Evangelizing Millennials and GenZ (#025)

[Music] welcome back to the borough shire podcast we're so glad to be with you i'm brandon vaught one of the co-hosts and i'm here as i am every episode with my best friend the great father blake britton father blake good to see you man likewise always good to see you brother last month when we recorded our episode we shared with people that you had just transitioned to a new parish bishop noonan our bishop here in the diocese of orlando appointed you not just to one parish but to a cluster of three parishes that you're now overseeing and i know when we recorded last time it it had just happened i think it was like your first week there but now that we're we're past holy week which was a big transition for you how's it been the first few weeks now at your new cluster of parishes yes well as you can see i have a little bit of a better background this time the books the books keep adding in your background i've noticed by the way every time we film there's like another bookshelf another set of books [Laughter] yeah i believe the last time it was sort of like i was in a closet you know space or filming out of the trunk of a car or something you know but um but yeah so i've settled in thankfully i'm excited to get back into a routine that's always one of the most difficult things i think is is you know when you move your routine is disturbed especially when you're somewhere for for multiple years you sort of get into a regular daily rhythm and that of course is always upset by by movement so i'm starting to get into the rhythm of things it's wonderful to be with three parishes and two schools and um and i'm thankful to god that we can continue this podcast i want viewers of this episode if you're listening on the podcast you won't be able to see this but if you're viewing the youtube version to note the background behind father blake look at all those books and then notice how many of them bear the distinctive spine of ignatius press so big shout out to our friends at ignatius press i'm hope hoping this makes its way to mark brumley the ceo our good friends over there notice all of the product placement we do on the burrow shire podcast for ignatius press books you can always tell it's ignacious because it has that little stripe at the top of the book that has the author's name and father blake and i joke whenever we go to bookstores together if there's a religion section a theology section a catholic section the first thing we always do is make the ignacious press pass so you just scan your eyes over the shelves and you look for those distinctive spines and you know those will be good books so um this episode is not sponsored by ignatius press but we are open to yes to ignatius press sending us free books in exchange for mentioning them and highlighting them in the background absolutely we are shamelessly open to that taking place um and as you could probably see i don't know if it's visible on the camera perfectly but here there's also little benedict the 16th who's hiding i'm not able to have my full cut out but i have to have at least one image of pope benedict the 16th always anytime that i'm doing a recording session so he's there as well and also of course with his entire i think he has two shelves back there uh and so yes ignatius press thank you for for donning my library with your wonderful books broshire podcast sponsored by ignucia's press okay 1999. actually i'll tease this out here i'm sure we'll say more about it later but blake and i are contributors to a book that will be published by ignatius press this fall i won't share the title or the topic yet we'll share that soon i believe they've said it's coming out in september of 2021 so we're both extremely thrilled to be uh publishing a book with with this publisher we've long admired yeah very much so very much so i mean i i've read them for so many years especially of course the main reason is my love for joseph ratzinger they're one of the premier translators of ratzer in the english language with von balthazar in the whole community movement um so i've been reading ignatius press for years you know but but this is not a podcast on ignatius press that could be another podcast ignatius press and obsession brandon vaught and father blake i was not planning on devoting the first five minutes to ignatius but it happened when i saw the background of your video there this is live people this is all right let us transition to the actual topic of today's discussion which is evangelizing millennials and gen z generation z so father blake and i are both millennials i think the way they they categorize that it depends on what survey or what group is studying the the demographics but usually it's if you were born somewhere between say 1980 1985 and the mid to late 1990s you're considered part of generation uh the millennial generation so right again that's myself that's father blake people that are in there maybe very late 20s early to mid 30s those are millennials and then generation z would be the the next generation after it i think many people draw the cut off line around the year 2000 if you were born after the year 2000 i'm always amazed now father blake when i follow the nba which i'm a hardcore devotee of nba basketball and now i'm seeing players coming into the nba you know a lot of the youngest guys are 18 19 years old but it'll say birthday 2003 right what you were born in 2003 like that i can't fat and then of course they look like they're 40 year old men they look like they're older than me but they were born in the 2000s but they're twice our height you know yeah twice our height five times as strong as fast but i always tell it in a bit of a different way you're the athlete i'm the nerd uh so i'm like did you watch the original pokemon with the original ass ketchup or did you do you watch this sort of new you know weird pokemon i think it's not like pokemon magenta or something you know i'm the original pokemon blue pokemon red so did you watch the original dragon ball z or did you watch dragon ball z kai you know like those are the distinguishing factors in my book nice but we'll kind of cover both of those generations in this episode so we're not drawing a hard distinction between millennials and gen z this is basically on how do you evangelize young people okay so anyone say below 35 above maybe 12 15 somewhere in that range we regularly receive emails here in the podcast suggesting topics suggesting episodes and i know we've gotten a handful about this topic from parents from fellow millennials and gen zeurs themselves saying how can we bring the gospel to this particular generation i think maybe first of all let's recognize that behind that question is a really good intuition namely that evangelization just there's not like one set of blanket strategies that works for everybody of every age that there is something important about recognizing the way we share the gospel with a 20-something or a 30-something is going to be different than the way we present it to a 50-something a 60-something a 70-something that we need to account for among other things age life experiences interests culture the environment in which they were developed so just asking that specific question how do we evangelize this specific demographic i think puts their finger on an important evangelization principle yeah very much so i mean we're going to speak about this a little bit later but the second vatican council is adamant on that this is the whole concept of the jornamento that renewal so it's not so much renewing what the church teaches because that's evergreen i mean you can never change the truth the truth the truth is objective and eternal but the manner in which we present the truth meaning the form of the truth the content remains the same the form may be adaptable according to the circumstances and the needs of our time and so that's you're right that's a very keen insight from our audience uh that you cannot evangelize the millennials the way that you did the greatest generation because the greatest generation which is the world war ii generation didn't have youtube uh they didn't watch anime they didn't play video games so there's a different paradigm there that we have to address i know a lot of times whenever i've been with bishop baron and people will ask him hey bishop you know what's the first step to evangelization i want to do what you're doing i want to go and make videos and create websites and share the gospel online and do all this stuff what should i do first and for years he's always given the same answer he said well the first thing you should do is read number two read and number three read and his his point was that look even before you begin the strategic work of you know what format and what message and all that kind of stuff you have to first shape yourself and i thought that'd be a good starting point here for our discussion about evangelization is that even before you get into the specifics of who the audience is how can we tailor the message of the gospel to them there first needs to be an inward turn you know a focus on evangelizing ourselves making sure the gospel has captured us making sure that christ has conquered our own heart and has shaped our own mind and will so that we're ready to become evangelist so let's start there how how do we begin forming