When we think of evangelization, what is our end goal? What does the fulfillment of someone becoming Catholic or Christian entail?
All of us share the responsibility to carry out Christ’s commission to “make disciples of all nations” (Mk 28:19). But this prospect of seeking out the conversion of others gives rise to various reactions. Some may feel emboldened by the task; others are unsettled by it. So before attempting to evangelize ‘the masses,’ we ought to better understand what we are trying to accomplish.
Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis have navigated this tension and offer a pathway forward, stressing a distinction between proselytizing and evangelizing. Distinguishing these two actions is not merely an issue of semantics; it is critical to our understanding of how we approach making disciples. What they propose, I suggest, is a recovery of our understanding of conversion.
Pope Benedict XVI identified a real danger in confusing these things. He asserted in a homily that what we believe as Catholics is “not a political ideology, not a social movement, not an economic system,” but “faith in the God who is Love—who took flesh, died and rose in Jesus Christ.”
Too often we conceive of conversion as a one-time thing, a decision to be made or a destination to arrive at. But conversion is not a single event; it is a lifelong process that forms the basis of Christian life. We undergo conversion in the fundamental encounter with Christ, being confronted with the demands of the Gospel and the costs of discipleship. Conversion is the ceaseless pursuit of bending our will to the Father’s.
Failing to recognize this necessary process and succumbing to the temptation to bypass it is proselytization. It is here that we fall into the trap of becoming obsessed with simply trying to convince people. To be sure, there is a place for good-faith arguments. However, overreliance on this method can leave us impatient with people’s questions and frustrated by their hesitations. Our holy desire to bring people to share in our faith becomes clouded by the false idea that their conversion rests on our intelligence or cleverness.
The term proselytizing typically refers to forcing or coercing conversion, usually by methods easily identifiable as an infringement upon the dignity and freedom of another. But these methods do not always appear aggressive or obvious. Any attempt to promote the faith through “means, and for motives, contrary to the spirit of the Gospel,” as the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has written, is proselytizing.
If we lose sight of the encounter with Christ and the ensuing relationship that fosters the life of faith, we deprive our beliefs and teachings of their source and end. Ultimately, we reduce our faith to a mere point of view. If our true desire is for others to know Christ, we must imitate him. Authentic evangelization is not accomplished through clever argumentation but by bearing witness to the working of God’s love and mercy in our lives.
“The Church does not engage in proselytism,” Benedict XVI said, “Instead, she grows by attraction: just as Christ draws all to himself by the power of his love.”
Focus on the Who, Not the What
How, exactly, can we imitate Christ in our pursuit of evangelization?
Evangelization must begin with recognizing whom we are engaging, not what. Just as it is easy to reduce our faith to a set of ideas, we can do the same thing to people. With increasing polarization, we become particularly prone to letting individuals and their concerns fade away, treating them instead as the embodiment of errors in need of correction.
Pope Francis points to the call of Matthew the Apostle to demonstrate this tendency of ours. He notes that few people in the Roman-occupied town of Capernaum would have seen Matthew as anything beyond his position: a tax collector, a traitor. As such, Matthew was seen through a lens of contempt and mistrust. The Scripture, however, notes that Jesus simply “saw a man” (Mt 9:9).
Christ sees beyond Matthew’s position and the attributes commonly associated with that and draws near. “This gaze of Jesus that sees the other, whoever he may be, as the recipient of love,” Francis says, “is the beginning of evangelizing passion. Everything starts from this gaze.”
This way of seeing people is not a passive nicety. We must intentionally avoid seeing people only in light of their faults, giving attention instead to their needs. If we truly imitate this gaze of Jesus, we begin to see others as God sees us: as people in need of mercy and wholly beloved.
A Way Forward
I recently had a young man approach me and ask me for advice. He explained to me that he had been in conversation with a young woman who did not believe in God and was trying to evangelize her. His experience had left him exasperated, depressed and even annoyed.
He detailed his approach, describing to me how the conversation went. He had told the woman that Jesus Christ was the way, the truth and the life. The young woman wasn’t so sure. So the young man explained that she didn’t have to accept the truth, but if that was her decision, she should at least be honest with herself and admit she was denying the truth.
Circular logic aside, I tried to explain how this argumentation was quite belittling to the young woman. While the truth is important, I feared this approach had reduced the Gospel message to a misplaced indictment of the woman’s intelligence. The young woman and Jesus had faded into the background, obscured by this seemingly insurmountable debate about truth.
Feeling defeated, the young man told me he felt he had failed. He expressed that he, too, once didn’t believe and had wrestled with his faith until “his eyes had been opened.”
What was it that opened his eyes? Where did his newfound vision come from? What was different about the way he saw things before this experience? I invited the student to take these questions to prayer and explained that this is where he must begin.
The student admitted he could see how he had been expecting this woman to arrive quickly at a conclusion that he had taken years to reach in his own faith journey. He expressed a sense of relief, seeing a way forward that left him encouraged and hopeful.
Not only will this testimony be far more moving to the young woman, but reflecting on the complexities of his own conversion will better enable him to speak to and accompany her.
Applying a similar renewal to our own vision of evangelization, I believe we, too, will find a sense of hope and a more fruitful way of proceeding.
