our Rite of Election this year.
A woman named Emma, from the parish of Our Lady Help of Christians in Blackheath, is being baptised at Easter. Her story, like so many others, began with a simple invitation. As an artist, she was asked by a Catholic friend to draw a picture of the Lord Jesus.
This invitation sparked Emma’s curiosity and led her to seek to know more about Jesus and about His Church. She began to do some research and to learn more about the faith through podcasts such as The Bible in a Year, hosted by Fr Mike Schmitz. But it was through Mass and Eucharistic adoration that her life changed forever. It was in encountering the Eucharistic Lord that she felt “peace” and said that “it’s almost like Christ brings a wholeness that you’ve been searching for your whole life”.
This is a beautiful story because it shows what lies at the very heart of what we mean when we say that we want our parishes to be communities of evangelising and missionary disciples. This is how souls are won for Christ: by leading people to him, so that they may come to know him for themselves.
Yet we know that following the Lord is not always easy. But he never said it would be. That is why our parishes also prioritise nourishing that encounter with the Lord through a deep and meaningful life of prayer.
The life of a Christian must be ecclesial and sacramental. It is experienced through belonging, sustained by prayer and brought to its summit in the Holy Eucharist.
That is why I place such strong emphasis on encouraging people to make Eucharistic adoration a cornerstone of their prayer life. It is why I encourage people to pray the rosary regularly. It is by meditating on the life, death and resurrection of the Lord that you can come to know him intimately. It is by encountering his living presence in the Eucharist that you will learn to love the Lord Jesus more deeply and see him more clearly.
The life of a Christian is also sustained by robust and thorough formation. That is why we have a project called Ambassadors for Christ, which draws on Sacred Scripture, the Church Fathers and the Church’s teaching to help people know their faith and speak confidently of the Lord Jesus and his saving work.
Preaching Christ purposefully and clearly, so that people truly understand the faith of the Church handed down from the apostles, is how the whole Church becomes more clearly missionary and more faithful to Christ.
Ensuring that people remain in the Church means no gimmicks and no watering down of the faith, but instead preaching with a purposeful Christocentric focus, so that people may know the Gospel of Christ and know his love.
At the Rite of Election, when I address the catechumens and candidates, I often recall how many years it has been since I became a Catholic. This year marks 46 years, and look what has happened to me.
Now, I cannot promise that all will become an Archbishop, but the promise I can make is that the journey they are now on is eternal. Jesus will never let them go, he will never turn them away and he will never stop calling them.
Our duty is to trust the Lord and to ensure that our parishes remain communities that nourish souls, so that people do not walk away, do not stop praying and do not stop seeking to love the Lord Jesus and walk in his ways.
