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Pillar 1

Prayerful—The Principle

A great story is told that St. Pius X once asked a group of cardinals, “What does the Church need today?” One cardinal answered, “Schools.” More Catholic schools seemed like a reasonable answer. The Holy Father responded, “No.” Another cardinal volunteered, “More churches.” The Holy Father again responded, “No.” Yet another cardinal answered, “Better recruitment of priests.” His Holiness finally answered, “No. What we need are holy laymen.” What the Church needs now is for all its members to seek holiness relentlessly. In order to obtain this holiness we have got to be first and foremost a people of prayer.

Every time Jesus had a decision to make or a momentous act coming up, He went to pray. Whether it was the beginning of His public ministry (see Mt 4:1-11), choosing the Twelve Apostles (Lk 6:12-15), before big miracles (Lk 5:16; Mk 1:35-37; 6:46), the Transfiguration (Lk 9:28-29), or before His suffering and death (Mt 26:36-45), Jesus was always seeking to communicate with His Father. Jesus was such a model of prayer that His disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray (Lk 11:1). It is often forgotten that Jesus even prayed intercessory prayer when He prayed for Peter (Lk 22:32) and when He prayed for us (Jn 17:20-26). Since Jesus chose to make prayer a part of His effective ministry, every effective evangelist must be a person steeped and overflowing in prayer in order to bring Jesus Christ to others.

There is a well-known adage that says, “You can’t give what you don’t have.” This can apply to many things in life including evangelization. The goal of evangelization is to share with others the truth that is Jesus Christ, but if we are unfamiliar with what that truth means for our own lives, then we will not have the truth to share with others. The pressing question remains: How can we bring Christ to others if we do not know Christ? Prayer is the “place” where we encounter God and speak to Him about our deepest concerns and our most heartfelt desires. Prayer is where God speaks His truth to us. Prayer is where we become fully alive in Christ; it is where we find peace, comfort, confidence, mercy, and most importantly an unquenchable love.

We have to keep in mind what Dr. Scott Hahn shares: “God is more concerned with sanctifying me than He is with sanctifying others through me.”⁸ Obviously this does not mean we should not be evangelizing, but instead it means that there is a priority to this process. We fly on planes quite often and probably could recite the safety instructions by the flight attendants. The attendants instruct the passengers that “in the case of emergency secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others.” We have to be breathing before we can help others. Once we are “breathing” a life of prayer, once we have these encounters in our interior life, we can then say “we have it.” We have the life, love, and light of Christ. Once we have it, we can then give it.

In order to be disciples who are effective in our evangelization efforts we must intensify our effort of bringing ourselves closer to Christ. Pope Francis described this challenge for all evangelists:

Spirit-filled evangelizers means evangelizers fearlessly open to the working of the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost, the Spirit made the apostles go forth from themselves and turned them into heralds of God’s wondrous deeds, capable of speaking to each person in his or her own language. The Holy Spirit also grants the courage to proclaim the newness of the Gospel with boldness (parrhesía) in every time and place, even when it meets with opposition. Let us call upon him today, firmly rooted in prayer, for without prayer all our activity risks being fruitless and our message empty. Jesus wants evangelizers who proclaim the good news not only with words, but above all by a life transfigured by God’s presence.⁹

The principle is absolutely clear and concrete; prayer and evangelization are inseparable, sanctity and the New Evangelization are parallel.

I (Tony) had an experience in which I forgot the all-important connection about prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit in efforts of my evangelization. When I worked the Totus Tuus Summer Camps, all summer long I gave the confession preparation talks for the junior high or high school campers. After a summer of this I felt that I really had the talk down pat, which developed into an attitude that preparation was no longer even needed. Toward the end of the summer I again gave the talk without preparation or even without praying before the talk. Perhaps in my mind I had even justified that other tasks took priority over praying for the talk. I felt like I had nailed the talk, with passion, energy, and flow. I believed I hit every point needed to make the talk flawless. After the campers went to confession that night, however, the priest came out of the confessional and told me that I needed to redo the entire confession talk. The confessions he heard seemed to lack depth and heart.

