In keeping with the
weekly papal tradition this last Sunday at noon, Pope Francis spoke from his
window over St. Peter's square and prayed the Angelus with thousands of the
faithful gathered there. The Angelus
prayed to and with our Mother Mary and in faith of the Incarnation, was a
fitting prelude for the remarks of the Holy Father that followed in which he
prayed that we, the Church, may be steeped in “the joy of evangelizing” and
invoke the aid of the Virgin Mary so that “we can all be disciple-missionaries,
small stars that reflect His light.”
If I were to try to
draft a “best practices” manual for the Catholic in the pew who desired to know
how to evangelize, I could do no better than to cite this brief statement of
the Pope. He emphasized the “dual
movement” that brings us to our relationship with God. First, God loves us: “we are His children; He
loves us and He wants to liberate us from evil, from sickness, from death, and
take us to His home in His Kingdom.” We,
for our part, are attracted by “goodness, truth, life and happiness and
beauty.” As these two sides attract, it
is Jesus who is “our point of encounter” with the Lord as His love incarnate.
There is, I believe, a
general tendency to think that “proselytize” and “evangelize” have the same
meaning. Proselytize, however, means to
recruit or otherwise bring into the fold.
If I wanted someone to join my fraternal organization I would
proselytize by informing him of all of the benefits of belonging and of the
wonderful works accomplished by the organization, thereby hopefully persuading
him to join. If, however, I wanted that
person to consider my Catholic faith, I would evangelize by first recognizing
and acknowledging his natural attraction to goodness, truth, life, happiness
and beauty and then bringing him to an encounter with Jesus, who is all of
this.
This is why we tell our
inquirers in the RCIA program that their focus is misplaced if they seek to
“join” the Catholic Church. It is not
about joining. It is about “becoming” more
like the image in which we are made. A
huge mistake is made if we place our emphasis on “weekly meetings” and “dues”
and opportunities for “social networking.”
That describes the activities of a club.
We evangelize when we emphasize the love that our Lord has for each one
of us and His invitation to love and serve Him and all others through Him. Once the inquirer has that encounter with
Jesus and he has been catechized in the faith, he no longer needs to be convinced
about participating in the Mass or giving of his time, treasure and talents to
the Church. These now become an act of
love.
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