ourselves to become evangelists yeah i mean i would adapt a bishop baron's statement which is a very good statement um but i would say be holy be holy be holy that's the first step of becoming a true evangelist um so you're right there's some fundamentals that we that we have to follow before we can truly go out and to preach the gospel and it's i think it's predicated on christ and his interaction in bethany which i typically call in sacred scripture the school of prayer this is the school of contemplation christ regularly uses bethany as this place and specifically the character of mary um of bethany he'll use her as an example of the primary responsibility of a christian which is not to do something but to be a someone to be at the feet of a someone so you see that interaction between christ martha and mary for example you have martha preparing cleaning we all know the story mary's sitting at the feet of jesus and jesus says mary has chosen the better part i know it's popular nowadays to say well you need a little bit of martha a little bit of mary but jesus doesn't say that he says mary chose the better part period which she is doing is primary what she is doing is foundational if we want to really follow christ if we really want to preach the gospel it will not be rooted in activity first it's going to be rooted in receptivity and sitting at the feet of the master and so step number one of being a good evangelist is prayer we have to actively engage on a regular basis with jesus christ specifically through the sacred liturgy the mass and the sacrament of reconciliation those must be staples in our life and they have to become a regular staple of our life for an extended period of time before we'll have the chops that we need to go out and start engaging the world and so i always encourage people who ask me the same question you know father blake how do i do this how do i do that step number one is be still as it says in the psalms be still and know that i am god we have to know what we're preaching before we can properly preach it so sitting at the feet of jesus adoring him in the holy eucharist in silent contemplation receiving his divine mercy monthly in the sacrament of reconciliation these things are necessary are presuppositional foundational to being a good evangelist and then after that you can couple it of course with study contemplative study there's a great book that you and i referred to frequently called uh the intellectual life um and it's it's by sir tiliage i can never say his name how do you say the language thank you i i always get it wrong i always want to make it more french than it actually sounds so tilians you know but uh but it's a fantastic little book and in there he'll mention how study also must be an act of prayer so before we can truly be intellectual before we can go out into the world we must also be people of study as bishop baron says read read read the church fathers the catechism the sacred scriptures to have christianity really be in our bones and the final point that i would say and definitely brandon could elaborate on this as well the final point that i would mention is community and healthy friendships that is possibly one of the areas where we are lacking most right now in the church is having uh healthy active communities of faith and when i say communities i don't mean like a parish i mean friends groups of friends who are journeying together seeking sainthood and they have this small group of maybe three or four families it could be or you know two or three people or like you and i our own friendship which then flows over to family life and flows over to our parishioners but these friendships that are really rooted in just a mutual desire for holiness that also is essential christ teaches us that by his relationship with the 12 apostles he spends three years with these men day in and day out eating in the same place sleeping in the same place preaching in the same place sharing everything with them before he goes upon the cross because he wants to really have a community to work with and to share with that community so that my community might become the one holy catholic and apostolic church those are all great tips and suggestions and it strikes me hearing you talk about each one of them that they all conduce or they all lead to the same goal which is to help you to know christ jesus that we we celebrate the sacraments so we can know christ jesus we read so we can know him better we enjoy community so we can see him glorified more the purpose is to help draw us into a deeper relationship with christ which is the prerequisite to sharing him with others you know i think if i was trying to just tell somebody about a person i had never met or i had never known there would only be so much i could do so many facts i could convey to make that third person compelling to the person i'm speaking it to you know say grab any historical figure from the 14th century and if i'm trying to tell a contemporary today about that person i could describe them i could tell about their birth and where they lived maybe a few stories from their life but it wouldn't be nearly as grabbing or compelling as if i was telling them about somebody i personally knew somebody i was close with someone i had conversed with someone i knew at the level of the heart and and i'm almost excitedly conveying that you need to know this person too you would love this person you would love to get to meet them you would love to get to know them they would make your life so much better to me that's that's the fundamental prerequisite of evangelization before we get into demographics or tips or strategies or styles whatever you have to know christ jesus you know maybe that's maybe that's why that book has always been my favorite spiritual book by frank sheed it has just that title to know christ jesus and i think it's because that's the bedrock that's why all of the things you just described father blake are so important because they all lead to somebody knowing christ yeah this is what i call in my own you know vernacular becoming an icon becoming an icon um or the theology of iconography so of course you know icons are a form of art but that artistic form is based upon a deeper theological principle which is the fact that the ultimate icon is if you read the original greek of the sacred scriptures is christ they call him icos theon uh the icon of god he is the perfect image of the fathers the way that we translate it into our english scriptures christ is an and aikos what that means in greek is a window or an insight into the divine whenever you see christ of course you see the father as he says in the gospel of john well the same is true of us that's the point of the sacramental life of the church when we're baptized when we're confirmed when we receive the holy eucharist we are meant to become an icon and achos this insight this window if you will into the divine and that speaks much more powerfully to people and it also bolsters your message in a very powerful way because you're putting your money where your mouth is people are able to easily disagree with the idea of something what they can't disagree with is when they come up against the reality itself they may hate celibacy in the priesthood i use this example on a regular basis just because it's you know impinged on my own reality as a priest but they may hate the idea of celibacy in the priesthood and think that it's ridiculous or medieval or old hat but they can't disagree with the fact that i'm a happy celibate that when they meet me i'm a priest who enjoys this lifestyle who finds it life-giving and fulfilling so in an abstract way they can say oh this is ridiculous and celibacy do the churches get with the times but when they when they butt up against me and meet me in real life i'm embodying this abstraction now all of a sudden they're the loss for words because the fact of the matter smacks them in the face and i'm here saying well you can disagree with this abstractly but i'm living this actually and i'm finding not only am i at peace but i'm at joy with this lifestyle and it's fulfilling the very depths of my being so that challenges them now to take it a little bit more seriously all right so once we got those bedrock principles in place as you said be holy be holy be holy which is another way of saying grow close to christ know him personally develop his own joy within you once we got all that down now we're finally ready to consider the the task of evangelizing millennials and genzirs one of the first moves to make and i think you and i would be here in agreement is to survey the landscape um i think of that great line from the second vatican council it was it ended up becoming one of the one of the mottos of the council which was to read the signs of the times in fact that and pope john the 23rd opening address i believe he refers to that as sort of the um the the guideline for what the council is about it's not just about looking inward and focusing on the church's inner dynamics but opening the windows and the doors of the church to look out and engage the broader culture reading the world around us so that we're able to recollect ourselves and better prepare ourselves to share the gospel with the culture of today say a little bit more about that idea because i it can be misunderstood reading the signs of the