The joyful way to evangelize
Spreading the good news comes from the heart.
Art covers the walls of a hip storefront in downtown Waterloo,
Iowa. On the Saturday before Halloween, 500 kids make their way inside
to claim a piece of candy, with an open invitation to return in a few
weeks to watch The Wizard of Oz. On a Friday evening dozens
pack into the building to watch and discuss the original Star Wars film
from 1977. Another evening a few people meet around a table to talk
about what it is like either being or knowing a gay Catholic. And yet
another evening an eclectic mix of homeless, hungry, and well-fed people
gather to share a community meal.
None of this may look like sharing the gospel, but according to
Ellen Kuchera, one of the creators of COR at 220 East, this is where
the heart of evangelization is taking place. COR, Latin for heart, is a
project sponsored by the four Waterloo parishes with the primary goal of
making connections between the church and the broader community. The
project is intended to respond directly to the mandate that Pope Francis
gave at World Youth Day in 2013: "I want a mess. I want to see the
Church get closer to the people. . . . We cannot keep ourselves shut up
in parishes, in our communities, when so many people are waiting for the
Gospel."
I tend to associate evangelization with
evangelical Protestants asking whether I have asked Jesus into my heart
as my lord and savior. With the rising importance of evangelization in
the Catholic Church, I have admittedly struggled with what this means
for me, a cradle Catholic intensely uncomfortable with anything that
smacks of imposing my own views on others.
Pope Francis
has attempted to respond to confusion like mine with a papacy focused on
evangelization--which consists not of "imposing new obligations" or
proselytizing but rather of a church living out its joy and sharing its
wealth of beauty, of culture, of resources with its neighbor. It is "by
attraction" that the church grows, he writes in Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel).
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