Excerpt: A River winds through your life

Limpopo River, Mozambique by Cary Humphries (National Archives, public domain)

An excerpt from Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story: Tools, Tips, and Testimonies,  Chapter One: What Is a Faith Story? Part 1 of 4 parts

A river runs through my life. It flows over pebbles and around jagged boulders. It twists and turns, disappearing into the dark underground, and then rises abruptly until it breaks forth into a glistening waterfall. This river always was a part of my life but, except for a few rare glimpses of it, I was unaware it was the faithful stream of God’s presence.

Whenever I saw people bubbling over with the presence of God, I wanted that radiance, that joy! Reflecting in my spiritual journal on the witness of their lives through their stories fed my longing to attain that joy. Was God calling me to evangelize? I didn’t know how to answer that call. I wasn’t sure what evangelization meant or whether God calls all Christians to evangelize. Pope Saint Paul VI wrote:

Here lies the test of truth, the touchstone of evangelization: it is unthinkable that a person should accept the Word and give himself to the kingdom without becoming a person who bears witness to it and proclaims it in his turn. (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 24)

All Christian evangelization is based on the Great Commission Jesus gives to the Apostles in Matthew 28:19-20:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.

I’m a writer and not a teacher, catechist, preacher, religious sister, or theologian. I searched for a way that the Great Commission applied to me. I like the USCCB’s statement that evangelization is “the proclamation of salvation in Jesus Christ and the response of a person in faith, which are both works of the Spirit of God” (Go and Make Disciples: A National Plan and Strategy for Catholic Evangelization in the United States, 10). That’s a declaration I can relate to and live by, knowing that both the proclamation and my response (as well as my proclamation and someone’s response to it) are works of the Holy Spirit.

I asked the Holy Spirit to show me how to evangelize. How do I proclaim my faith in response to God? How do I proclaim my faith so that others will respond to him?

The Holy Spirit answered by reminding me of those times I sensed the presence of God and felt the effervescence that I detected in others. He connected those times of joy and added others, until gradually the river emerged into full view. I saw this living stream of God’s presence as the source fulfilling my heart’s desire to evangelize. The river of my Catholic faith story is God’s ongoing work in transforming me into the person he created.

Next time: The Value of a Faith Story,  Part 2 of What is a Faith Story?