times so what does it and what does it not mean yeah so the way it could be misunderstood it's always you know good to start there is reading the signs of the times does not mean to agree or to condone the signs of the times or to or to accommodate the church to the surrounding culture to become like the times exactly and that's how it's both been misinterpreted as well as misapplied so um some people misinterpret that reading as you know the church saying oh we just need to get hip and with it i mean some people will actually apply it that way so they'll say yeah the church is you know old hat we really do need to to get with it so let's go ahead and change some of the church's fundamental teachings and etc so that's is not what it means that was not the vision of the second vatican council saint john the 23rd is emphatic on that point over and over and over again in this opening address of vatican ii this council cannot change truth it cannot change the fundamental deposit of the faith that is given by jesus christ it's not the job of the church to change the teachings of jesus it's the job of the church to present those teachings with vigor with joy and with love and to safeguard their solemnity and their dignity and so when it comes to reading signs and times what it's talking about there is having wisdom having insight a keen eye i think the fundamental principle can be found in the gospel of matthew when jesus says be as gentle as a dove as cunning as a serpent so there the lord is giving us this forum if you will this way of the evangelist one is gentleness like a dove so it's this subtlety it's this humility an ability to discern and to to see the things around you but also there's a cunningness to recognize those trends that are going on in society and to now use those to the advantage for the sake of the gospel uh pope benedict xvi will speak about this in his his wonderful book introduction to christianity in the first several chapters and he'll mention how christians really have to be men and women of their age and i found that striking when he mentioned that and again he doesn't mean be men and women of their age in the negative sense to take on the sins of that age but they have to be very much immersed and invested in their age we can't have a fight or flight mentality about the world that's not how the church exists she is in the world and this is what allows her to see the seeds of faith as the church fathers say the seeds of faith within the trends of the world so right now for example we have this uptick in artists like cardi b or you know or little snazz x which i have my own opinions on the vulgarity and how disgusting their music is and how um how utterly degrading it is to human culture but as we look at their popularity we have to ask why because the human person is never attracted to something because it is evil saint augustine teaches us that there's always gold wherever gold is to be found so the human person can only be attracted by something because either a there's a good in it or b there's a misconceived good in it so there's a good that they think is in there that they're misconceptualizing is present in that reality the duty for us is to read those signs okay why is cardi b so popular what is she tapping into is her form vulgar absolutely and inappropriate absolutely but that doesn't mean that what she's presenting is not stirring the hearts of millions of people because it is and we have to find out why that is so we could bring them out of that vulgarity and bring them down to the fullness of the truth of the gospel reminds me of a line that's often misattributed at gk chesterton which says that every man knocking on the door of a brothel is actually looking for god right what he thinks he'll find in the arms of the prostitute is actually the deepest hunger of his heart for love and for intimacy that he can only find in god it also reminds me of the pauline strategy paul line strategy of becoming all things to all men that to do that you have to be familiar with the culture around you in order to be winsome and attractive to people with whom you hope to evangelize you know it's exactly what paul did himself in athens greece on right hill of the areopagus mars hill one of my favorite passages in the new testament acts chapter 17 because he's he goes to athens and first begins to evangelize in the synagogues i've always liked that detail that's that's his first place he first goes to the people that are already in tune with religion you know the jews who already recognize god who already recognized the old testament they already have a religious sensibility he goes first to them and proposes this new exciting truth of christ risen from the dead but then while he's doing that he's invited by these pagan greek philosophers to come to this mars hill and tell them about his new message and what he does on his way up the hill is he takes note of the surrounding greek culture which he would have already been somewhat familiar with so that when it's time for him to proclaim the gospel he begins by first complementing their religiosity he says i notice you're a very religious people so he's looked at the signs of the times he's read that okay these people have statues they have altars they have religious symbolism and incense okay there there's something there some shared bridge some seed of faith that we can work with and then he quotes their own poets that famous lion and and him whom we live and move and have our being you know is a line from one of the ancient greek poets so he's reflecting back to them their own culture their own poetry their own language and then finally he says i notice you have this altar to an unknown god so again a master of reading the signs of the times he notices their their cultural institutions and and buildings and architectural features he notices their poetry and then he notices this altar and he ties all that together and directs it toward christ and says i'm here to proclaim that god to you the god that your altar is set up toward the god of whom your poets have been speaking unconsciously the gods whom all your religious longings are pointing that's whom i'm presenting to you i've always seen that as exactly the pattern for 21st century evangelists is we have to be people that are equally conversant and uh and familiar with the culture around us i think you said earlier something that i see a lot sadly in catholic circles is a very antagonistic relationship to culture that you know music video games movies news any cultural events anything that involves sin or vice which is almost everything is bad and in order to maintain our own purity as a christian culture we need to resist all that and there's some truth to that yes we need to protect our own virtue and purity we can't we need to be you know uh in the world but not of the world all that stuff is true but if you're completely antagonistic if you're completely against the times and against the culture you'll be evangelically impotent right you'll have no engagement with the culture which is a prerequisite for evangelization right and you're also negating the full ramifications of the incarnation of jesus christ embraces the world for god so loved the world it is not that so god so loved the perfect god so loved the flawless the immaculate for god so loved the world the fact that god becomes flesh is him now embracing the world and all of its brokenness yet yet he was without sin it says in the sacred scriptures so he both embraces the world while maintaining his own sinlessness and dignity and that's possible for us as well we can embrace the world we can help redeem the world by the merit of christ and his crucifixion but that doesn't mean that we have to sin at the same time or we have to modify our own morality according to the morality of the world so there's a balance to be struck there that we as christians really need to discern and that's why we mentioned the beginning prayer is essential sitting at the feet of jesus if not you're going to go one of two ways and they're both extremes which is always unhealthy either one you're going to go into the world at which time you'll see the sin and the evil you might commit some of that sin and evil then it frightens you and then you run away you sort of become a hermit of of the world or the other extreme is you're going to embrace it whole cell and go into mortal sin yourself you know so those are sort of the two avenues i've seen christians go down especially as a spiritual director director and confessor um unfortunately i see those two extremes you have people who are terrified of the world because they're so afraid of sinning and then you have those who are like well you know what everybody else is going there anyway so might as well do it and those are the sort of two most popular responses that i find to the world well there's another way and that is the truly christian way the way of christ the way of the saints which is being in the world but not allowing the world to define who you are in christ because that can only come from the heart of jesus that's why i think it's so important you emphasize earlier the need for friendships and community to have this home base from which you can go out into the culture but then retreat that right we're home in christ in the church among our christian friends we're not