United in Prayer - Archdiocese of Baltimore

United in Prayer

Hebrews 13:12-15

Therefore, Jesus also suffered outside the gate, to consecrate the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp, bearing the reproach that he bore. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come. Through him [then] let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.

A Prayer for Seek the City to Come

God in heaven, we thank you for so many generations of diverse Catholic people who before us labored to build your Church in Baltimore. We praise you, for through their faithfulness, we received your gift of Faith, Sacraments, Community, and Service to our neighbor. We ask you for the grace we need to come together again, gathered by your Word and by your Son’s presence in the Eucharist, to respond anew to your call, here and now, to seek joyfully the city to come.

With the aid of Mary, Our Queen, renew our hearts. Give us courage to deepen our commitment to our Savior, to be witnesses of his Gospel to all the people of Baltimore, and to accept the challenge to dream boldly and recreate your Church in our City.

Guide us by your Holy Spirit, we pray in hope, to embrace together what you call us to embrace, and to let go where you call us to let go, for your glory and for the good of our Church, through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Inspiration From Our Holy Fathers

Pope Francis

“Thinking of the next Pope: a man who, through the contemplation of Jesus Christ and the adoration of Jesus Christ, may help the Church to go out from itself toward the existential peripheries, that may help it to be the fecund mother who lives ‘by the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.’” (H.H. handwritten notes from March 9, 2013 for Papal Conclave speech, no. 4)
“I want people to go out! I want the Church to go out to the street! I want us to defend ourselves against everything that is worldliness, that is installation, that is comfortableness, that is clericalism, that is being shut-in in ourselves. The parishes, the schools, the institutions, exist to go out! If they don’t go out, they become NGOs, and the Church can’t be an NGO.” (Address to Argentinian Youth at World Youth Day, Rio de Janeiro)

Aparecida

“The faithful … by virtue of their baptism, they are called to be disciples and missionaries of Jesus Christ.” (no.10)
“In our pastoral experience, often sincere people who leave our church do not do so because of what ‘non-Catholic’ groups believe, but fundamentally for what they live; not for doctrinal but for vivential reasons; not for strictly dogmatic, but for pastoral reasons; not due to theological problems, but to methodological problems of our Church.” (no. 225)

Evangelii Gaudium

“When the Church summons Christians to take up the task of evangelization, she is simply pointing to the source of authentic personal fulfillment. For here we discover a profound law of reality: that life is attained and matures in the measure that it is offered up in order to give life to others. This is certainly what mission means.” (EG. no. 10)
“God’s word is unpredictable in its power. The Gospel speaks of a seed which, once sown, grows by itself, even as the farmer sleeps (Mk 4:26-29). The Church has to accept this unruly freedom of the word, which accomplishes what it wills in ways that surpass our calculations and ways of thinking.” (EG, no. 22)
“Evangelization takes place in obedience to the missionary mandate of Jesus: ‘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 have commanded you’. (Mt 28:19-20). In these verses we see how the risen Christ sent his followers to preach the Gospel in every time and place, so that faith in him might spread to every corner of the earth.” (EG, no. 30)
“Lay people are, put simply, the vast majority of the people of God. The minority – ordained ministers – are at their service. There has been a growing awareness of the identity and mission of the laity in the Church. We can count on many lay persons, although still not nearly enough, who have a deeply-rooted sense of community and great fidelity to the tasks of charity, catechesis and the celebration of the faith. At the same time, a clear awareness of this responsibility of the laity, grounded in their baptism and confirmation, does not appear in the same way in all places. In some cases, it is because lay persons have not been given the formation needed to take on important responsibilities. In others, it is because in their particular churches, room has not been made for them to speak and to act, due to an excessive clericalism which keeps them away from decision-making. Even if many are now involved in the lay ministries, this involvement is not reflected in a greater penetration of Christian values in the social, political and economic sectors. It often remains tied to tasks within the Church, without a real commitment to applying the Gospel to the transformation of society. The formation of the laity and the evangelization of professional and intellectual life represent a significant pastoral challenge.” (EG, no. 102)
“All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients. The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization; indeed, anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love. Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus: we no longer say that we are “disciples” and “missionaries,” but rather that we are always “missionary disciples.” (EG, no. 120)

Pope Benedict XVI

Lineamenta

“Being Christian and ‘being Church’ means being missionary; one is or is not. Loving one’s faith implies bearing witness to it, bringing it to others and allowing others to participate in it.” (L, no. 10)
“People are able to evangelize only when they have been evangelized and allow themselves to be evangelized, that is, renewed spiritually through a personal encounter and lived communion with Jesus Christ.” (L, no.22)

Pope St. John Paul II

Redemptoris Missio

“I sense the moment has come to commit all of the Church’s energies to a new evangelization and to the missions ad gentes [to the nations]. No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples.” (RM, no. 3)
“Our own time, with humanity on the move and in continual search, demands a resurgence of the Church’s missionary activity. The horizons and possibilities for mission are growing ever wider, and we Christians are called to an apostolic courage based upon trust in the Spirit. He is the principal agent of mission!” (RM, no. 30)
“The evangelical witness which the world finds most appealing is that of concern for people, and of charity toward the poor, the weak and those who suffer. The complete generosity underlying this attitude and these actions stands in marked contrast to human selfishness. It raises precise questions which lead to God and to the Gospel. A commitment to peace, justice, human rights and human promotion is also a witness to the Gospel when it is a sign of concern for persons and is directed toward integral human development.” (RM, no. 40)

Novo millennio ineunte

“This passion will not fail to stir in the Church a new sense of mission which cannot be left to a group of ‘specialists’ but must involve the responsibility of all the members of the people of God. Those who have come into genuine contact with Christ cannot keep him for themselves, they must proclaim him.” (NMI, no. 40)

Pope St. Paul VI

Evangelii Nuntiandi

“It has been possible to define evangelization in the terms of proclaiming Christ to those who do not know Him, of preaching of catechesis, of conferring Baptism and the other Sacraments” (EN, no. 17)
“…the Good News proclaimed by the witness of life, sooner or later has to be proclaimed by the word of life.” (EN, no. 22)
“There is no true evangelization if the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God are not proclaimed.” (EN, no. 22)
“…evangelization will also always contain – as the foundation, center, 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.” (EN, no. 22)
“But evangelization would not be complete if it did not take account of the unceasing interplay of the Gospel and of man’s concrete life, both personal and social. This is why evangelization involves an explicit message, adapted to the different situations constantly being realized, about the rights and duties of every human being, about family life without which personal growth and development is hardly possible, [60] about life in society, about international life, peace, justice and development- a message especially energetic today about liberation.” (EN, no. 29)

Pope St. John XXIII

Princeps Pastorum

“Anyone who deems himself a Christian must know that he is bound by his conscience to the basic, imperative duty of bearing witness to the truth in which he believes and to the grace which has transformed his soul.”

REFLECTIONS

FAQ

Want to Get Involved?

Check out Seek the City to Come events near you.

EVENTS CALENDAR