Start with your spiritual journal
A woman writing at sunset (Dollar photoclub)
Editor’s Note: This four-part series, Start with your Spiritual Journal, is taken from Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story: Tools, Tips, and Testimonies by Nancy HC Ward. The series begins with Part 1: How do we start? Part 2 covers A Journal versus a Spiritual journal and Part 3 presents Best Practices.Part 4: The Blessings of Journaling concludes the series. Enjoy!
Part 1: How do we start?
If we are meant to be evangelists, as unique expressions of God’s presence, how do we start?
Saint John Paul II coined the term “the new evangelization.” In reiterating this call in his message to World Youth Day attendees in 2005, he said:
The Church needs genuine witnesses for the new evangelization: men and women whose lives have been transformed by meeting with Jesus, men and women who are capable of communicating this experience to others. (7)
We fulfill our baptismal call to evangelize, with the new fervor of the new evangelization, by sharing an experience of conversion, renewal, or healing from our faith story every time God gives us an opportunity.
One of the fundamental tools of evangelization emphasized in the early Church as well as the new evangelization is our firsthand witness of how we met the Lord Jesus, and what he is doing in our lives. Witnessing requires that we stop being content to know about the Lord, and get to know the Lord himself, personally and intimately. We want to witness from our hearts, not our heads. Regardless of our hesitancy to put into words our personal relationship with the Lord, much less share it aloud, we cannot hand on what we profess to believe unless it matches what we do privately and publicly.
The Apostles knew how to tell the story of how they met the Lord and developed a relationship with him, and how he transformed their hearts and therefore their lives. The events in the life of Jesus, from his first miracle at Cana through his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension, lived in their hearts. Their testimony-based evangelization came from what they had seen and heard from the Lord, not something they quoted from the story of someone else.
We have to be able to tell our story of how we met the Lord, and how our relationship with him is changing our lives. Like all evangelists, new or old, we are called to speak the truth of the faith as revealed in our experience and relationship with Jesus Christ—yes, that scary, vulnerable, stepping out in faith to share what God has done in our lives and how he transformed our hearts.
As “genuine witnesses for the new evangelization (. . .) whose lives have been transformed by meeting with Jesus,” we can wing it—or we can be ready and effective, as those “who are capable of communicating this experience to others.”
This book promises tools, tips, and testimonies. Journaling is the first of five tools that take us from wishful thinking to proactive evangelization. Our spiritual journal is crucial in preparing to share our faith.
Next time: Part 2: A Journal versus a Spiritual journal