I didn’t understand. After all, I had the talk down perfectly, and it went well so many times before. So I started over and, as always, went back to prayer as with any new talk. But, I was coming up blank and becoming more and more stressed. The next week, when I had to give the confession talk, it was terrible! I came up with a stupid analogy about a fish that smokes cigars in his fish bowl and the water needed to be changed, but he wouldn’t let anyone change it because it was comfortable to him. Just take my word for it, it was really bad. This time, however, the priest came out of the confessional crying and said the talk nailed it. The Holy Spirit was truly present and hearts had been changed that night. I was able to look back and realize it wasn’t me, but the Holy Spirit who was now fully at work. I had been getting in the way of being the instrument of God’s plan in the lives of the young people.

Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, a great spiritual writer of the twentieth century, explained the drastically different impact a holy priest and a decent priest will have on the people around them. While the following quote from his book is in reference to priests, we can replace the word “priest” with whomever we are or whatever we do, such as “teacher,” “catechist,” “youth minister,” “parent,” “grandparent,” “godparent,” “confirmation sponsor,” “volunteer,” “co-worker,” or “neighbor.” Chautard says:

If the priest is a saint (the saying goes), the people will be fervent; if the priest is fervent, the people will be pious; if the priest is pious, the people will be at least decent. But if a priest is only decent, the people will be godless. The spiritual generation is always one degree less intense in its life than those who beget it in Christ.¹⁰

This places a large weight on our shoulders. Instead of just throwing our hands up in the air declaring that the “world is going to hell in a handbasket,” maybe it is time to look inward to our own pursuit of holiness.

There is a real tendency for those in the Church to constantly be looking for the next program or method that is going to inspire those in the pews or call in the masses from the streets. However, no program is going to save this culture; neither will any governments, economic system, or medical research. The Savior of the World goes by one name, and that name is Jesus Christ. Evangelization is us, making Him present now, today. The only way that will happen is if we are a people of prayer, people striving for holiness.

While attempting to evangelize it is always easy to explain away lack of acceptance or enthusiasm for the Gospel message with the pretext that people have free will. While this excuse is easy to use, can we say that a misdirected free will is the only reason that people do not accept the Gospel? Did not the thousands of people converted by St. Francis Xavier, St. Francis de Sales, St. John Bosco, or Blessed Teresa of Calcutta also have free will? Of course they did. So what was the difference? We can come to only one conclusion: the instrument is different. Now, obviously, it is only grace that can move someone to accept the Good News of salvation, but we cannot help but think that those who are standing in front of us would be more open to grace if we were replaced by St. John Bosco or Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. Why is that? Because of the holiness of these saints, and because they knew and loved Christ more than we do. As Dom Chautard put it so sternly, “Educators [that is, anyone who brings the Gospel to others], because we lack an intensive inner life, are unable to beget in souls anything more than a surface piety, without any powerful ideals or strong convictions.”¹¹

Does this describe the success we have seen in our own work in the vineyard, in our apostolate? Of course, we still need to study; still need to come up with new, engaging stories; still need new ways to grab the attention of our audiences so that they might turn their ears to the message of God’s grace. But what grace will reach them if we are a dry well versus a channel that the life of God rushes through?

The Sea of Galilee is the lowest freshwater lake in the world and is the second lowest lake. The Sea of Galilee is brimming with life both within its waters and on its shores. This is evident not only today but also from the Gospel stories that we are so familiar with about the fishing industry that was so abundant at the time of Christ (especially when the carpenter’s son was giving the advice of where to fish in Luke 5:4). The Dead Sea, on the other hand, is appropriately named since its salt levels (about 35 percent) are so high that no life can exist except some bacteria and fungi. It is the lowest lake in the world and the shores are the lowest dry land in the world. My (Chris) wife was blessed to go to the Holy Land a few years ago and she visited the Dead Sea, and she recounted the strict instructions of the tour guide about not drinking even a little bit of the Dead Sea water. There was a prior instance, the guide advised, where a visitor ingested about a cup of this salt water and was rushed to intensive care where he stayed for a month because his kidneys were shutting down. Now, the distance between the two seas (actually lakes) is about sixty-five miles, and they are both fed by the same source, the Jordan River. So what is the cause of the difference between life and death in the two bodies of water? It seems to be that the Sea of Galilee has an outlet and the Dead Sea has none. In other words, the Jordan River flows into the Sea of Galilee and then it flows out, but not so with the Dead Sea, the water simply evaporates (about seven million tons a day), thus leaving the high concentration of salt. The lesson for us is that as Christ pours His grace within us so we must give that grace to others, we must produce fruit, or we will be at risk of being “cut down and thrown into the fire” (Mt 7:19).

