The New Evangelization

Written by: prof. Tomislav Ivančić, PhD

More than anything it is necessary to bring people the Good News that God exists. It is immensely important to proclaim God, to bring His presence to people, to tell them about God and to show them by our own lives and behavior: Here is God! In other words, if we want to help society today, we desperately need evangelization.

To evangelize means to bring to others the first message about God, “God exists!”

However, in order to do this, we first need the New Evangelization, which means that we as Christians must first become able to bear witness to God, that is, to be so filled with the Holy Spirit that it radiates or „smells beautifully“ around us, so that others feel how nice it is to be with us. St. Paul says that it is necessary to spread the pleasant fragrance of Christ around oneself.

This does not mean that religious education should be taught, because religious education teaches people what God has revealed, it does not change man. To speak of God does not mean to theologize, or to teach theology. Theology is a science that studies the Scriptures, our religiosity, and our relationship to God, but does not realize that relationship to the Creator and does not make us better. Only faith and prayer change us. It changes us when we start thinking about who God is for us, when we are aware of his nearness, when we are silent in front of him and just soak him up and listen to him; then we become new people.

What does it mean to evangelize?

The new evangelization therefore means to evangelize the Church, to enable her to proclaim the Good News to others.

In the Community of Prayer and the Word, we started in this area first with seminars for the evangelization of the Church, which should qualify evangelizers, who will then qualify others to witness and proclaim to the people. To hold a seminar means to be able to evangelize the Church and the world. To evangelize means to be directly, simply with someone, so they can smell that goodness and God from you; it means coming to work and working like that, talking, greeting people and behaving so that people feel that you are different and ask you, „What is that in you?“

That is why evangelizing means first enabling yourself, freeing yourself from sin, and opening up for the Holy Spirit so that the Holy Spirit permeates you, that his intelligence and strength are in you and that you simply work differently than everyone else, that you cannot but be honest, just and good. 

If you are evangelized, wherever you go, even if you say nothing, or as soon as you say a word, people feel that Someone else is speaking from you; you are not alone, the Almighty Creator in you is. If the people next to you do not feel it, then you are not yet evangelized, you are not yet a witness of Jesus, but you need seminars and prayer to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

You go to a seminar, therefore, to help others, to become able to change others and live for others. Just as medicine is studied to heal others, not yourself, so you go to a seminar to bring others to God. And we regularly fall into the trap and think that by being at a seminar we are different and that it is enough to feel better afterwards. No, that’s not it.

After the seminar we can feel both empty and miserable, but the Spirit radiates from us anyway. Our body and psyche may be tired, but the Spirit of God works and radiates on the people around us.

In other words, all interpersonal spaces need to be filled with the news we experienced in seminars, that is, to talk about the world and the meaning of life in such a way that we do not mention God, Jesus Christ, prayer, or grace, but that the Holy Spirit speaks from us. He speaks from within to people who listen, while we speak worldly, normally, as any other man would speak. That is what needs to be learned. And not just to speak, but to write. As long as we write only beautiful, pious thoughts, these are mostly emotions that have worked in us, but it is not yet the Spirit of God.

We must seek the Spirit of God to work from us. This is what modern society demands of us. Let us therefore choose to pray every day for ten or fifteen minutes, persistently, until we feel the Spirit radiate from us, until others feel and tell us that a power is coming out of us, which is not of us. It is necessary to talk about the meaning of life, about God who is coming, about Jesus Christ who is the historical truth.

Pope Francis says we should go to those on the margins of the Church, to the margins of society, to those who do not know about God, and they cry out for Him. There is no man who does not cry out to God. Everyone in the depths of himself longs for you to say something good to him, such as, „God is here and loves you!“ But we must not say this with pious words, because by doing so we will only hurt man. Pious words are so intimate that they must be discreet, they must not be uttered so easily in public. So it is good to read the Gospel and see how Jesus says it.

Prayer happens in silence and discretion between me and God, it is an encounter between Him and me. And that word I hear in prayer is what I will say to others.

Heavenly Father is the intimacy of God, Jesus is the one who says what the Father thinks and plans. Jesus is the word, He is the evangelizer and we need to learn from Him. And the Holy Spirit accomplishes what Jesus says in us.

