Terry Barber - How to Share Your Faith with Anyone: A Practical Manual for Catholic Evangelization

HOW TO SHARE YOUR
FAITH WITH ANYONE

TERRY BARBER

A Practical Manual for
Catholic Evangelization

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible , revised edition, 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C., and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All rights reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scriptures marked GNT are taken from the Good News translation, second edition, copyright 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Those marked CEV are taken from the Contemporary English Version, copyright 1995 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. Used by permission. KJV signifies verses taken from the King James Version.

Scriptures marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible, Catholic Edition. The Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible: the Old Testament, 1952; the Apocrypha, 1957; the New Testament, 1946; the Catholic Edition of the Old Testament, incorporating the Apocrypha, 1966; the Catholic Edition of the New Testament, 1965 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Every reasonable effort has been made to determine copyright holders of excerpted materials and to secure permission as needed. If any copyrighted materials have been used in this work without proper attribution, please notify Ignatius Press in writing so that future printings of this work may be corrected accordingly.

Cover photograph:

Bernini Columns , Saint Peters Square, Vatican City

by Massimo Merlini/istockphoto.com

Cover design by Riz Boncan Marsella

2013 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-58617-850-5

Library of Congress Control Number 2013940828

Printed in the United States of America

In gratitude for the many graces

that I have received through my

baptism, through the Sacred Hearts

of Jesus and Mary, and through the

protection of my guardian angel.

I hope this book will help you to fall

in love with God. As Saint Augustine says:

To fall in love with God is the greatest

of romances; to seek Him the greatest

adventure; to find Him the

greatest human achievement.

I pray that this book will reach many

souls so that everyone can treasure

the beauty of our Faith and find

the desire to share the Gospel.

, by Scott Hahn

, by Matthew Arnold A Life of Evangelization

1. Evangelization: Its Not Just for
Protestants

4. Preparing for One-on-One
Evangelization

8. The Ten Commandments of
Evangelization

This book is more than you might think or hope it will be. Its not just another volume about apologetics. Its not another playbook full of strategies for winning arguments with your brother-in-law or coworkers. Its not a master plan for winning skirmishes in the culture wars.

Its a book about friendship. Its a book about love.

I know the title says its about sharing the Faith, and the subtitle describes it as a practical manual, but sharing the Faith is a most refined expression of friendship and loveand love involves both deeds and words. Love involves a world of practicalities.

The traditional definition of love is to will the good of the other. We can wish no greater good for the people we know than that they live the Faith. The Faith is a gift weve received from God and want to share with all our friends. And the more we live the Faith, the more we want to share it; and so the Faith inspires us to make still more friends.

God created us for such a life. He created us for friendship. We are social beings, drawn to conversation and companionship. We prefer to work with other people who share our goals. We prefer to live in towns and neighborhoods. We mark our years off by times of celebration when we gather with others: birthday parties, holidays, vacations, and reunions. Friendship is a natural good that draws us to still higher goods. It draws us outside ourselves, toward others, so that we can share the goods we have, both material and spiritual. Friendship is all about a marvelous exchange, and the marvel is all the greater when we bring it to a supernatural level.

Friendship is the ordinary context for Christian witness in the world that God created. Terry Barber knows this, and so his manual is distinctively Catholic and different from some I knew when I was a young Protestant minister. Mr. Barber has written a manual that is practical, but he never leads us to turn people into projects or objects. People are meant to be friends, and friends are meant to be enriched by our gift of faith. Friendship, which is good by nature, can grow infinitely better by grace and can continue forever in heaven.

This book couldnt be more timely. Recent popes have, for decades, been calling the Church to a New Evangelization. In 1983 John Paul II announced that the New Evangelization was to be officially launched in 1992, because that would mark the five hundredth anniversary of the founding and first evangelization of the Americas. In preparation for that launch, he published an encyclical in 1990, Redemptoris Missio , and there he stated: I sense that the moment has come to commit all of the Churchs energies to a New Evangelization.... No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church, can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples.

Note that there are no exemptions. Everybody is called to evangelize. Everybody is called to commit all energies and resources to this task.

Pope Benedict XVI, in turn, took up the theme with gusto, making it the focus of a world synod of bishops and a dominant motif in his Year of Faith. He clarified our mission. He stated frankly that we need to evangelize not only the people who have never heard of Christ, but also our neighbors who have been de-Christianized . It is sad that we can speak of many once-Christian people who have drifted from their baptismal commitment.

Whats so new about the New Evangelization? First of all, its to be carried out not just by missionaries, and not just by clergy, but by everyone. Its the job description of all the members of the Church. And, since most Catholics are laypeople, that means it will primarily be the work of laypeoplemen and women, boys and girls, who witness to the Faith in the very ordinary circumstances of their workaday and school-day livesin the context of their friendships.

But how? We laypeople dont preach like priests and deacons. Most of us dont teach like professors. How will we do it? Thats what this book is all about: the nitty-gritty, practical, everyday, workplace, neighborhood, school, and home application of our universal call to go out to all the world and tell the Good News.

The Church exists, said Pope Paul VI, in order to evangelize. Evangelization is the work of the whole Church. Evangelization is what we dosimply because were Christian, simply because were Catholic .