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December 11, 2020One of my new favorite Christmas movies is the most recent animated remake of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. In one particular scene, the Grinch is strolling through the festive Christmas town when he gets bombarded by carolers, literally. They follow him around and as he tries to hide. They circle him and slowly crawl in, all while the singing about our Savior Jesus. He is clearly having an anxiety attack, but this does not deter them. They have one goal in mind, making him just like them.
This is NOT what evangelization is, and yet sometimes it is how we view it, or why we hate the idea of sharing our faith with others. Those “evangelists” we think of, cornering people to accept God as Lord and Savior, certainly do not encourage us to evangelize the world. Sometimes we are even tempted to say, well this is just MY Faith and I don’t want to push it on others. This is also NOT what Jesus calls us to do. At the end of our lives we will ultimately end up in either Heaven or Hell. It is our call to help others to Heaven, and we may even be held personally responsible for those we did not reach out to who end up in Hell.
So what is evangelization? It is nothing more than listening and sharing the faith. It is not pushy and should never cause others anxiety, although it can be challenging. It can start as simply as asking the other person what they do believe in and LISTENING intently before we ever begin to share with them our own story. After all, how do we even know what they need to hear if we don’t first listen? If we find ourselves doing all the talking while the other person is slowly but surely trying to creep away, I guarantee you what you are doing isn’t truly evangelizing.
Inviting someone to Church, giving them a free Rosary or Miraculous Medal (both available at the Information Table) with instructions on what they are, and sharing our own faith lives are good ways to encourage someone to want to learn more. But without a desire to know more, we can’t force them to care. We are called to plant the seeds always and pray for them, but we aren’t always the ones called to cultivate the harvest. It is more important to spread the love of Christ and share a personal relationship with our God than to educate someone on all the nitty grittys of our Catholic Faith or morality. There is a place and a time for it, but this isn’t how evangelization begins. We must be more interested in the person we are talking to than what we have to say or about winning an argument.
If you care about saving souls from Hell, you must evangelize. But we must also be careful that what we are doing is truly evangelizing and not pushing someone farther away from God. Remember, we are the body of Christ and we are to represent Him in all that we do. Like it or not, our actions can have eternal consequences, even more so our choice not to act all. In fact, the phrase, “Preach the Gospel at all times and use words when necessary,” was never actually said by St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis was an avid preacher and would be the first to tell us that we can’t use the lazy way out by saying nothing. But be not afraid, as it should be the Holy Spirit Himself who guides us. All we can do is ultimately radiate His glory and love. This Christmas, share Christ with all you meet, and yes use words, but in the right way and manner.