Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius
December 7, 2014
Spiritual Ponderings
7 Virtues of a Good Evangelizer

Recently we looked at the Seven Deadly sins that an evangelizer or someone trying to defend the Catholic Faith can commit while trying to do the good of spreading God’s kingdom. Now I would like to look at seven virtues that Catholics should develop. It is these virtues that will make them a walking/living sign pointing to people like Christ. For help looking at these virtues let us turn once again to Mark Brumley. Mark is the current president of Ignatius Press, the largest Catholic publisher and in the past wrote for Catholic Answer Magazine and spoke around the country defending the Catholic faith. His book: How Not To Share Your Faith: The Seven Deadly Sins of Catholic Apologetics and Evangelization will act as a guide for us. Quotes from his book will be in bold and my thoughts will appear in the normal font.

1. Prayer
The essence of prayer, as every well-instructed Catholic knows, is the lifting of the mind and heart to God (CCC 2559). Every Christian must pray, but prayer is especially important for the apologist. He must have the habit of it. Sheed says somewhere that the theologian who does not believe is like the gourmet chef who does not eat: he knows a lot about the subject matter of his expertise, but has never experienced its reality. We could say the same of the apologist who does not pray.

When I was in high school there was a time in which I decided that I no longer wanted to be a person of faith. I only saw faith as a set of rules that limited my fun. I went to Mass on Sunday’s not to disappoint my mother but that was the extent of my faith. Luckily for me, while I was at Mass I saw people live out their faith life in many ways. One of the older ladies in the parish whose name was Dorothy would pray the Stations of the Cross every morning after Mass. One day I asked her to explain why she took so much time to pray. She responded that she prayed the Stations of the Cross every day because it reminded her of all that God had suffered for her and it made her happy to know that God loved her so much. Through her example and the example of others I began to see that being a person of faith had more to do with memorizing facts. It was about building a relationship with a God who loved me so much that He willingly died for me.

Then, too, there are practical reasons for apologists to pray. Prayer can motivate us to engage in apologetics. As the apologist’s own prayer life grows, so does his displeasure with anything contrary to God’s will. God wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4). Error keeps people from the truth. The closer the apologist grows to God in prayer, the more intense his hatred of error and his desire that all men know the truth; the more intense his desire to use apologetics to help bring people to the truth.

What does it mean to be in a relationship with a person? It means getting to know that person and allowing the things that matter to that person matter to you. The center of the Catholic faith is not a dogma but rather a being the Blessed Trinity. God desires a deep and intimate relationship with us. How can we truly know what is important to God unless we communicate with Him (and this communication is of course prayer).

Archbishop Fulton Sheen once wrote: “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.” I would hate for someone to miss out on heaven because of one of these misconceptions about the Catholic Church. I know in my own life that every time that I have disagreed with the teaching of the Catholic Church, that eventually with enough study and talking with others that I had to admit that I was wrong and that the Church was right. I also know that the only reason I was able to admit that I was wrong in any situation is because I am solid in my relationship with Jesus and I know that He loves me whether I am right or wrong.

I also know that when it comes to evangelizing that it does matter if I am right if I cannot express the truth of the faith in a way that will make others want to listen to. A polite question (“have you ever thought”) often goes much further than a direct statement (“you need too”).