New Evangelizers Post: You Don't Have to Be a Saint to Save Someone

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.  

One of the biggest internal obstacles to people sharing the Gospel is their own personal sense of sinfulness. “How can I tell others to live more Christ-like when I don’t live the way I should?” This is the question that plagues so many of us. We all know that we are sinners. And yet we lament that the truths of the faith are not more easily shared in our society. We are shy about speaking up because of our shortcomings. It is similar to the feeling that parents feel when they try to enforce the rules on their children that they themselves flouted growing up.

But it goes deeper than that. Some people simply dismiss out of hand the idea that they could be called to a higher service to the Gospel. Perhaps there is an announcement after mass that they need volunteers for RCIA and you think, “I barely know my faith as it is, how do I help another?” Or perhaps there is a call for Eucharistic Ministers and you say to yourself, “I barely make it to Church on weekends as it is, they wouldn’t want me.” Or you might be in a conversation with a drinking buddy and he mentions that he doesn’t believe in God anymore. You want to say something but think, “He’s seen me at my worst and knows I shouldn’t be a hypocrite with any God talk.”

All of this points to the fact that we have generally accepted a great cultural lie that only the saints should do the preaching. But the opposite is actually true:

You don’t have to be a saint to save someone.

Do not misunderstand: all of us are called to be saints. We must make it our life’s work to live a life free of sin. Not all sin is deadly, but all sin is bad and destructive and it must be excised from our lives. The above statement is not meant as a bland acceptance of our fallen state, a shoulder-shrug to our sins as we go forward ignoring them. That is not at all what this means. The moment you simply accept any sin as a part of your life without working hard to eradicate it, then the soul is on its way to death.

However, this spiritual paralysis that I described at the beginning is also a real problem. One of the things I have learned in my time teaching religion is that so many of our young people reject the Catholic faith because no one has really shared it with them. This is more than a few words at PSR classes or the like. Many have not really experienced the explicit witness of Christ in their lives. Young people, whether they know it or not, are hungry for the Good News.

But if we all waited to be perfect, then the Gospel would never be proclaimed.

You can read the whole article here.