home in the world the world is not our home we're spiritually homeless but if you don't have that that safe hub from which you come and to which you can return then when you go out to read the signs of the times and engage the culture you'll take up residence there that that right reshape your identity and you'll find yourself home there rather than in the arms of christ yes um something else that i wanted to um talk about is and i i keep thinking of bishop baron i know i keep recognizing his name but it's only because i think he's the best at this of of finding the seeds of the word reading the signs of the times i think of someone like bishop baron and think you know he watches x number of movies a year not so much because of coronavirus anymore but you know he'd go to the movies once every week or once every other week he would see every new movie that comes out and then in response he'd produce these youtube commentaries looking at the spiritual the religious themes he listens to music all the time he's not a huge fan of contemporary music you know but he bob dylan knows backward and forward has memorized the lyrics to basically every bob dylan song because he's listened to it dozens and dozens of times i see someone like bishop barron and what clicks for me is that to evangelize the culture in this way by reading the signs of the times and using those as springboards for evangelization you have to be a student of the culture and know it extremely well so for example like you know one of your interests is video games like you know that world really really well and you play a lot of video games you've you've enjoyed them for years partly because they're a form of entertainment right but also for this reason that that whole world you've now moved into as a mission field of evangelization and so by playing these games and studying these games and reading articles and watching trailers and all like by living in that world you're becoming a more credible witness to the gospel in that world and absolutely it's an important point because i i hear from a lot of catholics that that feel guilty that say i'm really interested in fashion you know i read fashion magazines and i follow fashion interest i look at the you know the great trends and desires people have fashion wise and i feel guilty for being so infatuated with that or you know change it to whatever other niche or hobby or interest you want from basketball to video games to whatever but in every one of those areas there's an opportunity for that person to say okay god put this interest on your heart you're interested in in fashion in a way that like father blake and i aren't like that's not at all our realm of interest which means that that's what my fashion wardrobe's quite limited [Laughter] what what are the new trends in priestly wardrobe well black and more black today should i do black or off black but my point is that neither you nor i are ever in a million years gonna evangelize anyone in the world of fashion that's just a mission field that we have no access to because it's not a point of interest for us but it is for a lot of other people including some who listen to this show you know or take say the realm of basketball for me or video games for you or books or whatever it is that what i want to resist here is the idea that like all culture is bad and we should feel guilty for becoming interested in going deeper and learning about some particular field i'd like to flip that on its head and think well maybe that's the area that's the the niche that god is calling you to evangelize to bring the gospel to yeah yeah that is so important brandon i mean what you're bringing up there brother is what i call the catholicity of reality if you want to read an outstanding book by d.c schindler called the catholicity of reason now i warn you uh that it's very deep and it is thick and what i mean by that is not so much lengthwise as it is just it's it's a substantial dense work uh philosophically because he is a a dense philosopher i mean he really is a a very in-depth one of the leading philosophers in the world especially the english speaking world but in there he he highlights the fact that catholicity is not a denomination of christianity catholicity is a fundamental principle of reality because it's rooted in god and so catholicity that word catholos does not mean universal it means according to the whole according to the whole w-h-o-l-e in other words when something's catholic that means that it takes into account the entirety of reality and it embraces the entirety of a reality not just partially part of a reality uh and that's something important for us as catholics to remember that we are a people who through christ have been given the ability to embrace the whole of reality so for example you have pornography pornography is not the whole of reality it highlights a perversion of reality which is the gift of human sexuality but that does not mean that human sexuality is an evil and so as catholics we're called to do is embrace human sexuality not as the porn industry does and not as tv shows do or movies but to embrace human sexuality now in its wholeness and its completeness and a very good example that would be the theology of the body by saint john paul the second there is a catholic embrace of sex one that sees it according to the whole reality of what it is is a spiritual and corporal gift from the father and we're called to do the same as catholics and this would also help us evangelize across culture it's amazing as you look throughout church history to see that we have saints who are scientists saints who were poets saints who were engineers saints who were medical doctors judges lawyers they were people who recognized that god was not against their desire but rather god was for the purification and the focusing of their desire and this allowed them to then redeem an entire field of human endeavor such as law medicine literature literature whatever it might be and we are lacking that severely in the church right now we've handed over literature we've handed over science to lesser men and it's important for us to really reclaim that for the prestige of the catholic church so let's wrap up this first general principle of reading the signs of the times i think maybe a good way to summarize it is if we're talking about evangelizing millennials and genders in particular read the signs ask yourselves what are these two generations interested in what's trending in their world what's getting them fired up and alive where do they turn their eyes how do they spend their money what do they focus their thoughts on and then the obvious follow-up question is why why are they interested in those things what are those what are those songs or movies or events or celebrities or people stirring in their hearts that they're not getting from elsewhere that the church isn't providing them or their family or their friends what's what's the the longing that's being expressed through their infatuation with these things um that the answers to those questions i think obviously depend on each individual person and so i want to add that obvious caveat right from the beginning that there's no monolithic generation z or monolithic millennial person they're gonna differ person to person but if if you're a fellow millennial like us if you're a gen zer and you want to bring the gospel to your generation those are the first questions to ask yourself right all right let's turn to another good principle here the art of accompaniment um we've obviously been hearing a lot about this from our current holy father pope francis it's a favorite phrase of his he's always encouraging and recognizing the art of accompaniment this is another one that i think is powerful and profound when understood the right way it could be misunderstood the wrong way maybe we'll start on that and like we did before what what does accompaniment not mean right yeah a company does not mean sinning with your friends to put it simply oh you know well dad i was just accompanying my friends as they drank at that party you know that's part of accompaniment dad um so yeah the art of incompetent most certainly is not lowering your your standards or lowering or lowering your morals um or your ideals for the sake of another uh and that's important for us to understand because that is sometimes what is dumbed down to and this is the result of this dumbing down of catholicism that we always hear about um and it's very important for us to realize that that is happening and it's not good it's not good uh and so art of accompaniment does not mean that we should lower our standards or the teachings of the church in order to match the standards of the world or those people around us we are not the lord will never ask us to sin for the sake of evangelization i often use john the uh john vianney as an example john vianney evangelized and converted prostitutes he did not have to be with a prostitute to do that he did not have to sin with a prostitute to do that he could do it because he recognized that what was deeply in the heart of that prostitute which was not her perversion or her prostitution it was her desire for the purity and the love of christ and this is what is what allowed him to accompany now these men and women and bring them fully into the life of the church so again that's not that's