He who has experienced conversion and has not gone to convert others, he commits a grievous sin. Whoever was in the seminar, and after that did not go to help others to come to the same experience of God, he commits a grievous sin. Egoism is a great obstacle to evangelization, the happiness of man and the future of the world. We need to start all over again. 

How to become an evangelizer?

How to become filled with the Spirit of God? How do you manage to sit down at a table and write down your experience and publish it or say it somewhere on the radio or television without being afraid? How do you live in the workplace so that others see that God is in you and enjoy talking to you about him? This will happen by experiencing your conversion, a reversal from your current way of life without God to being with God permanently and continuously.

The problem can also be in what we think, say and do. First we think we should pray. Then we start saying a prayer and then we make a prayer practice out of it. We learned the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary, the Angel of the Lord and the rosary. We talk, but we are not in it, our tongue speaks, but we do not; we say prayers, but we are not with God, we think of other things and we are distracted. And there is the whole problem. We lack action. 

Every saint had a lot of followers. Why? For the saints were not only thinkers, but did and lived what they thought. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as well.

Today we have so many books, but these books cannot change anyone. People read them, admire them and quote them. It’s all interesting, but it practically doesn’t change people. We need something else to experience conversion and then change the world. Our words need to be put into practice. What we think and say should come from our experience. Only if we speak from our experience our words carry weight and people start to trust us and they start to change. On the other hand, if we say only what we have read and learned, it will not touch anyone.

In other words, only he who has changed himself has paved the way for others to follow him. There is no other way.

Prayer is union with God. In prayer we meet Jesus, God. But in order to meet God, we must first hear Him. If our prayer is just a recitation of learned prayers, then what we say is just a habit, without us being present at all. And if we are not present in prayer, we cannot be united with God. Then, if we don’t hear what God is telling us, if we don’t see what God looks like, how He looks at us and calls us by name, then it’s not prayer. Prayer is not one-way street.  It doesn’t just go from you to God. Prayer is not even the utterance of prayer formulas. “You will not be heard because of your many words,” Jesus says.

Prayer is always a form of two-way communication. You say one word and God ten others. What God tells you changes you, not what you say. Even if you say for a hundred times: “God, heal me”, you will not be healed. But if Jesus says once, and you hear, “Be healthy,” you will be healed. Also, listen to what He tells you, how you should speak, testify, write, and you will see. The world was created by the word of God, not ours. People are changed by the word of God, not ours. Prayer is invoking God and then listening to His voice. When you read the Gospel, you need to listen to it, hear it, and start thinking about it. Then you become aware of what you are reading, you open yourself to it and the Spirit enters you. Then the encounter happens. We actually talk too much to God and don’t let Him talk. In fact, we often insult him with our prayers, and we think we are praying.

Jesus says, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” When did you believe that? Try today. Experience that conversion. Stop praying and living without God. Because God is the greatest need. People don’t need you, or your bread, or your clothes, or your money. People need God through you. I can’t get to God without you. But in order to give them God, you have to have him in you. That’s why you need conversion. Conversion is a decision: “I will begin to communicate with God.” When you decide, and then start praying. But at the same time make another conversion: decide that you will not babble anymore, but only say your prayer briefly and with focus, and then listen from the inside God speaking to you. How good it is to listen to the prayer Our Father at least once! You will see how that will change you. And if you say it a hundred times, nothing changes.

Conclusion

Let us become aware that God is the first and greatest need of every person. It is not some pious sentence, but an existential reality. Bring God to Croatian society, to your family, neighborhood, to work and you will see. But don’t talk about God, don’t say his name anywhere, “don’t throw pearls in front of pigs”, don’t say pious words, but be pious, be with God yourself, and then He will speak from you. People will then feel your goodness and love and thus they will feel God because God is love and goodness.

To evangelize means that you become so full of the Spirit that you radiate him. You write, speak and act, and everything becomes filled with God.

This article is free. If you want to support our work, you can become our supporter. Information on how to become our associate or supporter of the Hagiotherapy Foundation Tomislav Ivančić PhD can be found here and thus contribute to the development of hagiotherapy and the realization of our vision.