[00:00:00] Jim Jansen: Hey everybody. Welcome to the Equip Cast, a weekly podcast for the Archdiocese of Omaha. I'm your host, Jim Jansen. Now let's dive into some encouragement and inspiration to equip you to live your faith and to be fruitful in your mission. Let's go.

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Equip Cast Coaches Quarter, where I break down important topics to equip you and your team for mission in your family, in your church, and in your ministry. So my name is Jim Jansen, and today I'm gonna give you a vision for how to find real hope for your mission. So I'll start off with a, uh, confession here.

I, I actually don't typically like. The themed years and days, right? Like, you know, it's like National Flower Growers Day. And honestly, this is the embarrassing part, like [00:01:00] even in the church, right? Like the year of mercy, the year of faith. I mean, I'm not like against them, but they, they rarely capture my imagination.

I'm usually not inspired by them. And I know this sounds bad, it's kind of scrooge. It's just they seem artificial. There's been something different for me about the Jubilee of Hope. It feels different and I think it's just as simple as the fact that I can see the need and I can feel the need personally for hope.

I mean, the reality here in the church, in the Western Hemisphere, uh, particularly the English Speak speaking church, is that most of our ministries and our institutions are struggling. I mean, we've been experiencing decades of decline. I mean, probably your own parish. And if you don't have the, the blessing of immigration or a booming real estate market, chances are your massing, your mass attendance and your giving and all the sacramental numbers have been dramatically [00:02:00] decreasing vocations, right?

Uh, all the, all the stuff we, we know these things. These are familiar. And although there are some bright spots in Hispanic ministry and in ecclesial movements and the great things happening on college campuses. The sad thing is those things are often dismissed and resisted by the rest of the church that are desperately in need of the invigorating life that they found.

So, I don't know about you, but I feel the need for hope, right? I feel the need for a Jubilee of hope. Uh, a Jubilee is like the great release. It's a great reset, and, and I want that. I need that. So I've been reflecting on hope, and again, here's. The embarrassing thing, I could probably describe to you what hope does, right.

It it enables us to persevere. You know, it's, it, it helps connect, you know, faith and love. But I was a little bit at a loss to define exactly what hope is. So, yeah, I know [00:03:00] what it does and I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like to lack it. I know what it feels like to have it, but what? What is it?

What is the thing of hope? So I turned to the catechism catechism number 20 92 0 9 0. It says, hope is expectation. It's expectation of blessing and forgiveness, and. Wait for it. It's fear. It is fear of offending God's love. It's fear of punishment, and it is this expectation and this fear that allows us to persevere.

But it's not the perseverance itself, it's expectation and fear. So that's what I wanna talk about. How do you nurture hope or in, in this case, right, the, the two kind of key elements of what hope is. How do you nurture expectation? Well, I would recommend first looking at the stories of the lives of the Saints, [00:04:00] right?

Other, other parishes where God has met their desire for renewal with abundance of grace. So there's a great story that Sherry Waddell shares. In her book, uh, fruitful Discipleship, it's the sequel to forming Intentional Disciples, and she just tells story after story of renewal times when I, I love like right kind of turn of the century, France, where everything was headed the wrong way, mass attendance, vocations, and all of a sudden God sparked this great renewal in the church there quite.

To the surprise of both the faithful Catholics and the uh, watching secular world. God did something beautiful there. We should marinate in these stories, right? Stories of God's renewal because. Both because of God's grace and and the expectation of his coming to our aid, but also just at a natural level, the culture change that [00:05:00] you seek, the transformation that you're looking for, it isn't as far away as you think.

One of the things that, just a very natural level that I found that I found inspiring is that cultures tend to tip at 15%. The author, Malcolm Malcolm Gladwell talks about it in his book, the Tipping Point, and then his, uh, recent sequel, the Revenge of the Tipping Point, that no matter how you slice it, cultures tend to tip at 15%.

If 15% of the population is infected with a disease or an idea or right, something similar, it tends to push the rest of the population in that direction. So that's the good news. You don't have to change every single mind and heart in your parish or in your parish boundaries. If you can just get 15% of people rediscovering the core message of the gospel, rediscovering the, the, uh, the call to mission, then the [00:06:00] whole culture begins to to follow.

But there's another element of hope, right? That's that's expectation. We look at the lives of the saints, we look at stories of God renewing his people and his parishes and his church, and we recognize that, you know that to begin to create a culture that is now pointed in the right direction. It's not as far as we think.

We're really only shooting for 15%, which you know, is a little bit easier as we continue to shrink and get smaller. There's another element and that's fear. Like we nurture hope. By nurturing a holy fear of offending God's love and punishment. I think salvation history is great for this. When, when we look at salvation history again and again, we see the lesson of God's people that when they've experienced blessing from God.