not what the art of accompaniment is it's not about sitting with others it's about doing what saint john vianney did and all the other saints of recognizing the aches in people's hearts and then journeying with them it's an organic development uh i i have a funny story to share about that uh because i i learned the art of accompaniment uh on my own in several ways and this is just a point that i want to mention to uh to our viewers and our listeners it's very uh essential and i learned this from saint augustine when i was about 13 or 14 years old it's very essential that if something happens in your daily life reflect on it it was socrates who said the unreflected life is not worth living if something happens in your daily life that really touches you that that really uh or something is stirred within you evokes a very powerful emotional response um or very kind of gut reaction you need to sit with that later in the day in silence and reflect on it don't let it just rise up inside of you and pass away because you will learn so much about reality not just yourself but reality as a whole from reflecting on those experiences and one such experience was uh i was involved in a very horrific car accident a number of years ago i'm actually very lucky to be alive and i was unscathed thank god but a young girl she had actually just gotten her driver's license bless her heart she was texting and driving ran a stop sign and just rammed right into me our cars flipped into she went through a brick wall on the side of a church actually you know and i ended up flipping and going off to another place my car was completely totaled and so was hers and so that necessitated that i started using public transportation it was actually a very humbling experience for me because i was on a hospital rotation as a seminarian at that point so i had to start using public transportation now and i'm thankful for that you know reality is always for you and part of that was that i had to travel for a conference from miami to jacksonville so i used what they called the mega bus it's like a double decker bus it is just greyhound but bigger it's basically what it is in the same kind of saucy crowd as well um and so i'm ashamed to admit that what i did was i i actually bought my seat and i bought every seat around me so that no one else would sit around me during the travel because i was so nervous about going that far in the kind of characters that would come on the bus so i bought about four seats so i'd have my space i brought my bravery i brought some ratzinger to read and i thought okay this is gonna be a several hour bus ride that is splendid and i'm gonna be safe and no one's gonna be around me um and so i'm there at the bus stop i get onto the bus and literally right after me this guy comes on he runs down the middle aisle and rips his shirt off he has tattoos all over him he starts swinging his shirt around and the conductor of the bus came up had to settle them down you know uh had to threaten to kick him off the bus and i thought dear god please don't let him come anywhere near me please lord and he came and he sat right next to me right next to me and at that moment i had to make a choice i mean i could have reported him to the conductor and of course escorted him off i had paid for that seat but i'm sitting there and i'm reading my bravery and i thought you know lord i have to trust that there's something in this that's for me like you're allowing this experience to happen and so i closed my bravery and he said you know hey man what is that and i said well that's it's called a brief or what have you said oh do you read about jesus and that thing i said yeah he said jesus is my favorite that's the biggest cat i got and he showed me this huge tattoo that he had of the head of jesus on his left shoulder blade anyways we got into this conversation he shared with me how he had recently been released from from prison in miami for uh dealing cocaine and uh we were talking back and forth he had apparently an estranged son from his from his girlfriend that he was going to go up and see in jacksonville and we got into this conversation we spoke the entire bus ride and by the end of it he divulged to me that he was actually baptized as a catholic but of course left the church in his teenage years but he said that that conversation really inspired him to see about entering back into his catholic faith now i don't know if he ever did i don't know what the outcome i still actually pray for him regularly but the fact of the matter is that in my willingness to be with him to laugh at him showing me the big tattoo that he had of jesus on his shoulder blade to hear his crazy stories just my willingness to share time with him to accompany him was very touching to his heart and his soul and it made him have a different perspective of his catholic faith that he had never had before that is the art of accompaniment accompaniment is not always glorious and it's not always convenient but it is what touches the heart of people and what he saw in that moment was that i legitimately cared for him he saw that i was reading he saw that i had right next to me in the chair next to me is brandon and i always do in every travel a pile of books to read and yet i didn't touch them once for hours i mean the guy wasn't dumb he knew i had sacrificed my time with what i wanted to do to spend with him and that opened up the avenues for a possible conversion into the church that is the art of accompaniment what a beautiful story almost everything that pope francis says and does has the same residence of of that story i think again it's one of his great strengths he's been the great promoter of this term accompaniment but he lives it out you know how many times have we seen him embrace someone with some you know deformity of the body or some disease or a homeless person or you know whatever how many times have we seen him engage people whom the rest of the catholic culture kind of recoils toward because they have impure ideas or an impure lifestyle it seems to me that part of the impetus of this uh recoiling is driven by the same spirit as a lot of groups throughout history like the donatists or the essenes who are so adamant about protecting the purity of the church that we don't want to go out into the muck and the uncomfortability of the culture which you you have to do to evangelize i'm thinking here about christ our lord himself that like he constantly went into the unclean places with the unclean people he ate and dined with prostitutes and tax collectors it was one of the biggest grievances against him but he knew that he had to do that to accompany them to god that otherwise those people would just remain lost in their own and so it's it's like the fulfillment of his own parables you have to go out to the lost sheep into the messy dirty fields you can't stay in your locked cramped pen with all the sheep that have already been saved so maybe that's a good point of reflection for our fellow millennials and gen zers is you know whether it's a drug dealer whether it's prostitutes tax collectors or whatever those symbolize today in your own world you know who are the people who are the places that others in the church might say those those people that that world is so dirty and impure and i wouldn't go there but accompaniment demands it and again as as i'm saying that i i want to add the caveat which we wanted to do earlier like accompaniment doesn't mean cozying up to sin doesn't mean like when i say evangelize prostitutes do it like christ did it doesn't mean you have to sleep with prostitutes or you know watch pornography or nudity or whatever that's not that's not accompaniment accompaniment means meeting people where they are without endorsing their wayward proclivities and helping them take one step closer to christ or one step down a more moral path yeah yeah absolutely and that that will be touching to people because our society nowadays especially millennial gen z culture as you and i know is defined not by actually being satisfied with who people are but by molding them to whom we think they should be and that's true even in the quote-unquote tolerance and acceptance culture that tolerance and exceptions culture is an absolute lie they're only tolerant of what they define as being tolerable but they're not truly tolerant in the sense of thomas aquinas they're not tolerant of the sense of affirming the goodness and the love of christ within another and so yeah sure you'll be accepted into the instagram culture if you endorse their ideology if you pose the way they tell you to pose if you post how they tell you to post then you'll be popular and have a following but it's not real inclusivity in the proper sense only the church has actual inclusivity that doesn't include the degradations of whom we've made ourselves to be nor does it include this sense of what society tells you that you should be that you should be it's an inclusivity that includes who you were created to be your vocation the fullness of life that god has made for you and that can only be met whenever you really walk with someone authentically and you show yourself once again to be that icon of someone who's also seeking to be who you were truly created to be um and that that does touch people's hearts it reminds me of this story that a priest friend shared with me and