Guidelines for an Evangelist's Life

Today’s readings are a treasure house of wisdom for those who seek to evangelize.

That should include all of us, for all of us are called by Christ to spread his Gospel and share the truth of God’s loving revelation, each of us in our own way. As it was for St. Paul, so it is for us: it is an obligation, and woe to us if we do not fulfill it!

Yet it needs to be an obligation that we embrace freely, joyfully, enthusiastically – not just to fulfill a duty and avoid hellfire, but because our experience and our understanding of the wonderful gift we have in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by itself makes us want to share that gift with everyone else! The more we share that gift, the greater and more wonderful that gift becomes for us, and the more we share that gift without earthly admiration or other reward, the greater our heavenly reward will be.

St. Paul goes on to tell us that one very important technique that is very helpful in evalngelization, for sharing the gift of God, is self-deprecation.

I have made myself a slave to all
so as to win over as many as possible.
To the weak I became weak,
to win over the weak.
I have become all things to all,
to save at least some.

It is more than a technique, of course, it is a lifestyle: based on our understanding of our utter dependence on God’s grace. It is simple honesty. Even “becoming all things to all” must be done in honesty: presenting facets of oneself and of the faith in ways that maximize the chances for successful conversion without ever endangering the integrity of the faith and of oneself.

St. Paul goes on to discuss other traits that are critically important for the life of a Christian evangelist (again, that should be all of us): perseverance, focus, and discipline. These can be difficult traits to develop and maintain in this world filled with so many distractions and problems, but they are essential (indeed, they are essential for almost any worthwhile enterprise, as St. Paul indicates by his athletic analogies – remember the stories of this summer’s Olympic athletes).

The world encourages us to take it easy, wander around, and do whatever we feel like. True happiness, in this world and in the next, requires us to be focused, to be disciplined, and to persevere.

In the Gospel, our Lord himself gives us stern guidance through the metaphors of the blind leading the blind and of ignoring the wooden beam in one’s own eye. It is a matter of life and death for us to be attentive at all times to our own limitations and imperfections (yet we dare not use them as excuses for shirking our responsibilities). We are all imperfect. We are all limited in our ability to see and understand. Some of us, by the grace of God, may be better than others, but all of us fall short of perfection. Yet each of us, by God's grace, must help ourselves and each other advance further and further up the road of holiness toward the perfection to which Christ calls us.

Our goal is to be like Christ. That is the goal to which we aspire and the path we must follow, as Christians and therefore also as evangelists. We must strive to imitate Christ, for our own sakes and for the salvation of all those we meet.