Evangelization...Not Just for Committees!

Hey guys!

I just wanted to talk a little bit about evangelization. Not, you know, standing on a street corner with a cardboard sign that says "Jesus will come again" or something crazy like that. I mean simple little things, like saying something in passing to your friends about church or something like that.

Here, let me explain.

When I first started really getting into the RCIA program, my family and I talked about it. Not a lot, but I brought it up to my best friend one day when I was at her house. Her mom, who had been part of RCIA before, asked me about it, and I was telling her all about it. My best friend and her little brother had never been confirmed, so they decided that they wanted to get into the program and become confirmed. On May 18th, I'm going to go watch them both get confirmed, and then they're having a confirmation party.

There's also a family that my family is friends with, a couple named Cindy and Junius. When we started the process of becoming Catholic, Cindy was pregnant with their first child. When we saw them and got to talking, every once in a while we would say something about something that happened at RCIA (like when Fr. Cesarone told us about his first confession and accusing himself of adultery at the age of seven), and after just talking about it in passing a few times we got them interested. When baby Michael was born, they got him baptized Catholic. Since their marriage was outside the Catholic Church, they are in the process of getting it blessed so they can get confirmed, Eucharisted (is that a verb?) and be in the faith with us.

Both of those times, we didn't run up to them and say, "HEY GUESS WHAT WE'RE GONNA BE CATHOLIC COME READ THE BIBLE AND PRAY WITH US AND YOU CAN BE CATHOLIC TOO AND..." and so on. If something funny or interesting happened at church or at Life Teen, just mention it to someone. If you think they would like Life Teen, even if they're not Catholic, invite them to check it out. If they like it enough, it might interest them in becoming Catholic themselves.

Wow, this was a long post. I guess what I'm really trying to say is that anyone can evangelize without even thinking about it. I never consciously tried to evangelize anyone, and my family alone brought five people into the faith just by saying things in passing. I'm sure people with more experience in the church can do even better than us. So don't be afraid to say something -- go ahead and evangelize! It's not just for the Evangelization Committee, you know!

~Nicole