Suppose we knew that God wanted each of us to be his chief witness for Jesus, to testify on his behalf in a way that inspires faith in others. Could we meet that challenge? How would we meet that challenge? These questions must have occurred to John the Baptist, appointed by God to be a chief witness for Christ, to testify to the Light. John is not the only one called by God to be a witness for Jesus, nor is he the first.
The first witness is Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus. God chose Mary to proclaim the coming of the Lord, first to her cousin Elizabeth, and then to others—in a special way at his birth, and then later at the Cana wedding feast. There are many other such witnesses whose testimony is recorded in the New Testament.
These early witnesses are in essence the first evangelizers. They were eager to spread the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. They simply revealed to others what they had seen and heard. In fact, the efforts of these first evangelizers defined the course of missionary work in the early Church that continues today in full force the world over. We celebrate this missionary work every year on the third Sunday in October. This year will mark the 100th anniversary of this celebration established by Pius XI. The theme for this year’s celebration chosen by Pope Leo is “One in Christ, united in mission.”
The heart of all missionary work centers on the confident proclamation of the message of Christ. The aim is to inspire trust and faith in Christ. Go forth and teach all nations, Jesus says to his disciples. This directive applies to more than a select few in the Church, however (Mt 28:19). As followers of Christ, we all are called to proclaim his message.
There is no better way to understand his words when Jesus says, come, follow me. All four gospels record this invitation of Jesus (Mt.16:24-28, Mk. 8:34-35, Lk. 9:23-24, Jn. 12:25). Jesus calls each of us to work in his vineyard (Mt. 20:1-16, Mk. 10:29-31, Lk. 18:29-30), to be his witnesses (Acts 1:8). In accepting his invitation, we in fact become evangelizers. The question for us today is how do we do that? How can we evangelize the Christian message?
The short answer is twofold—we evangelize with our lives and with our deeds. There is no other way to evangelize other than living out the faith that we hold in our hearts. The way we live our daily lives in fact is our answer to the invitation by Jesus to follow him. In turn, what we hold dear in our hearts motivates what we do, our deeds. We always do what is important to us. When our lives are centered on Christ and his love for us, we bring his loving presence to others in a way that inspires faith and heals the soul (Mt 7:16, Rm 15:7). Evangelization is fundamentally a journey of love.
Jesus invites us to go with him on this journey for three good reasons. First, Jesus appeals to our natural fondness for challenge. This is the whole point in asking us to go on a journey that invites us to exchange our love of wealth for love of others. Jesus wants us to journey with him, who is love itself. Jesus is fully aware that accepting his invitation means that we abandon our fear of the unknown and place our trust in him. He also knows how difficult this can be at times.
Second, Jesus appeals to our natural fascination with mystery. We like the mysterious. Jesus asks us to follow him without saying where we shall go or what we will do together. Jesus invites us without providing the details. We do not chart the way. We do not decide when to rest and when to go on. We do not even know what the experience will be like along the way. We simply get up, leave behind our old ways and habits, and follow him.
Third, Jesus appeals to our natural desire for community, for connection. His invitation is to voluntarily associate with his followers in a special way. Living in community provides the most fundamental way we experience love, especially in our families and in our faith communities. In both family and in community, we can learn how to connect with others in a meaningful way. We learn how to love and invite others to join our community.
These three elements—challenge, mystery, and community—are the heart and soul of the invitation that Jesus extends. With these elements, Jesus aims to show that the journey of love, however mysterious, is a journey that leads to eternal life. That journey begins with a genuine attitude of trust and abandon in the here and now.
Our choice to accept his offer calls for us to think about our lives in comparison to how Jesus invites us to live—seeking peace, honoring justice, showing mercy, and above all, loving others without bias and judgment. In that case, we might have to give up some old ways of doing things, but we have nothing to fear in accepting this challenge. We can trust the Holy Spirit to show us the way and to provide the necessary grace to “walk the talk” (2 Cor 12:9).
Walking on this path provides opportunity to encounter others with the ears and eyes of faith. Faith enables us to see Christ in ourselves and in others. We can do this because each person we encounter on the path of love is a child of God. When we look into the face of another, no matter how distorted or ugly that face appears to us, we look into the face of Christ. When we deliberately seek the Lord in our encounters with others, especially the least of his children, we are sure to see him.
Our calling to evangelize is a calling to live a different way in the world, to see things in a different way, to adopt a worldview that is possible only through Christ, who strengthens us for the task (Phil 4:13). As evangelizers, we become coworkers with Christ. We become the salt of the earth, light for the world, a branch of the true vine, a temple of the Holy Spirit, who in turn renews the face of the earth. We are all chosen for a life of good works born of faith and love to bring about a new reality, a new world—the kingdom of God. This is what evangelization is all about. This is what it means to bring the message of Christ to others.