They've gotten comfortable and self-referential. It happened again and again in the time of the judges when they'd got just a little bit of relief. You know, in the book of judges, they get just a little bit of relief from the persecution that they're [00:07:00] experiencing from the, uh, pagan nations that, that remain in the promised land.

Then they rejoice for a little while and then they turn back in on themselves and they don't complete the mission that God has gi given them. God raises up another judge. Get relief and then they turn back in on themselves again and again and again. We see the prosperous northern kingdom right turn in on itself.

Turn again to pagan gods. Trust. It's a good lesson, right? When we have turned in on ourselves, when our budgets and our facilities and our attitude and attention is more on taking care of ourselves, right? Our own comfort, our own children, our own people, and it's not about the mission to proclaim the gospel to souls within our mission field, right?

Think neighborhood, think fallen away friends and family. Then we've fallen into the same pattern of salvation history. It shouldn't surprise us. We should expect this and we should have a, a, a vigilance and a holy fear to avoid it. [00:08:00] Right? Fear of the Lord is a supernatural gift. It's nurtured by repentance.

Now, I get it. If you're listening to this, you're like, uh, I am craving renewal from my parish and my family, and the particular ministry that I help lead and serve for my personal apostolate. I wanna see God move. That's why I'm listening. I'm one of the. I know. I mean, chances are you're working your tail off to try and foster that renewal and the idea of repenting might seem odd or out of place to you since you've been trying so hard.

In fact, I'll go farther to say you might feel all alone, and I bet that feeling of being all alone has led you to frustration and judgment of the other people who just don't seem to get it. They don't seem to be giving their all like you've been. Well, that judgment sounds like it's something worth repenting from 'cause it's not pleasing to God [00:09:00] and it's not effective in winning others to the cause.

He wants you to remember that you are not alone, right? He wants you to call on him for help. The Holy Spirit is waiting to come to your aid, but it's very easy for us when we feel the heaviness of the burden to think that we're all alone and to forget to call on him for help. He also has a role in mind for everyone, right?

But he doesn't react well when we kind of judge and condemn his children. He wants our joy and our conviction to attract. It's far more effective than our silent judgment because let's be honest, people can feel it. Even if you try and hide it, people can feel how you really think about them. And when there's silent judgment in our heart, even if we don't say a word, it ends up coming out.

So there's a place for corporate repentance, right? Even though you're working hard, even though you're giving your all to mission, there's a place for you. In repentance, even if it's [00:10:00] not your fault. Even if you've been given your best, think about Jesus. Jesus wasn't guilty, but he repented with us. That's what the baptism and the Jordan is all about.

He led us in repentance by his example. 'cause he knew we couldn't do it all on our own, and he knew we needed the example of someone who was faithful and righteous, who still embraced repentance. To me. This is what. This is the pastoral conversion that Pope Francis had spoken so eloquently about, that we need to learn again to see our neighbors.

We need to learn again, right? To go out and to the spiritually poor, to the materially poor, that we need to move from a self-referential way. Of being to a more mission-oriented way of being. We need to recognize that the Lord is literally dying to pour the spirit out upon us and send us out. And that brings us right to the, to the Great commission.

My own reflections lately have been really nurtured by the [00:11:00] promise that Jesus gives to be with us. Always. Now, for sure He is with us, always in the scriptures, in the Eucharist. In the pouring out of the spirit in the community, on and on and on. He, he's present to us in hiding in the poor. He's present to us a thousand different ways, but his specific promise, and I will be with you always until the end of the age.

It comes in the context of the mission to make disciples just listen again to the great commission. When the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain, to which Jesus had ordered them. And when they saw him, they worshiped, but some doubted. Then Jesus approached and said to them, all power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. Now wait for it. That's a big [00:12:00] job. And here it comes, he says, and behold, I am with you always until the end of the age. That promise comes exactly in the midst of our going out of our repentance, of our conversion, our commitment to mission.

That's where Jesus promises to be with us till the end of the age. Lemme pray for us. Father, we thank you and we praise you for your goodness. You're here, you supply everything that we need. We are not alone. You have given us companions. Lord, we ask that you would nurture in us a holy fear, a fear of offending you, of neglecting, uh, the, the little ones, the spiritually and the materially poor all around us.

And Father, we ask that you would grant us again, a holy expectation, an expectation of renewal. Of life, of fruit, of [00:13:00] peace and joy. Father, come to our aid. Send your spirit to renew our hearts and our minds to renew in us. Again, the gift of hope in this jubilee year of hope. Amen. Amen. Alright, what are your thoughts? You can respond back in the chat at Equip dot archomaha dot org. Again, that's Equip dot archomaha.org. Thanks everybody. Thanks for listening to the EquipCast. We hope this episode has inspired you to live your faith and equip you to be fruitful in your mission. Stay connected with us by going to equip dot arch omaha.org.

God bless and see you next time.