Wendy discusses how Catholics today can communicate the Faith to the world today.

By Wendy Grace

Much of my work involves teaching people how to be good communicators. I’ve always believed that when it comes to the difficulty in trying to attract people to the Catholic Church, the problem isn’t what the Church teaches but how. So often the truth, beauty, and joy-filled life our faith can give us is totally misinterpreted and unnecessarily vilified. So how do we meet our neighbours where they are at, knowing there is so much that has gotten lost in translation. How do we rise to the challenge that Pope Francis set when he said the following; 

“The thing the Church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the Church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else.”

One of the Gospel stories that we are all familiar with is the Prodigal Son which is about the Father welcoming home his son despite all the sin he had committed. The Father didn’t scold the son about the past, he opened his arms and loved him. Are we saying to those who have lost their faith or never had it in the first place - welcome home? 

I know it can be hard to find the courage to respond to our calling as Catholics to share the “good news”, maybe because we are sometimes made to feel by our modern culture like it’s bad news. So often we are made to feel singled out by being the Catholic in the room, so often put on the defensive. It’s understandable that the grave sins committed by a few have led to so much hurt and closed off people's hearts to our faith, but remember we put our trust in Jesus Christ, not the shoulders of sinners. The most powerful thing we can do is the witness of our own life, which can be one of the greatest tools of evangelisation. 

I know engaging with certain hot-button issues can mean a type of social excommunication, and that can be a real challenge. But I have found when you communicate with grace, patience, and love there is a groundwork to foster mutual respect, even when you disagree on profound issues. You don’t have to engage with every piece of mud slung at the Church, stay focussed on what faith has to offer. For me it's as simple sometimes as saying, my Catholic faith makes my life better, it helps me in my marriage, family, and work, and I hope that the witness of my life speaks for itself. 

When the opportunity to discuss your faith arises, always see it as a moment to share something positive about your faith. When the apostles were asked about Jesus' miracles, they actually used a key communication tool “bridging back” to the topic they wanted to talk about - Jesus. They always brought it back to him, and so should we. 

The key is being led by our own love of the Lord and the power of the Holy Spirit, asking them to guide our thoughts, words, and actions (A prayer I say every day!). Look to the Gospels and you will see that proclaiming the good news was almost always meeting people in their context, tax collectors at work, prostitutes in the streets, Romans in the courts - Jesus shared what a conversion would mean for their lives but also challenged them to turn away from their sin, in order that they could have a joy-filled life. 

We are reaching out to a world that often feels like it hates us. But what is portrayed in the media and the Twitterverse in my experience, is an unfair representation of the average person. I am continuously surprised, when I explain certain life choices or elements of my faith, and how interested and open people are to learning more. So perhaps this September pray that your life may be a witness for the Kingdom of God and for the courage to be able to plant little mustard seeds along the way.