is a well-known adage that says, “You can’t give what you don’t have.” This can apply to many things in life including evangelization. The goal of evangelization is to share with others the truth that is Jesus Christ, but if we are unfamiliar with what that truth means for our own lives, then we will not have the truth to share with others. The pressing question remains: How can we bring Christ to others if we do not know Christ? Prayer is the “place” where we encounter God and speak to Him about our deepest concerns and our most heartfelt desires. Prayer is where God speaks His truth to us. Prayer is where we become fully alive in Christ; it is where we find peace, comfort, confidence, mercy, and most importantly an unquenchable love.
We have to keep in mind what Dr. Scott Hahn shares: “God is more concerned with sanctifying me than He is with sanctifying others through me.”8 Obviously this does not mean we should not be evangelizing, but instead it means that there is a priority to this process. We fly on planes quite often and probably could recite the safety instructions by the flight attendants. The attendants instruct the passengers that “in the case of emergency secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others.” We have to be breathing before we can help others. Once we are “breathing” a life of prayer, once we have these encounters in our interior life, we can then say “we have it.” We have the life, love, and light of Christ. Once we have it, we can then give it.
In order to be disciples who are effective in our evangelization efforts we must intensify our effort of bringing ourselves closer to Christ. Pope Francis described this challenge for all evangelists:
Spirit-filled evangelizers means evangelizers fearlessly open to the working of the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost, the Spirit made the apostles go forth from themselves and turned them into heralds of God’s wondrous deeds, capable of speaking to each person in his or her own language. The Holy Spirit also grants the courage to proclaim the newness of the Gospel with boldness (parrhesía) in every time and place, even when it meets with opposition. Let us call upon him today, firmly rooted in prayer, for without prayer all our activity risks being fruitless and our message empty. Jesus wants evangelizers who proclaim the good news not only with words, but above all by a life transfigured by God’s presence.9
The principle is absolutely clear and concrete; prayer and evangelization are inseparable, sanctity and the New Evangelization are parallel.
I (Tony) had an experience in which I forgot the all-important connection about prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit in efforts of my evangelization. When I worked the Totus Tuus Summer Camps, all summer long I gave the confession preparation talks for the junior high or high school campers. After a summer of this I felt that I really had the talk down pat, which developed into an attitude that preparation was no longer even needed. Toward the end of the summer I again gave the talk without preparation or even without praying before the talk. Perhaps in my mind I had even justified that other tasks took priority over praying for the talk. I felt like I had nailed the talk, with passion, energy, and flow. I believed I hit every point needed to make the talk flawless. After the campers went to confession that night, however, the priest came out of the confessional and told me that I needed to redo the entire confession talk. The confessions he heard seemed to lack depth and heart.
I didn’t understand. After all, I had the talk down perfectly, and it went well so many times before. So I started over and, as always, went back to prayer as with any new talk. But, I was coming up blank and becoming more and more stressed. The next week, when I had to give the confession talk, it was terrible! I came up with a stupid analogy about a fish that smokes cigars in his fish bowl and the water needed to be changed, but he wouldn’t let anyone change it because it was comfortable to him. Just take my word for it, it was really bad. This time, however, the priest came out of the confessional crying and said the talk nailed it. The Holy Spirit was truly present and hearts had been changed that night. I was able to look back and realize it wasn’t me, but the Holy Spirit who was now fully at work. I had been getting in the way of being the instrument of God’s plan in the lives of the young people.
Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, a great spiritual writer of the twentieth century, explained the drastically different impact a holy priest and a decent priest will have on the people around them. While the following quote from his book is in reference to priests, we can replace the word “priest” with whomever we are or whatever we do, such as “teacher,” “catechist,” “youth minister,” “parent,” “grandparent,” “godparent,” “confirmation sponsor,” “volunteer,” “co-worker,” or “neighbor.” Chautard says:
If the priest is a saint (the saying goes), the people will be fervent; if the priest is fervent, the people will be pious; if the priest is pious, the people will be at least decent. But if a priest is only decent, the people will be godless. The spiritual generation is always one degree less intense in its life than those who beget it in Christ.10
This places a large weight on our shoulders. Instead of just throwing our hands up in the air declaring that the “world is going to hell in a handbasket,” maybe it is time to look inward to our own pursuit of holiness.
There is a real tendency for those in the Church to constantly be looking for the next program or method that is going to inspire those in the pews or call in the masses from the streets. However, no program is going to save this culture; neither will any governments, economic system, or medical research. The Savior of the World goes by one name, and that name is Jesus Christ. Evangelization is us, making Him present now, today. The only way that will happen is if we are a people of prayer, people striving for holiness.
While attempting to evangelize it is always easy to explain away lack of acceptance or enthusiasm for the Gospel message with the pretext that people have free will. While this excuse is easy to use, can we say that a misdirected free will is the only reason that people do not accept the Gospel? Did not the thousands of people converted by St. Francis Xavier, St. Francis de Sales, St. John Bosco, or Blessed Teresa of Calcutta also have free will? Of course they did. So what was the difference? We can come to only one conclusion: the instrument is different. Now, obviously, it is only grace that can move someone to accept the Good News of salvation, but we cannot help but think that those who are standing in front of us would be more open to grace if we were replaced by St. John Bosco or Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. Why is that? Because of the holiness of these saints, and because they knew and loved Christ more than we do. As Dom Chautard put it so sternly, “Educators [that is, anyone who brings the Gospel to others], because we lack an intensive inner life, are unable to beget in souls anything more than a surface piety, without any powerful ideals or strong convictions.”11
Does this describe the success we have seen in our own work in the vineyard, in our apostolate? Of course, we still need to study; still need to come up with new, engaging stories; still need new ways to grab the attention of our audiences so that they might turn their ears to the message of God’s grace. But what grace will reach them if we are a dry well versus a channel that the life of God rushes through?
The Sea of Galilee is the lowest freshwater lake in the world and is the second lowest lake. The Sea of Galilee is brimming with life both within its waters and on its shores. This is evident not only today but also from the Gospel stories that we are so familiar with about the fishing industry that was so abundant at the time of Christ (especially when the carpenter’s son was giving the advice of where to fish in Luke 5:4). The Dead Sea, on the other hand, is appropriately named since its salt levels (about 35 percent) are so high that no life can exist except some bacteria and fungi. It is the lowest lake in the world and the shores are the lowest dry land in the world. My (Chris) wife was blessed to go to the Holy Land a few years ago and she visited the Dead Sea, and she recounted the strict instructions of the tour guide about not drinking even a little bit of the Dead Sea water. There was a prior instance, the guide advised, where a visitor ingested about a cup of this salt water and was rushed to intensive care where he stayed for a month because his kidneys were shutting down.
