The Joy of Evangelization

Receiving Blessing from Father

I think that one of the reasons that I am so drawn to evangelization is because my spiritual pilgrimage began at an Evangelical Old Catholic Church- I learned to treasure God’s word and to desire to share God’s love with others.  Then as I finally found my home in the Roman Catholic Church through the movement of Jovenes Para Cristo I started to admire the lay men and women that taught us in weekly spiritual talks, courses and retreats.  They preached God’s word and were like teachers of the faith.  I was so motivated that I asked God to send me to preach the Good News.  Yet, I ended in the prayer ministry and while others took the floor to proclaim the gospel I was locked in the chapel praying for them.  This would be my role for the following two years, yet my spirit yearned to speak to the masses to share my testimony.  Looking back now I see that God was evangelizing me first!  Sometimes we yearn to go and preach all these wonderful truths we find in God, forgetting that the first person we have to reach is ourselves.  Pope Francis wrote this great exhortation: The Joyof the Gospel: Evangelii Gaudium, in which he motivates us to be like the Samaritan woman and go share what God has done in our lives with others and to do so with joy.  The entire document is a jewel of wisdom and so easy to read if you want to be inspired and renewed read it!  It has so much substance yet, what caught my attention as pertaining to this post is that he urges us to transform ourselves in the process of trying to evangelize others.  In our hubris we can at times feel superior in our spirituality and like we no longer need to be transformed and renewed, yet our Pope reminds us that in the process of reaching others we must never forget to start the conversion with self!  Thus, do not deprive yourself of Christ thinking that you have graduated from the faith before you reach heaven.  I like to think of my Catholic faith as that of a child because the more I know the more I realize how much I don’t know (smile). 

The GAP dress and jacket, Bebe Cut-Out Heels-Yard Sale, Jewelry-Thrifted

When I returned to the Catholic Church, I was full of pride and I yearned to publicly declare my faith in religious settings, but God kept me hidden in the chapel.  In fact, I never got to publicly speak until I joined Life Teen last year.  Now as I share my faith in this forum I noticed that the person that is transforming the most by these posts is myself!  People that know me only through my blog sometimes erroneously classify me as this good, faithful woman and to those I want to tell you that if you want to admire someone admire Jesus!  If you desire to change become more like Jesus! “Though it is true that this mission demands great generosity on our part, it would be wrong to see it as a heroic individual undertaking, for it is first and foremost the Lord’s work, surpassing anything which we can see and understand. In every activity of evangelization, the primacy always belongs to God…”  We need to be vigilant that in our evangelizing attempts the one we are leading our brothers to is Christ and not ourselves.