Who? Me? You want me to evangelize?
In the summer of 2016, I was one of the parishioners who walked with the seminarians from St. Paul Seminary to do door-to-door evangelization in the neighborhoods within the boundaries of Blessed Sacrament parish. We did it for three to four hours a day, four days a week and for six weeks.
To this day, I still cannot believe how I did it. I was scared to death every time we went out.
NO, I am not a Bible expert; NO, I am not an expert in Catholic Church teachings; NO I am not eloquent; NO, I am older and don’t have the stamina to walk around with vigorous young seminarians (I had to constantly remind them to walk slower); NO my mind is not as quick as before, and I have senior moments; and several other NO’s in my mind including my aches & pains.
However, I had a couple of YES’s that prevented me from walking away from this task. YES, I firmly believe that the Holy Spirit will be walking with me – whom shall I fear? YES, I can share with others how my faith in God has made my life more peaceful and meaningful. If I present myself as a non-threatening and a respectful witness, perhaps the person I encounter will become a bit more interested in God. This is a very good start.
In spite of the stress and fear that I felt during the evangelization walks, it was one of the best things that I have ever done in my life. Why? because above all else, I was able to experience first hand and on a daily basis how God works and adds to my weaknesses. What was once limited came out a hundred times better at least in my mind.
It is not for me to know if I facilitated a conversion or someone’s return to the church. All I did was open the door for the Holy Spirit to enter in or plant the seed of faith that one day will hopefully grow. It may take days, months or even many years for that seed to grow. I will leave the harvest to God, the Master Gardener. I am only a worker in His field.
How about you? How can you be an evangelizer? Do you want other people to experience God’s goodness and lead better lives? Are you looking for a special Lenten offering this year?
One way to evangelize is to invite someone to come to church or pray with you. We are NOT planning to do a door-to-door initiative like we did in 2016.
However, we can still invite someone to come to our church through flyers - a written invitation to come to our church. Last Christmas, one of our parishioners with the help of her son, distributed four hundred invitation flyers around our neighborhood. Again, we will never know the end result of that endeavor; we will leave that to the Lord.
Holy Week and Easter will soon be here. THE E- TEAM IS ASKING FOR VOLUNTEERS to do a “no contact” distribution of invitation flyers for our Holy Week and Easter worship services. “No contact” means, you just leave the flyer by the door or porch, no door knocking or conversation is expected from you. You can do this as a family or group project. You can surely just do it for your block, for your building, for your family & friends. You don’t have to distribute hundreds of invitation flyers; the important thing is that you are doing something for God!
Please pray about it. We need to know how many invitation flyers to prepare so if you are interested, please sign up before March 27th. Sign-up sheet is at the Hospitality Desk.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, Star of the New Evangelization, Pray for us.
This post is a contribution from a member of the Blessed Sacrament Evangelization Committee (“E Team”).