Editorial

By Paul Schratz

For many of us, the archdiocesan synod has been a crash course on evangelization, previously thought of by many people as "How can we get more people to become Catholic?"

It's as though we thought more people would hear and accept the Good News if only we could find appropriate strategies and techniques.

Certainly none of us can help but be impressed with the missionary zeal of those members of faiths who go door to door spreading their beliefs. The Church would only benefit from having more such street corner missionaries.

Yet it's more important for the world to believe that there are attractive alternatives to the worldly philosophies that dominate today, and what we're learning from the synod is that if more people are going to open themselves to embracing our faith and turning their lives over to Christ, something extra is needed.

That's why the Archdiocese of Vancouver is putting renewed emphasis on mission and evangelization. Those have become recurring themes in its messages and actions, such as the launching of offices of Evangelization and Service and Justice.

The lesson for many of us is that evangelization requires a major rethinking. Rather than find the right method for delivering our message to others, we are slowly realizing that it's less about what we have to say, and more about how we convey the message through our lives.

The best preacher in the world is only effective to the degree that he is able to live a Christ-filled life, to the rejection of his own desires. The Vatican II document Communio et Progressio made the perceptive statement that "Communication at its most profound level is the giving of self in love."

Communicating, and by extension evangelizing, is not a matter of techniques, technology, or strategies. It's about identity. We are reminded that our identity as Catholics must be reflected in all we do. All of us - wives, husbands, singles, priests, religious - are called to model the very life to which we're calling others.

Pope Benedict XVI made that exact point last week when he discussed the life of St. Ambrose. "Without speaking a word, he spoke with the testimony of life," Pope Benedict said of the bishop of Milan who was so influential in St. Augustine's conversion.

Speaking in his general audience, the Holy Father pointed out that teaching the faith is not something one does, but rather someone one is. In the case of St. Ambrose, his example rather than his words influenced St. Augustine, who learned to read Sacred Scripture "in a prayerful attitude, in order to truly receive it in one's heart, and to assimilate the word of God."

Pope Benedict said "catechesis is inseparable from the testimony of life," adding that as "educators of the faith," we "cannot run the risk of looking like some sort of clown, who is simply playing a role."

What words of wisdom for those of us who are trying to be evangelizing Catholics, amid our temptations to focus on strategies, or to mistake the faith for a series of rules, regulations, and prohibitions.

Pope John Paul II used to say that when you lose your memory, you lose your identity, suggesting that today's world is facing not so much a rejection of faith as a forgetting of memory and of culture. He reminded us of our faith and of our culture by exemplifying the inseparability of belief and action. When he visited his would-be assassin Ali Agca in prison, he displayed, communicated, and taught God's mercy much more effectively than words ever could.

Living the Gospel is a higher calling than teaching the Gospel. The Church has been telling us that from the time of Christ, through the early Church, to today. We can always use a reminder.