i've shared this story before i think in one of my books and on social media but i thought it would be very appropriate to share it here under this heading of accompaniment um a priest friend was telling me about a pastor he knew who served in a church in this large downtown area that had a large population of gay people and there was this one particular transgender person who would regularly visit his church and he would light candles at the different shrines and the different side altars around the church and whenever he would come in he would always present present himself with great drama very theatrical and the way he moved and was wearing over the top wigs and hats and dresses he was never irreverent when he came in but you know naturally he captured everyone's attention everybody knew he was there the priest said that he would always greet this man with a smile and with kind words but then one day he found that the man was weeping in front of this shrine of our lady and the priest went up to him and he asked what was the matter and the man revealed that his mother had recently died i think she had died a few months before that and that his family knowing that he had adopted this transgender lifestyle had asked that he not attend the funeral as they thought that his presence would confuse and scandalize members of his close-knit uh baptist congregation so this gentleman was not a catholic he reluctantly complied so he missed his own mother's funeral and he said while the funeral was taking place which was happening right then he decided to come to this catholic church so that and then he kind of gestured to the statue of our lady so that he could be with his mother he then told the priest that all of his life he had been the object of derision and mockery and that he had known very little kindness but over the years he said he discovered that the one place he could go where he knew that someone would always be kind to him was the catholic church and even if someone wasn't kind to him there he could still find that kindness and the faces of the plastered saints that were surrounding the church the priest then said a few years passed by and he noticed that the man was not coming around as much as he often was and that when he did come around he kind of looked like a shadow of his former self he was gaunt he was moving more slowly wasn't as flamboyant and theatrical and so the priest made some inquiries and he found out that the man was gravely ill before the man died the priest visited him in the man's very disheveled apartment and he found that the man was utterly despondent he was sure that he was going to die alone that nobody loved him nobody wanted him none of his family had come to visit him he was worried that there would be no church to bury him but through the priest's intervention and by the grace of god the man became open to being received in the catholic church and shortly before he died he became catholic and the priest offered him a funeral mass he said there wasn't many people in attendance but those who did come they remembered the man from his theatrical visits you had the daily mass goers you had the rosary ladies people who knew him and then after the funeral they all stayed behind to light candles around the various altars and shrines including the shrine to our lady and pray for the repose of his soul and what my priest friend said when he was recounting this story to me he said i'm quoting him now verbatim this is precisely what pope francis means in his yearning for a church of mercy no one had to do anything to convince that man of his misery what he needed was to be convinced that he mattered and that he could be loved no moral teaching was compromised and letting the man know mercy that's what saved him yeah to me every time i hear the word accompaniment i think of that story because nowhere in that story did the priest you know scold him condescend him um no where did he was he condemned now i'm sure if the questions came up in conversation about about gender sexuality all of that stuff the priest would have stood right in line with the church he wouldn't have endorsed that wayward behavior but what he offered was the act of accompaniment that slowly over the period of several months that that gentleness and mercy led that man down a path that eventually resulted in him coming to know christ through the church that's the goal of accompaniment the goal of a company it's not to accompany someone like on a treadmill and keep them walking in place the goal is to accompany them somewhere like the disciples to emmaus you're moving away from jerusalem in the wrong direction let's turn you around and walk you back to where you need to go that's true accompaniment yes yes absolutely and that's it's going to that's what's going to make the church uh able to pierce through the crud of culture if you will or the anti-culture that's starting to be developed in society that our voice is going to sound different because it's going to keep the balance between not compromising the objective truths of for example sexuality or whatever might be marriage while simultaneously being able to pierce the hearts of those people who might be living those sinful lifestyles or aching for that kind of joy and love only the church can have that tension han jones von balthazar speaks about that that no others no other institution can have that because no other institution has jesus christ we're the ones who are founded upon the sacramental presence of jesus in the world and he's the only one that's able to maintain that tension between the sinner and the sin and able to embrace both and redeem both simultaneously and that's a grace given to the church as well so we definitely need to grow in that culture all right so reading the signs of the times the art of accompaniment let's talk about a couple more and we'll have to go i feel like this is always how we end up with our discussions it's like we'll have to rush through these last few ones quickly because we spent so much time on the earlier ones but there's two more points that we wanted to hit one of them was to know your stuff know your stuff and this maybe takes us all the way back to bishop baron's recommendation at the beginning of read read read if you have nothing inside your mind and your heart to share your evangelization will be empty it'll just be fumes you need to know your stuff know your faith know the reasons why you believe what you do you know traditionally this is called apologetics apologetics coming from the greek word meaning a defense referencing peter's admonition that you should always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is within you it doesn't mean being aggressive it doesn't mean proselytism it means just being prepared for to give an answer when someone asks you why you believe what you do or whenever you're put on the spot uh why is this so important and what can we do to get better at it yeah so um i always use luigi dasani in this particular dynamic because he is one of the foremost apologists of the 20th century hands down and what he calls the methodology of evangelization or the the method if you will of living so jasani for those who don't know monsignor luigi dasani actually had the privilege of making a pilgrimage to his grave in milan not too long ago he was a 20th century priest a professor and educator but he also was the founder of communion and liberation communion which is originally an italian movement uh that pope benedict 16th was very supportive of until this day but it also spread internationally and it's this movement that's entirely dedicated to that art of accompaniment how do you walk with others but also how do you show them how do you verify and this was was jason's word he used all the time verify verify verify what he means is if you're going to make a claim about a lifestyle if you're going to make a claim about the truth of something you're going to have to test it against reality so you have the apologetic of the world which currently is relativism or secularism so uh so the apologetic of the world is that there is no truth and that we could each do whatever we want jasoni says don't combat that verify it so if that's your claim and this is what he'll call the new form of apologetics you know this is the way that we that we're going to have to apologize the world nowadays because if not unless they see sort of the fruit of their own hands it's not going to be as effective and so you tell them i claim that jesus christ and the catholic church is the fullness of truth and this is why so yeah knowing your stuff there and then they can make the claim there is no truth that we can do whatever you want well you can try to verify that in your life and then i will verify this in mind and then we need to talk about who's is really satisfactory and adequate to the fullness of life which lifestyle actually is adequate and addresses all the different facets of our humanity it's very effective it's very effective and i actually use this on a regular basis in protestantism so when i'm confronted by the heresy of protestantism and people will sort of bring up with me you know well uh i for me it's just jesus is enough is a you know jesus alone is enough for me i don't need anything else i just you know it's a me and jesus kind of relationship and i'll say okay what does