The goal is to be a reservoir that takes in water in order to store it, that it may be distributed when needed. A reservoir ceases to be a good reservoir if, like the Dead Sea, it does not give out its life-giving water. But if all a reservoir does is give out its water and keeps nothing of itself, it is called a channel. To be a channel while evangelizing is a dangerous position, because the channel retains no grace for itself and eventually will dry up. What a delicate balance between keeping our reservoirs filled with the grace of God and continually giving ourselves to others.¹² It is a difficult balance, but it must be reached for the health of our soul and those who we are trying to reach. We can take the example of the saints and even Our Lord, who continually pulled away from the active work to draw close to the Source of all activity through solitude and prayer.

Prayerful—The Practice

In order to effectively evangelize we must be a people of prayer. We must pursue holiness relentlessly so that our heart and mind are one with God. It is in prayer that our heart and mind are conformed to God’s heart and mind. Pope Francis explains how prayer makes us better evangelists:

One form of prayer moves us particularly to take up the task of evangelization and to seek the good of others: it is the prayer of intercession. Let us peer for a moment into the heart of St. Paul, to see what his prayer was like. It was full of people: “…I constantly pray with you in every one of my prayers for all of you … because I hold you in my heart” (Phil 1:4,7). Here we see that intercessory prayer does not divert us from true contemplation, since authentic contemplation always has a place for others.¹³

We must recommit ourselves to a renewal of an effective prayer life. To effectively evangelize we need a prayer life that has Passion, Purpose, and Perseverance.

We must RE-commit to our prayer life with Passion. Pray for an intense renewal in our own life and our own faith. The first step in the New Evangelization is a requirement on our part to continually be evangelized and renew our commitment to Christ. As Pope Francis exhorted:

I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her, since “no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord.”¹⁴

If we have not made a firm commitment to daily personal prayer, then today must be that day. If we have a daily prayer life, then, can we take it to the next level? Can we get to daily Mass more often? Can we get to adoration more often? The New Evangelization will not be possible without this reNEWal in us.

During my (Chris’) senior in high school my mother received the devastating news that she had breast cancer. I still vividly remember my mother on her bed crying while she still held the phone that had delivered the message. Unfortunately, this was at a time in my life in which I did not take my faith seriously; I was not a good Catholic, not a good son, not even a good citizen. But this news shook me to the core. I remember praying for the first time in years. Even though my prayers were shallow and selfish, I believe it began to open my heart a little. Praise God, my mother has been cancer free for twenty years. When we come face to face with the serious crisis of a family member or a close friend, such as a cancer diagnosis or news of a bad car accident, our prayers become intensely serious. We will pray with every fiber of our being and with all our strength begging God to intervene.

This is a good thing; indeed our heavenly Father desires to hear all the petitions that weigh so heavily on our hearts, but do we pray for conversions with the same intensity and passion? While physical healings may not always be in the will of God, we can be certain that God wants all people to enjoy eternal life with Him. After all, the conversion of sinners is what causes joy in heaven (see Lk 15:7,10). Praying for conversions in others is truly loving them, whether for family, friends, neighbors, strangers, or our enemies. Pope Francis encourages us to pray for everyone: “We all have our likes and dislikes, and perhaps at this very moment we are angry with someone. At least let us say to the Lord: ‘Lord, I am angry with this person. I pray to you for him and for her.’ To pray for a person with whom I am irritated is a beautiful step forward in love, and an act of evangelization. Let us do it today! Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of the ideal of fraternal love!”¹⁵ In the Bible, Jesus counsels us with this instruction: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44). The first step to the act of forgiveness is praying for them, which will lead us then to doing acts of charity for them.

