THIS is a big
challenge to anyone who takes his duty of
helping in the evangelization of people seriously. He has
to convey
the highly spiritual and supernatural doctrines of our
Christian faith
in such a way that these doctrines are understood,
appreciated, loved
and lived by the people.
Given the
immense diversity of people in terms of
backgrounds, intellectual levels, let alone, in spiritual
and moral
life, anyone who has to evangelize should really have to
count on a
deep mastery of the subject, a wide variety of styles,
and a keen
sense of knowing how the people are.
But, really,
before anything else, he has to count on the
supernatural help of the Holy Spirit to whom he should
first pray,
asking for help and enlightenment. With the Holy Spirit,
he can speak
and evangelize in ways that are beyond his human
capabilities, no
matter how developed these human powers are.
With the Holy
Spirit, whatever effort he makes, which will
always be inadequate, we can manage to touch the hearts
of the people.
We should never forget that in this business of
evangelization, it is
the Holy Spirit who is the prime mover. The evangelizers
are just
human instruments who are effective only to the extent
that they are
vitally united with the Holy Spirit.
This does not
mean that the evangelizer is spared of his
duty to study things well and to learn the fine art of
adaptation to
all kinds of people. That’s because it’s only when he
does his part
that he can be an effective and faithful instrument of
the Holy Spirit
in the act of evangelization.
The
implications of this condition are indeed tremendous.
For one, the evangelizer really has to study the
doctrines so well as
to incarnate those doctrines in himself. Hardly anything
is more
put-offish to the people than when the people feel they
are just given
a lecture, a disembodied intellectual exercise.
In this regard,
one should distinguish among simply being
a performer, an actor and being a true minister who would
faithfully
personify Christ in his own way. He actually does not
need to be a
consecrated person to personify Christ. To be credible,
he just has to
be consistent to his Christian identity and to what he is
conveying.
Otherwise, he
can get the accusation Christ hurled once on
some false teachers: “The teachers of the law and the
Pharisees sit in
Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they
tell you.
But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what
they
preach.” (Mt 23,2-3)
Besides, the evangelizer
should really make the effort to
know the people well, so that as much as possible he can
be on the
same wavelength when he evangelizes the people and so
that he more or
less can speak the same language of the people.
In this, some
knowledge of psychology, people’s culture,
temper of the times would be very helpful. What is more,
it would be
very advisable that the evangelizer spend time with the
people to such
an extent that he can identify himself as one of them or
as intimately
related to them. As. Pope Francis once said, the shepherd
has to have
the smell of the sheep that he tends.
Again, all
these are possible if one is vitally united to
the Holy Spirit, to the spirit of Christ. He can
personify what St.
Paul once said about how we should be: “I have become all
things to
all people so that by all possible means I might save
some.” (1 Cor
9,22)
To be sure, to
able to adapt to everyone’s mentality in
evangelizing is something that will require a lifelong
process of
study and deepening in one’s spiritual life.
No comments:
Post a Comment