Prayer at the Heart of Evangelization

So, you want to evangelize? That's great news! First, though, make sure your prayer life, your life with Christ, can sustain you.

After all, evangelization is about what? It's about directing the vision of others to Christ. It is helping them to love Jesus and understand they are in turn loved by Him. This union with our Lord is the definition of prayer. Thus, we need to have what we want to give. Put negatively, we cannot give what we do not have.

In fact, it is essential for us evangelizers to be working toward contemplative prayer: a silent "being" with the Lord, where we use no words, and let the Lord "pour over us." This takes practice, because in the beginning there are many distractions and resistances. With practice, these begin to fade and we are able to sit in the Lord's peaceful presence.

How?

If you are new at this, start with short periods of prayer, say ten minutes, and then gradually build yourself up to an hour. Begin by asking God to help you to pray. Imagine that! Next, slowly read a short passage from the Gospel. Then, be quiet before the Lord and let Him speak. If you become distracted, don't beat yourself up. Again ask Jesus to help you pray, even repeating the name, "Jesus" a few times, and/or re-reading the same Gospel passage. Then be quiet again!

It is important to build prayer as a habit of life. Pick the same time every day (preferably not bedtime, since it tends to be our "junk time" when we are tired). If you drift away from regular, quiet prayer, not to worry, our Lord is forgiving. Go back to it! After a while, you will find yourself longing for silence with God. At this point, you will certainly find evangelizing a necessity, since you will want everyone to have what you have: a relationship with Jesus.

Mixed Messages Hurt Evangelization

With so much attention being given the call to a "New Evangelization" in the midst of an increasingly hostile culture, we need to ask ourselves some basic questions about how we live and present our Faith. An important question to be briefly posed here concerns the mixed messages we send that hamper evangelization efforts.

With increased frequency, the people enmeshed in the secular culture and "lukewarm" Catholics are calling Church leaders to account (usually unwittingly) for their inconsistent messages by filing "doctrinal lawsuits". For example, when Church leaders allow Catholic institutions in their dioceses to host unfaithful speakers, sponsor "new age" spiritualities, or otherwise publicly violate the faith on the one hand, and then demand faithfulness from their employees on the other, they leave themselves open to obvious vulnerabilities and liabilities. Again, some Church leaders will not excommunicate or even refuse Communion to publicly and rabidly pro-abortion politicians (the rich and powerful) on the one hand, and preach the importance of pro-life policies on the other, opening themselves to accusations of hypocrisy and inconsistency.

Moreover, these "mixed messages" hurt our efforts at evangelization. What is evangelization? It is preaching the Gospel, the Gospel of the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We preach Christ crucified and the importance of imitating Him. Yet, if we are unwilling to suffer, to carry our crosses, to take a risk for the Way, the Truth, and the Life, how is this convincing? In fact, our actions betray our words.

The New Evangelization needs to begin in earnest, but this better start with each of us, especially Church leaders, examining our consciences, facing our hypocrisy, and purifying our fear. Only then will we be able to convince this culture we are serious.    

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