Casting Nets. Chris Stewart
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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. Now, the distance between the two seas (actually lakes) is about sixty-five miles, and they are both fed by the same source, the Jordan River. So what is the cause of the difference between life and death in the two bodies of water? It seems to be that the Sea of Galilee has an outlet and the Dead Sea has none. In other words, the Jordan River flows into the Sea of Galilee and then it flows out, but not so with the Dead Sea, the water simply evaporates (about seven million tons a day), thus leaving the high concentration of salt. The lesson for us is that as Christ pours His grace within us so we must give that grace to others, we must produce fruit, or we will be at risk of being “cut down and thrown into the fire” (Mt 7:19).
The goal is to be a reservoir that takes in water in order to store it, that it may be distributed when needed. A reservoir ceases to be a good reservoir if, like the Dead Sea, it does not give out its life-giving water. But if all a reservoir does is give out its water and keeps nothing of itself, it is called a channel. To be a channel while evangelizing is a dangerous position, because the channel retains no grace for itself and eventually will dry up. What a delicate balance between keeping our reservoirs filled with the grace of God and continually giving ourselves to others.12 It is a difficult balance, but it must be reached for the health of our soul and those who we are trying to reach. We can take the example of the saints and even Our Lord, who continually pulled away from the active work to draw close to the Source of all activity through solitude and prayer.
Prayerful—The Practice
In order to effectively evangelize we must be a people of prayer. We must pursue holiness relentlessly so that our heart and mind are one with God. It is in prayer that our heart and mind are conformed to God’s heart and mind. Pope Francis explains how prayer makes us better evangelists:
One form of prayer moves us particularly to take up the task of evangelization and to seek the good of others: it is the prayer of intercession. Let us peer for a moment into the heart of St. Paul, to see what his prayer was like. It was full of people: “…I constantly pray with you in every one of my prayers for all of you … because I hold you in my heart” (Phil 1:4,7). Here we see that intercessory prayer does not divert us from true contemplation, since authentic contemplation always has a place for others.13
We must recommit ourselves to a renewal of an effective prayer life. To effectively