Trying to See Through the Cloud

Fervor, ironically, can be fickle.  Driving home from work yesterday, I listened to Catholic Answers on the radio.  Curtis Martin was the guest; he is the founder of FOCUS ministries, which runs faithful Catholic campus ministry programs at 74 universities.  It sounded like their ministry was just like a Newman Center, with the exception that they’re an organization independent of a diocese.  

Curtis talked about evangelization in a simple way.  I found it very comforting—which again is odd, since that’s not the feeling I get when I think of evangelization.  He said over and over that Catholicism works—it just needs to be presented well.  Even further, it needs to be presented as a powerful, fulfilling relationship with the God who loves us without question.  It really is Good News!

It lit a fire in my heart and I arrived home excited.  I picked up Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth (vol. 1) and eagerly started reading.  A big question floated in my head—how do I evangelize?  What do I do?  I wanted to hit the ground running! 

And then, life.  Dinner, exercise, watching a little TV/spending time with my lovely wife, and then bedtime.  The fervor?  The question went from an exciting prospect to a simple curiosity.  

Maybe the first step is to let go of what I think evangelization is supposed to look like.  Three images stick in my head.  The first?  St. John the Baptist.  Preach in public in a loud voice.  Terrifying.

The second is that I would have to walk up to random people to ask them about Jesus.  It happened to me once in college, while I was walking out to the parking lot.  The guy’s approach was perfect for the situation, but the very thought of doing that to a stranger makes me very nervous. 

Finally, part of me thinks that evangelization is necessarily successful.  Just convey the Truth in the right way, and poof!  They’ll come running into the Church!  Well, that’s not really true.  I remember one of the things Fr. Jerome (of happy memory) told me once.  Some of the greatest saints are some of the greatest failures, by human standards.  My patron, St. Francis Xavier, was a failure in China and Japan despite having some success in India.  

To sum up: I don't know what evangelization "is" for my state in life.  My three images are more caricatures of evangelization more than anything else.  Yeah yeah, there's the St. Francis quote.  But too many people--myself included--use that quote as an excuse for inaction.  I don't know what it will look like or what God will ask of me.  Right now, I pray for openness and willingness to hear His voice.