New Evangelization of Church begins with you, laity

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about the “New Evangelization.” To what does this phrase refer? It is an effort by priests, deacons, religious and laity to renew Catholics whose faith is stagnant. Many of these are practicing Catholics who do the minimum. They attend Mass regularly but their faith turns off when the liturgy ends. Once their faith is awakened and dynamic, these same individuals, in turn, go out and share their faith with non-practicing Catholics who feel marginalized, estranged from or hurt by the Church.
At the heart of the New Evangelization then, the question remains: “What role does an average Christian, a layperson, have in the Church’s mission to ensure that every man and every woman has a real, living opportunity to encounter Jesus?” Furthermore, “how can others encounter the risen Christ through you?” You live in a post-Christian world where millions and millions of your neighbors could go through their entire lives very easily without any kind of meaningful contact with Christianity, with Jesus, with the Church. Moreover, they do not have to go out of their way to avoid it either. They were raised outside the Church. Maybe no one in their family had any kind of living faith; maybe none of their friends did. They may work in a place that is even openly hostile toward anything that sounds like religion. Perhaps they are even living in an environment that would actively discourage anyone from asking questions about faith.  
“In such a world, how on earth is a gap like this to be bridged?” In all likelihood, the only ones who are going to be able to do this are lay people. You look just like anybody else. You are there in their workplace. You are members of their families. You are their friends. You are the ones through whom they can meet the risen Christ.  
“How can you help other people encounter Jesus?” First of all through your reverence toward them and toward all people. You do not approach them to fix them. You seek something for them first. Not from them, for them. You are seeking their fulfillment, the very best for them, in this life and in the life to come. Everyone is called to justification, that is, to salvation. What you, laypeople, are seeking is to help them respond affirmatively to that calling. You need to approach each person with this attitude of reverent attention. Your reverence is an essential part of your proclamation of the Gospel, even if you never put it into words. They will know. They will recognize it.  
Because of your reverence, because you know that human beings are created and redeemed by God’s love, you take very seriously anything that threatens or limits truly human freedom or dignity. This is what so many volunteers from Catholic Charities are doing at immigrant shelters along the southern border of the United States.
The witness of the Christian life is the first and irreplaceable form of the New Evangelization. What does it mean to share like that? The late Emmanuel Celestin Cardinal Souhard, Archbishop of Paris, had a wonderful way of expressing this. He wrote, “To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.”  
That is really what it means to be a witness. You may think, partly because of your culture that says you do not talk about these things in public, that this is purely private. You may believe that it is unacceptable for you to share an experience of God with people who have not had this experience. Many of these same people are longing for the hope, for the healing, for the goodness, for the grace that you have experienced in and through your encounters with Jesus. These people may not even know it’s possible. You would be amazed at how many people might respond if you would simply share the hope that rises in those instances where your life would not have made sense had God not existed, had his love not touched your lives.
This witness, this sharing of your encounters with the risen Christ, this is the New Evangelization, which you, the laity, are needed to provide to sustain the life of the Church.
Father Comandini is managing editor of The Catholic Spirit.