The Apostolic Kerygma and the Spirituality of Sarah Mullally’s Novena
“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.”
Acts 3:19
Fifth essay out of five studying Sarah Mullally’s novena
The deepest problem within certain contemporary developments in Western Christianity does not necessarily consist in an open denial of the historic doctrines of the faith. Very often, the language of Christianity remains entirely intact. People still speak about the Holy Spirit, prayer, grace, mission, and Jesus Christ. Biblical references remain present, and the tone is frequently warm, pastoral, spiritually sensitive, and emotionally intelligent. Precisely for that reason, the phenomenon becomes more difficult to discern clearly. The decisive question is not merely whether a document employs Christian vocabulary, but what actually occupies the centre of its spirituality. What Gospel finally emerges when all the elements are viewed together? What becomes the practical heart of the message? What is presented as humanity’s deepest need, and what is portrayed as God’s central answer to that need?
The novena God With Us, written by Sarah Mullally for Thy Kingdom Come, offers a particularly revealing example of this tension. Throughout the document, the practical centre of spirituality is organised around presence, accompaniment, listening, relational grace, human closeness, and interior transformation. The Holy Spirit is presented primarily as a consoling presence and a force of accompaniment amid human fragility. Evangelism itself is described largely in terms of conversation, relational proximity, and human mediation of divine love. Mullally writes that God desires to transform us into people who will bring about “the changes we want to see in the world”. Later she declares that believers are to become “that meeting point between our Five and the love of God”. The famous quotation attributed to Teresa of Ávila — “Christ has no body now on earth but yours” — effectively becomes the symbolic axis of the entire novena. The dominant concern of the document no longer appears to be primarily the proclamation of forgiveness of sins through Christ crucified and risen, but rather the formation of believers capable of embodying a welcoming, humble, compassionate presence for others.
And at that point an unavoidable question emerges: is this truly the centre of the apostolic kerygma? Because once one returns to the book of Acts, the contrast becomes extraordinarily striking. Apostolic Christianity appears from its earliest days as the public proclamation of objective and confrontational realities. The centre of preaching is not primarily the believer’s interior experience nor the human mediation of spiritual accompaniment. The centre is Jesus Christ crucified and risen. Peter proclaims at Pentecost: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” The apostolic kerygma possesses an extraordinarily concrete content. It speaks about human sin, guilt before God, the death of Christ, the resurrection, judgement, and repentance. Peter does not merely offer spiritual reassurance to his hearers. He confronts them: “you crucified and killed” him. Stephen declares: “You always resist the Holy Spirit.” Paul proclaims in Athens that God “commands all people everywhere to repent”.
The apostolic kerygma does not revolve principally around emotional accompaniment or the human mediation of spiritual presence. It revolves around God’s decisive intervention in history through Jesus Christ. And for that very reason repentance occupies such a central place in Acts. Peter proclaims: “Repent and be baptised.” And again: “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out.” The apostolic Gospel does not appear as a simple invitation to experience spiritual welcome. It appears as confrontation with the reality of sin and an urgent summons to be reconciled to God. Humanity is not presented primarily as wounded and in need of accompaniment, but as sinful and in need of reconciliation with the living God through Jesus Christ.
This is precisely what makes Mullally’s novena so significant. Although the document revolves around Pentecost, evangelism, and the work of the Holy Spirit, repentance virtually disappears from its spiritual vocabulary. Sin is barely mentioned and never occupies the place of humanity’s central crisis. Guilt before God does not structure the spirituality of the text. Judgement is almost entirely absent. The cross is never presented primarily as the atonement for sin and the objective reconciliation of humanity with God. Instead, the dominant language persistently revolves around presence, listening, accompaniment, conversation, service, emotional support, and human connection.
None of this means that such realities are false or anti-Christian in themselves. Historic Christianity has always valued mercy, compassion, and care for one’s neighbour profoundly. The problem arises when those dimensions begin occupying the structural place that once belonged to the apostolic kerygma itself. For the final result is no longer simply a different pastoral emphasis. It is a silent reorganisation of the very centre of Christian life. In the book of Acts, humanity’s great need is reconciliation with God through Christ. In Mullally’s novena, the principal need appears to be accompanying and sustaining human vulnerability through relational presence and spiritual closeness. In Acts, the Holy Spirit proclaims Christ crucified and risen, convicts of sin, and calls people to repentance. In the novena, the Spirit appears primarily as a force of listening, accompaniment, consolation, and interior transformation. In Acts, the Church is born as a proclaiming community. In the novena, the Church appears principally as an accompanying community.
And precisely there one of the most unsettling features of contemporary Western liberal Christianity begins to emerge. It no longer needs openly to deny the historic doctrines of the faith. It can preserve much of its traditional language while progressively displacing what once occupied the practical centre of Christianity. That displacement becomes particularly dangerous because it maintains a Christian appearance. The language remains. The biblical references remain. Spiritual sensitivity remains. Yet the Gospel slowly begins to reorganise itself around another core. What disappears is not necessarily Christian vocabulary itself, but the confrontational character of the apostolic kerygma. Sin ceases to occupy the central place. Repentance begins to fade. Reconciliation with God loses priority in relation to emotional accompaniment. Christianity gradually risks becoming a therapeutic and relational spirituality in which the Church’s principal mission is no longer the proclamation of Christ’s redemptive work, but the creation of spaces of welcome, validation, and emotional containment.
And so the unavoidable question returns once more: what Gospel are we proclaiming? The apostolic Gospel of the book of Acts, centred upon Christ crucified and risen, upon human sin, repentance, and forgiveness? Or a spirituality whose principal aim consists in accompanying, listening to, sustaining, and emotionally supporting the human person? Because these produce profoundly different forms of Christianity. One proclaims that God has acted decisively in Jesus Christ to save sinners and reconcile a fallen world to himself. The other risks progressively reducing Christianity to a spirituality of welcoming presence and human accompaniment. And precisely there lies the deepest problem within Sarah Mullally’s novena: not primarily in what it explicitly denies, but in what progressively ceases to occupy the central place. For the Church was not sent into the world merely to accompany it spiritually. It was sent to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