Consider this example from my family’s (Chris’) experience. There was once a person in our neighborhood who didn’t like the barking of any dogs. We have a rat terrier who loves to bark with her high-pitched, annoying bark. Every time Teri would begin to bark, the neighbor would put a foghorn out the window and blare it. It became quite a contentious situation. My wife decided that for the feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux—the Little Flower—she and the kids were going to hand out flowers with “God loves you” written on them throughout several neighborhoods. The kids went hesitantly to the door of this person and gave her a flower of love, and a miracle happened that day! She has never blown that foghorn since and actually called recently to say that our gate door was open and she was afraid Teri might get out. That is the power of prayer and action!

Pray for a heart like our Savior, a heart full of zeal and love for lost souls. Pray with intensity that Our Lord will open our eyes, ears, and lips to love others into the Kingdom. When this becomes our prayer it will be amazing how often we will begin to see opportunities to share the Good News. When I (Chris) was visiting a friend in San Diego, he was generous enough to take me—a guy raised in Kansas—surfing. (I am sure it was just for his own entertainment). After I had adequately embarrassed myself and we were done with the suffering, we enjoyed watching the sun set over the ocean while sitting around a small campfire on the beach. A young couple came on the beach looking for their own fire pit, but there were none left, so we invited them to join us. As the couple was gathering their wood, my friend, who has a passion for saving souls, led us in a quick prayer: “Father, if we can be an instrument for this couple to come to know You then let us be that instrument. Hail Mary, full of grace…” No exaggeration, within the first five minutes of the conversation we were talking about Christ and His Church with the couple. She was a non-practicing Catholic, and he was someone raised with no religion. I will never forget that prayer or conversation, or the example that my friend showed me for having a passion for saving souls (that friend went on to become a chastity speaker, reaching millions of souls across the world). Pray for passion to pray with passion to be the evangelist that brings souls to Christ to satisfy His passion.

We must RE-commit to our prayer life with Purpose. A prayer life that has purpose will demonstrate commitment. Faithfulness to a daily prayer time is essential. Do we give at least one percent of our day to the Lord? In a twenty-four-hour day, one percent is only fifteen minutes. Do we give the Lord the best time slots of our day or the leftovers? At our (Chris’) home we have what we call a “prayer chair.” It is well-worn, complete with foam falling out of its arms, but it is the first place that we begin every morning. My wife and I read the Scriptures in that chair every morning. Daily Scripture reading is so essential to our prayer life to allow Our Lord to speak to us through His Word. This kind of committed prayer life will make clear our purpose as evangelists.

We need to pray for, by name, those who we want to come into or come back into the Church. Do not be afraid to be specific. When I (Chris) was driving to visit a Methodist minister, who had become a good friend because of his influence on me during my years in college where he was the chaplain, I was praying a Rosary for him and our conversation. In my prayer I asked the Blessed Mother to allow me to ask him one question, then she could have the rest of the conversation. (I was so generous.) The one question I wanted to ask the minister was, “How is your prayer life going?” When I arrived at the small college we quickly caught up. “How are things going?” “How’s the family?” “How’s work going?” Then the Methodist minister asked me, “So, Chris, how is your prayer life going?” I picked myself up from the floor and proceeded to describe to him what was going on in my prayer life and where I would like to be. Then without me saying a word, he went on to describe his own prayer life and that was the entirety of the conversation. Purposeful prayer can change lives.

Be open to the Holy Spirit and ask the Spirit to suggest people to pray for, then pray for them regularly and watch for opportunities to encourage them with your words. We know people who carry a piece of paper with a list of names of those that they are praying for. Use your phone calendars to remind you when to send a text or call someone needing prayers that day. People, above all, want to be noticed and wanted. So, being mindful of what is important to others is key to purpose-filled prayer in action.