that mean what does that look like in reality whenever you say that my claim is that jesus has given us more than just a spiritual abstract relationship he's given us a concrete relationship in the life of the church and i explain my position in the incarnation your claim is that all those things are irrelevant to relationship with christ so can you help justify your claim and can you show me where that claim reaches its fruition through the sacred scriptures can you show me where that claim is found in the teachings of the early church you know so what you're doing there is that you're not being combative you're actually affirming if you will their claim or you're or you're sort of building up their claim and saying let's see if it stands but if it doesn't stand and it's amazing for me my own apologetics to see they immediately recognize whoa no wait this doesn't hold water this doesn't hold water okay so now we have to find out what does hold water what does hold water uh and and you could do the same thing with secularism if people say you know i claim that marriage can be whatever i want it to be or i could be with whoever i want to be or i could say that i'm a man or i'm a woman and that's fine well let's verify that let's see if that's a true claim let's see if it's appropriate to the form of reality and if it's not then you're going to have some questions to answer i don't i don't have to defend the claim because here's my claim here's my what i had the data i have to back it up you're making this claim and you have no data you're making this claim and there's nothing to it holds no water so you're going to have to provide me with some answers and it's a very effective form of evangelization but that again requires that we know what we're talking about that we ourselves have verified what we're talking about if i say that we in order to practice the fullness of christianity we need the body blood soul and divinity of jesus i have to verify that for myself as well that means i have to know that here i have to be a lover of the eucharist i have to understand the theology of the eucharist where it came from why the eucharist is essential to christianity why jesus instituted it in the gospel of john and in the synoptic gospels why is christ saying that unless you eat my body and drink my blood you don't have life within you i need to know that in my bones and not just know it in my brain i can't just know it abstractly i have to really experience it the eucharist gatheration would have you so this is what i call the incarnation of truth so truth has to be incarnated within me as well and so that's what i have to say um on that particular form of evangelization now when it comes to a more practical form of apologetics for example like what are some base level responses that i could give to transgenderism or i could give to um these different industries or secularism atheism i think something along the lines of the book that you recently published on what to say and how to say it or maybe some of these books by scott honor would have you would be very appropriate tools again to arm ourselves with the knowledge but that knowledge has to be verified all right so personal holiness reading the signs of the times the art of accompaniment knowing your stuff let's turn to one final thing to keep in mind when evangelizing millennials and ginsengers especially the young and it's the way of beauty the way of beauty also known as via pulchritudinous you'll see that phrase in the writings of pope benedict and pope francis bishop baron has become one of the great advocates in the english-speaking world of the via pulchritudinous it's something we pride ourselves on at word on fire i think a lot of people point back to hans ursman balthazar the swiss theologian who said when you look at these three great transcendentals of goodness truth and beauty we often try to lead with truth followed by goodness and then beauty if it ever comes into the picture is an afterthought you know so we want to tell people what to believe we want them to believe the truth we want to tell people how to behave you know shape up your moral life that's the goodness but then beauty is sort of just this ignored step child in the corner and what von balthazar proposed is to evangelize the world today it needs to be completely reversed we should lead with beauty so you attract someone with the lure of beauty show them a beautiful thing whether it's a beautiful piece of art a beautiful cathedral a beautiful poem a beautiful life you know something that draws somebody in because of the attractive beauty inherent in it but then from there you lead them to the good so they say something about this has captured me and i want to arrange my life in a direction that's oriented toward it you know i want my life to be in tune with the beautiful i see i think by the way this is this is exactly what happened in the end of the 20th century with mother teresa is mother teresa by the world's terms was the ugliest person in the world right she's this leads over nun filled with wrinkles and bony fingers i mean she's like the caricature of a witch i've heard her described that way as like an old bent over witch so by the world standard she's ugly by the standards of of the transcendent realm by the standards of god she was the most luminously beautiful creature on the planet one of our greatest saints right and so many people were captured by the beauty of her life by the beauty of how she gave all of herself for the sake of the sick and dying she was utterly for others not a not an ounce of selfishness in her way of life the beauty of her life led to the good meaning people were then led to change their own lives as a result of the beauty they saw in her they say i want to change my behavior to become more like her and then finally the last step is to the true when they say ah once i've been attracted to the beautiful i've changed my life to conform to the good now i want to find the truth that lies at the source of that goodness you know so back to mother teresa what is it that inspired her to live that way what truth caused her to radically give her life to the sake of the sick and dying she was very clear about it it's because of christ you did this to me whenever i help the beggar in the street i'm helping christ christ is the the fuel that ignited all that she did i've always liked that progression and i think i agree with von balthazar that in today's world with millennials and ginseers they're so turned off by truth claims and moral demands because that's all we've heard growing up is just believe this right thing because that's what you need to believe or just behave this way because you need to you need to live a good life that those things become non-starters for a lot of young people that you know in the world of relativism don't tell me what to believe everybody's got their own beliefs in the world of moral relativism don't tell me how to behave everyone can live their own way you do you i do me so those are non-starters evangelistically but the beautiful is non-threatening non-invasive attractive if we lead with beauty first it can often have uh much better results so be curious to get your thoughts on this via poker tutorinis yeah yeah most certainly i can give a personal testimony and then of course speak about the uh the more objective testimony but on a personal level i can tell you that's what fascinated or opened up the door for my great falling love with catholicism was beauty my mother thankfully gave me a great sentiment a great sense of beauty growing up because she herself was a classical musician studied in opera so i was surrounded by the beautiful on a regular basis classical music and we go to symphonies together and what have you but also the parish that i grew up with it had a very good sense of beauty and it was just something that fascinated me as a boy because i found a reality in the church that could not be found anywhere else in the world this goes back to the point we're making before that there's a danger when the church takes on different auspices of the world different practices of the world uh you know the world can do a rock concert way better than the church can it just can because rock and roll is of the world you know pop music is of the world so the church will never be able to do pop music as well as michael jackson no matter how how crisp we try to make our lyrics and how cool it may sound it's just not going to happen gregory enchant the world can't do you know incense the liturgy the beauty of of the mass this is something the world can not provide is impossible for the world to provide this is our corner market and those are the things that i found as a young boy growing up that just absolutely fascinated me why when i'm in this place within these walls do i feel something do i see something smell something that i don't anywhere else in the world and that eventually opened up my fascination and great love affair with catholicism that also opened up my heart to my vocation to the priesthood of jesus christ and we need to definitely reclaim that that sense of beauty so that's on a personal testament of how beauty formed my own catholic heart in a more objective sense you're absolutely correct the bible says so is not an adequate reason to follow the catholic religion and that's why i do