Evangelization

“Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.
Always be ready to give an explanation
to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope,
but do it with gentleness and reverence,
keeping your conscience clear,
so that, when you are maligned,
those who defame your good conduct in Christ
may themselves be put to shame.
For it is better to suffer for doing good,
if that be the will of God, than for doing evil.” – 1 Peter 3:15

When I was in diaconate formation, I also traveled nonstop for my job. One such Friday night I was returning home from New Jersey. In class that week we were studying world religions, in particular Judaism. As the plane was taking off, I was reading from my text book. The man next to me asked what I was reading. I explained who I was, that I was in formation to be a Catholic deacon, and what I was studying at the time. He told me that he was Jewish, and, pausing for a second, asked me if I could answer some questions about Christianity for him.

We spent the next two hours discussing our faiths and how they were connected. A Catholic cannot fully understand the depths of their faith without having an understanding of Judaism. Catholicism and Judaism have a shared root in the tribes of Israel. Just as Jesus is the fulfillment of Torah, Catholicism is the fulfillment of Judaism. This is a claim that non-Catholic churches cannot make because it was lost when they divorced themselves from the Catholic Church.

There was a ding as the seatbelt light came on, signaling our approach into O’Hare airport. The two hours had passed in no time and how I had longed that this trip would have been longer. My new-found friend said that he asked these questions to as many Christians as he could. None had ever been able to give him a sufficient answer to any of them. He asked why more Christians didn't know the answers. That was one question I could not answer for him.  His wife was Lutheran. She was in the middle of converting to Judaism because she couldn’t answer his questions. We exchanged contact information and talked periodically for the next couple years.

It is not enough to just say you have faith. You need to be able to tell someone why you believe what you do. Saint Peter said we need to be ready to give an explanation for the reason for our hope. He didn’t say that we need to be ready to defend our faith against all attackers. If we are ready to give explanation of what we believe we will have an understanding of our faith. If we can’t tell someone why we believe what we do we open our faith up to be manipulated by someone who presents what appears to be a logical argument against our faith. There are many Catholics who believe and support some very unCatholic things because they do not know their faith.

Where to start? Everything we believe as Catholics we say in the creed at Sunday Mass. Here is a good video explaining our creed.