When our prayer has purpose it will make its way to every part of our day. If we are about to have a conversation in which sharing the Gospel could happen, then we need to pray before it. This could be a silent prayer on our own, or we could invite the other person to pray with us. When conversations about the Faith happen spontaneously then perhaps we can end with prayer, as Pope Francis encourages us:

If it seems prudent and if the circumstances are right, this fraternal and missionary encounter could end with a brief prayer related to the concerns which the person may have expressed. In this way they will have an experience of being listened to and understood; they will know that their particular situation has been placed before God, and that God’s word really speaks to their lives.¹⁶

Prayer can be simple encouragements to those around us. When an evangelist prays with purpose it can give purpose to our day, and then the lives around us might find their true purpose.

We must RE-commit to our prayer life with Perseverance. Never lose heart; always trust that the King of All Hearts will hear this prayer. As Pope Benedict XVI said, “It is never too late to touch the heart of another, nor is it ever in vain.”¹⁷ Can we imagine what might have happened if St. Monica had stopped after five years of praying for her son, Augustine? So many times after our talks parents and grandparents approach us with stories about family members who are no longer practicing their faith. Their broken hearts break ours because everyone has family member and friends in this state. We also encourage them to never stop praying, and we share with them the prayers we wrote. The first is to St. Monica:

St. Monica, as you prayed so faithfully for your son’s conversion to Christ for many years, I ask for your intercession as I pray for (Name). Please grant them, by the power of the Holy Spirit clarity of mind and purity of heart according to the Truth of Jesus Christ, so that they will have the courage and conviction to live in knowledge, love, and service of Jesus Christ in this life and the next.

While Monica prayed unceasingly for Augustine, it was Ambrose, not she, who would be the effective instrument to bring Augustine to Christ. So we also share this Prayer to St. Ambrose:

St. Ambrose, you were sent as an answer to the prayers of St. Monica for the conversion of her son, St. Augustine. I now humbly plead for your intercession, to send someone, like you were to St. Augustine, into the life of (Name). May they be led to know our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the truth of His Most Holy Church. I pray that I may be a fit instrument in and not an obstacle to their conversion, and that I may have the wisdom to see the difference.¹⁸

St. Monica was rewarded for her persistent prayer with the conversion of her son St. Augustine, and the Church was given one of the greatest minds of two thousand years. Prayer that is persistent can change the world.

Since we believe in the power of persistent prayer, we developed the “Casting Nets Prayer Crew,” who are people that pray Memorares for our ministry and those that Casting Nets will encounter. We developed “business cards” and “postcards” with the Memorare and a number grid that allows the person to count up to one thousand Memorares. Then they give us the card and we take those prayers wherever we go. We encourage the “Crew Member” to add their own intentions and share those prayers with others. Here is one such story from a friend of ours:

My sister recently went through a very difficult divorce. She married an atheist who, along with her own personal struggles, led her away from her Catholic faith. Her incredibly miserable marriage led her to incredible loneliness. This misery led her back to prayer, and she is going to a Christian church with her two boys now. Life has been and continues to be very difficult for her. I prayed one thousand Memorares over a ten-day period for her and for her sons and sent the Casting Nets Prayer Crew Card to her with a personal letter. I never expect a response when I do this because many times I do not get a response. My sister, whom I rarely talk to, called me to personally thank me for the letter and the prayers. She called me in tears and said she hasn’t received a hand written letter in the mail since she was a child. She was incredibly grateful. Shocked at the words personally written for her, she was overjoyed! So often we don’t get an update on the effects of our prayers in real time, and this was one of those special moments.

When the evangelist prays with perseverance the heart of our loving Father will be captured and the perseverance will prove our love for friends, family, and strangers so that they may be granted the perseverance to gain a true conversion, for “Love never fails” (1 Cor 13:8, NABRE)!

There will never be a New Evangelization without a new commitment to a life of prayer and relentless pursuit of holiness. As we renew our relationship with Jesus Christ, His wants will become our wants. His zeal for souls will become our zeal for souls. His desire to invite all people into communion with Him will become our desire to invite all to Him. Remarkably, our focus to turn inward to find the King of the Universe will ultimately turn us outward to the world around us to share the Person and relationship we have found and invite all to the same Good News.