Recently, I have been giving a lot of thought to how can a regular Catholic Joe like me can fulfill my evangelical duty. I suppose when I think about evangelism, I conjure images of a man on a soapbox on the corner or walking door to door like the Jehovah Witnesses do. When I think of these things, I get intimidated and turned off. And then I do nothing.
So I have been wondering how a guy like me, a guy with a 50+ hour a week job with frequent business travel, a family with a wife and five young children, a mortgage and home could possibly evangelize too. It is so daunting and it seems impossible. And so I do nothing.
And then something happened that made me think that all my nothing may be something after all.
I watched an interview of author Dean Koontz with Raymond Arroyo on the World Over. I am a big Koontz fan and have read everything he has written since the eighties. I remember some years back (in the pre-Internet days) I was reading a Koontz novel and I noticed something. I called by brother Matthew, also a Koontz fan, and said to him, "I think Koontz might be home team. I think he might be Catholic."
It wasn't something overt, Koontz doesn't preach, but there were all these small elements, respect for virtue, and an acknowledgement of evil, that gave me the impression of Catholic thinking in his story telling. Later on I would come to find that I was right. I would also come to find out that Dean Koontz is a Catholic convert.
In the Arroyo interview, Koontz talks about how he came to his conversion. He had a rough childhood as the result of a very troubled father. In college he was dating a Catholic girl, his future wife Gerda. But Koontz said that she never asked him to convert. But on weekends and holidays Dean and Gerda would go to visit Gerda's extended family including aunts and uncles.
Koontz says that is was their joy, their generosity, and their love for one another that struck him the most as it was so different from his family. They were a Catholic family and their virtues were on display for the world to see. It was these virtues, the joy, the generosity, and the love that Koontz began to associate with Catholicism. It eventually intrigued him enough to begin researching and reading about it and we all know how that ends. Koontz converted.
And Koontz, through his non-preachy novels, is conducting his own form of evangelism even though he is just doing his job, being Catholic and doing his job. And I bet most of his readers would never even know it. Cardinal Dolan has even written Koontz to express admiration for his writing even going so far as to call it 'Apostolic.'
When listening to this interview, it struck me that all this evangelism is going on and their wasn't a soapbox to be found.
Do you think that Gerda's aunts and uncles thought they were evangelizing when they were kind and generous to this young college kid dating their niece? Probably not. They were just living their lives according to their faith, in joy and generosity, and then someone, maybe even an unlikely someone noticed.
And now Dean Koontz writes and has sold millions of copies of his books and entertained many. But he is a Catholic while he does it. He extols virtue and calls evil by name and because of that maybe somebody will notice.
And that's it, isn't it? Be Catholic. Be joyous. Be generous. And some day someone will notice.
So this got me to thinking, how I am I ever Catholic in public?
Well, every Sunday morning we load all the kids up in the van and we take them to Mass. When we go to Applebee's and get the extra chairs around the table, we always say grace together as a family. My wife frequently encouraged a Christmas/Easter Catholic neighbor to sign her kids up for Catechism. She eventually did and now we see them in Church every Sunday. Do these things and maybe somebody will notice, maybe they already have.
So maybe evangelism isn't just about the soap box, although there is surely a place for that. But maybe the evangelism that I am called to do is this other kind. Live your every day busy life the best way you can, the way Jesus would want you to. And if you do that long enough, consistently enough, and joyously enough somebody will notice.
It is amazing what God can do with a whole lot of nothing.
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Joy is what marks a Christian and draws people to Christ. In Acts, Luke tells us that through their communal life,their taking care of the poor, worship, and eating of meals “with exultation and sincerity of heart” the lord added to the Church every day. It’s not just the martyrs and the great saints, but it’s all of us every day witnessing to the truth of Christ that draws people to Christ or that pushes them away. The real question then becomes, what kind of witnesses are we?
I agree,& also with Amy about witnessing.
Occasionally, we witness by standing firm to our beliefs even if unpopular.A friend told me that during an unplanned pregnancy, their non-Catholic church supported abortion as an option for them. A Catholic aquaintance, though stood firm & did not. After deciding to go ahead with the pregnancy & birth, my friend looked at the new, beautiful child & couldn’t conceive of returning to the pastor who would allow an infant’s destruction.The end of the story is that my friend & their family became Catholic entirely due to the Church unbending teaching on the sacredness of life .
I am a huge Dean Koontz fan. He acknowledges evil, but unlike some novelists I can think of (and I am talking to you Thomas Harris) he doesn’t glamorize it. I hope that in my actions and interactions I project my faith in a positive manner.
I hope my everyday life acts as a witness. My friends pre-conversion are mystified why I would become a Catholic, even a Christian. Even my family members that are wayward Catholics don’t understand it. Every once in awhile they “pop a question” and I hope my answers help to water the little seed Jesus has planted in them. Looking back I can see all of the people who helped to water the seed that was planted within me and I hope I am doing that for others.
Isn’t this the kind of equivocation that has gotten us in so much trouble over the years? We hide behind the “preach the Gospel at all times, use words when necessary” rhetoric to avoid actually communicating the kerygma to people. Sure, we should have a reason for the hope that we have, but we should also be proactive in articulating the faith even before anyone notices how awesome we might be.
