And Christ told them this parable:

What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.’

Dear Friends in Christ,

Our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, has appealed to the Universal Church, to make this year of Jubilee a “new springtime for evangelization.” All of us recognize the need that we bear in our own soul, to ceaselessly seek out the mercy of God and the inspiration of His Holy Spirit, as we meet and face the challenges that come upon us throughout life. And we pray that the Father in Heaven will make of our own hearts, temples for a renewed and re-invigorated faith during this Holy Year.

At the same time, almost every one of us knows someone, who has strayed from the way of the Catholic Faith, who has abandoned the practice of the Sacraments, and who suffers the narrowed flow of grace that must result when a child of the Church wanders from the shelter which Baptism and Confirmation have made his true home.

It is our aim, during this year, to devote as much of our energies as possible to finding, encouraging, and restoring to the practice of the Faith, those people whom we know to have wandered, and who are perhaps awaiting our invitation to come back home, to grow and rejoice once more in the fellowship of their Church, and to take comfort and strength from those holy Sacraments which only the Church has to offer.

Christ Himself invites and urges us to this effort, and teaches us that in Heaven, there will be greater rejoicing over the one who was lost and brought back, than over the many who never strayed. Faithful to His teaching, the Archdiocese of Atlanta will be supporting throughout this year and into the next, a project entitled Come To Me, specifically engendered to assist men and women of good will to reach out to those who have become distant, and to make a return to the Catholic Faith welcome and inviting to those who may harbor the desire to “come home.”

The doorway events for this year of evangelization will be two. The first will take place at the Cathedral of Christ the King on the Feast of Corpus Christi, June 25th — an opening of the door into this year of renewed evangelization to those who have fallen away from the Faith. And the second will be a grand assembly at the Georgia International Convention Center on the Feast of Corpus Christi, June 16, 2001 — an opening of a doorway into our reunited Church, a homecoming celebration for all who will have benefited during this year of our efforts and God’s merciful blessing. This week’s issue of The Georgia Bulletin in large part is devoted to an unfolding of the details of the upcoming year’s work, as well as particulars about the two major public events I have mentioned.

In the wake of the Easter Season, and especially filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit’s love, given on Pentecost to the Apostles, to Mary our Queen, and to the whole Church, may we join now with the will of Jesus Christ our Savior, who has instructed us to go and search out the lost, the strayed, the disconsolate — to enfold them into our loving care, to lift them upon the shoulders of our own strength, and to bear them home to the safety and to the contentment of the pasture they once knew but have left behind, the pasture of our Holy Church, and the unending Feast of the Blessed Sacraments.

Assuring you of my prayers and best wishes and with kind personal regards, I am

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Most Reverend John F. Donoghue

Archbishop of Atlanta