prefer josani's method of evangelization and verification uh it's one thing to say that the bible says so it's another thing to show why the bible says it so that when the bible says it is greater you know to serve than to be served well actually that sounds like it sort of stinks you know i'd much rather be in a mansion with a bunch of servants the world says well we're gonna have to show the city of service and that's what you see in someone like teresa of calcutta when they witness that and then you maybe invite them to serve with you go feed a leper take care of an orphan help provide clothing for someone who's naked and then reflect and verify your thought your emotion what's happening in reality stop making it it's not making it an abstraction and start making something real and then it opens up to the beauty of what's actually taking place and so yeah absolutely i mean i agree of course if on balthazar i always have from the moment that i read that in his text and i do believe this will be the great way of evangelization moving forward will be the way of beauty especially with millennials in gen z one place that you see this a lot for example uh and recently is in reaction videos which i love and i think it'd be funny uh and maybe our viewers and listeners can can give their own thoughts on this if maybe brandon and i did a few reaction videos i know some people would probably enjoy that a lot and that came to mind not too long ago that i think that would be something good for us to do but uh but if you look at some of these reaction videos of gen z people who who were born after someone like luciano pavarotti the great opera singer was you know had already died they listened to pavarotti saying nesundorma for the first time and they're in tears you know a 14 year old 15 year old in tears listening to luciano pavrati or in tears listening to a symphony for the first time by mozart and they don't even know who mozart is unfortunately they should but we know our public education system is in shambles uh and so most of these kids just don't don't even know who mozart is uh and yet they hear mozart and these are kids that usually listen to you know again pop music to rap what have you but they're brought to tears by mozart's la crimosa from his uh from his writings from his uh compositions on what do they call that brandon whatever i can't believe that it slipped my mind whenever you write a mass of the dead anyways oh requiem a requiem his requiem mass and so they hear that for the first time and they're brought to tears that tells you right there what their hearts are longing for if a 16 year old could cry at mozart's requiem nowadays in the year 2021 we know what their hearts are longing for so that's a good sign and we need to start utilizing that you know i think there's a lot of forms of art that we would recognize as objectively beautiful something like the sistine chapel or one of mozart's requiem masses something like that usually of the classical period or the renaissance period something like that and i know in my experience with lots of my millennial friends gin sears sometimes it just doesn't land you know i've had people who have said yeah i went to visit the sistine chapel and meh like it was nice but eh and it's always bugged me because i've always thought no that is like one of the most glorious adjustments in the history of western art why why has it not affected you the way it's affected me is it because as the old adage goes beauty's in the eye of the beholder or because beauty is just subjective and then i had to realize through a lot of conversations and reading that no the problem is a lack of formation right beauty of recognizing what makes something beautiful and that it could be that our faculties for recognizing beauty are immature and ill-formed that this happens to all of us you know like when we're kids if we're a five-year-old we could go to the sistine chapel and think it's nothing special but that's only because our minds and and our hearts haven't matured enough to recognize why that thing is objectively beautiful so i i don't i want to hesitate here that you know father blake and i are recommending all these instances of beauty and high culture particularly in the realms of music and art and it might not be enough just to show that to a millennial or a gin's ear and say see look how beautiful this is because they might just not be prepared they might not have the tools in the background to understand why that particular thing is beautiful so what i often like to do is this circles back to reading the signs of the times ask yourself or look around and and make a judgment of of this what are millennials and gin ears already finding beautiful even if their faculties are ill-formed what do they find that's just beautiful you might even explicitly ask them what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world and for some of them it might be a beautiful woman or a beautiful man or it might be a beautiful piece of art i know for a lot of them it's a beautiful piece of music or a beautiful movie like is it video game music i think we talked about that father blake on the episode on video games how many of them are drawn to cinematic soundtracks and when you read the comments on youtube it's they're gushing they're like i've never felt this feeling in my heart i'm moved i have these longings as a result of listening to this so that's step one is figure out what what did they already find most beautiful but then press it put your finger on that and press it down and say okay why do you find that beautiful and where is it leading to this is where the the via part of the via poker tutoriness comes in it's not just poker tutoring it's not just beauty it's where's this thing leading you to you know um i think of plato famously and his reflection on beauty uh contemplating the beautiful was always meant to lead you out to the source of beauty itself beauty with a capital b that you you contemplate this one beautiful thing but as all of us know when we are in the presence of great beauty the more beautiful something is the deeper the level of dissatisfaction is like when you see like or when you listen to a gorgeous piece of music it it almost empties you and it makes you long for more of that like it's only increased my ache for the capital b beautiful and so that's where this via poker tunines really shines especially with young people is i think a lot of young people recognize beautiful things but then what we need to do evangelistically is help press that and lead them to where that beautiful thing is pointing them absolutely absolutely all right well an hour and 13 minutes later let's recap here um again we're talking about evangelizing millennials and gin ears in particular we started off emphasizing the need for personal holiness so be holy be holy be holy until you do that you're just sharing abstractions and facts and propositions the purpose of evangelization is to guide someone to an encounter with a person you want to introduce a friend that you've made to somebody else because their life will be objectively better knowing this jesus christ so personal holiness no jesus no christ jesus personally second read the signs of the times third the art of accompaniment fourth know your stuff know your stuff and then fifth and finally via pulchritudinous the way of beauty any final comments you want to make here before we wrap up everyone is called to be an evangelist each of us by man of our baptism our anointed priest prophet and king what that means is we are anointed to sanctify ourselves in the world we are anointed to be prophets of the gospel to profess the truth to the world and we're anointed to to regalize the world to make the world something that's dignified and worthy of the king of kings worthy of the son and so know that all of us have these principles that we need to follow uh and that we're called to by the holy spirit and by merit of our baptism so be not afraid i'll share those great words to saint john paul ii be not afraid know that christ loves you follow some of these principles sit at the feet of jesus grow in holiness study walk with others be humble and you i think you'll be amazed at the amount of souls that you'll be able to bring to the church and to christ well thanks for watching and listening let's keep the conversation going if you have any good tips or ideas thoughts questions about evangelizing young people leave them in the comment boxes father blake and i will try to jump in there and and continue the dialogue with you there this episode again has not been brought to you by ignatius press but if uh if our good friends at ignatius are listening future episodes could be brought to you by ignatius press um we only require a shipment of all the collected works of joseph ratzinger and hans von balthazar it's a small price to pay for this stellar sponsorship it is it is we are not a men who ask for much we're just asking for for indefinite subscriptions to your press [Laughter] well again thanks so much for watching and listening to this episode and we'll see you next time on the burrowshire podcast god bless y'all

Channel: The Burrowshire Podcast

Views: 861

Rating: 4.9354839 out of 5

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Id: RYkmXe8JUqU

Length: 76min 5sec (4565 seconds)

Published: Wed May 19 2021