Put God and one’s duty to Him first and everything else follows. I was impressed by the Dean Koontz interview but I’m not so convinced about “the Catholic Novel” or the novel’s efficacy for helping to save souls. I know many claim to have found the Faith through Chesterton, but of the millions who read Koontz, are there many who would partly attribute conversion to his novels? Thank you.
Wait a minute, you write this column in addition to your primary obligation which is to serve your family! Not so shabby. Sometimes when I feel like my life is hidden in my kitchen (which could really use a deep scrubbing) and some organization of the pots and pans, I remember a Mother Teresa quote about doing little things with great love—things that nobody notices. I feel quietly confident that HE notices, and the grace of this IS evangelical, even if I never lay eyes in this life on the one who receives the grace of my offering.
You love your wife, yes? There must be times when you tell people what a difference being married to her has meant to your life.
You love your children, yes? There must be times when you tell people how much joy they bring to you and your wife’s lives.
You love Christ, yes? There are times when you can tell people what a difference he has made in your life and the joy that has come of it.
James, the joy of life in Christ is simply what draws people closer. We need to catechize as well, but sometimes people aren’t ready for the catechism first. It’s the people looking at one’s life from the outside, saying: “I know something about Person X’s life. It’s not easy. He just got laid off, was sick, has a lot of kids, etc, but he is always joyful. What makes that possible? I want what he’s got.” But Person X needs to be able to answer Y’s questions. It’s not equivocation.
Response to Anna Lisa, I think I found what you are talking about, this article and the mother Theresa article I found on my Facebook today. God sure does work in mysterious ways.
“We must not drift away from the humble works, because these are the works nobody will do. It is never too small. We are so small we look at things in a small way. But God, being Almighty, sees everything great. Therefore, even if you write a letter for a blind man or you just go sit and listen, or you take the mail for him, or you visit somebody or bring a flower to somebody—small things—or wash clothes for somebody, or clean the house. Very humble work, that is where you and I must be. For there are many people who can do big things. But there are very few people who will do the small things.”
—Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
From her book “Love: A Fruit Always in Season”, on our website here: http://goo.gl/WkjbD
Might I offer a suggestion?
I’ve pulled together a plan for making sure every public library network has a minimum of quality Catholic content by fundraising through parishes to buy and donate books. I’ve blogged the whole thing here: http://attheturnofthetide.blogspot.com/2012/11/project-sowing-seeds.html
It’s nothing complicated, and pretty easily done by people anywhere in the country. Part of the impetus is my own frustration with trying to find solid Catholic books at public libraries and knowing that most librarians don’t even know what they’re missing. Further, in this year of faith, I think we have a great opportunity to make it a lot easier for people to find the faith if we just, you know, hold some bake sales, fish fries, and pancake breakfasts. Also, we’re losing the culture wars. Lots of people still use their public libraries for research and reading for fun. If they run into unexpected riches at their public libraries, how many souls might we save? How many minds might be changed on abortion, the nature of marriage, the existence of natural law and objective morality, etc.?
Caspar,
I think that’s a great idea & I’ve found many Catholic books & DVD’s in our local library that I’m fairly sure were donated by faithful Catholics for the purposes you cite.
But I also find many religious books offered for sale in the library’s discard section.Libraries discard materials that don’t see regular patron use-at least that’s their story.Librarians tend to be on the left side of politics & not overly friendly to religion, so I have my suspicions, too.
I think we should still donate Catholic materials, but shouldn’t expect them to remain on the shelves permanently.
Yes, there’s the risk of things being cycled out, but the sower still sows, even if some of the seed will fall on rocky ground. Also, God only knows what plans he has for the book sale!
Caspar,
Good point about the book sales.Thank you.
Caspar, I pinned your blog post in the hopes that even more people would see it. I encourage everyone who has Pinterest to do so as well.
James: What you’re talking about is a problem if that’s ALL that’s being done. But it’s not a problem if it goes along with regular evangelization—and some of us are not called to that, any more than we are all called to be priests or to be missionaries in foreign countries, etc.
Before I came back to the Church but while I was exploring it, I was away from my home and family in another state for a professional conference, when I sat at lunch with people I knew and a visitor from somewhere in South America. He spoke very little English, but we all tried to talk to him. When our lunch came, he made the sign of the cross before he ate. He didn’t make a big deal about it, and no one said anything, but it was obviously just part of eating for him—he wasn’t trying to convert all the American heathens. It made a huge impression on me at the time and I’m sure he never had any idea.
Thanks, ADTWF!
Good point - how we live is definitely a witness, and we each have our own voice as we walk it out. I too and a Koontz fan, and I’d also agree with Amy that joy is an important component; an emotional state of joy creates a more productive environment and a smile or good word towards someone else is sometimes exactly what they needed that day.
But I’d add, we can evangelize by writing down, or gathering, the evidence we see around us for a loving, real, God. That is what I am trying to do with this evidence collection of sorts: http://www.evidencetoconsider.com/
But as we live our faith out, the “accidental” evangelism will no doubt increase!
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