For more than a decade now, as we approached the end of the second millennium and prepared for the Great Jubilee 2000, Pope John Paul has been emphasizing what he calls a “New Evangelization.” The term is new, but the idea is not. The idea is an old one, but it hasn’t been employed much since the early centuries of the first millennium.

What does he mean by a “new” evangelization? The Pope is calling all of us to become evangelists for the new century and the new millennium. The “old evangelization” is typified by the bringing of the faith to the New World after 1492. It was done by missionaries, nuns, monks, priests and bishops you might call professionals. The Catholics of the world supported them with money and prayers for hundreds of years. The Holy Father is telling us that this pattern of action is inadequate for the present age and the present culture. Missionary work cannot be done by the “professionals” alone. As in the early Church, everyone has to be a missionary.

John Paul II reminds us that the call to holiness is universal, as the Second Vatican Council taught: we are ALL called to be saints. Likewise, as the Council taught, by Baptism and Confirmation we ALL share the responsibility for the maintenance and spread of the faith. We are ALL agents of the New Evangelization. By the very fact that we are Catholic Christians we are evangelists!

As we reflect upon relationships in FAITH this month, let’s be sure to consider what adjustments in thinking, what new habits in acting, and what new approaches in human relationships are required by our role in the New Evangelization.

Then ministries of the ordained, the professed and the commissioned among us still need to be promoted. The New Evangelization needs priests, deacons, vowed religious and lay ministers. But people can be evangelists in many other ways, and not necessarily by devoting two years of their lives to it the way the male Mormons do, or by going door-to-door on Saturdays like the Jehovah Witnesses.

All parents are evangelists, the first teachers of Christian faith and behavior to their children. Those who teach children or teens in religion classes, in parochial schools, or through youth ministry are all evangelists.

People who show love, care and concern in the name of the Lord to neighbors, employees, fellow workers or fellow students testify to the God of love. They evangelize especially when others are ill, discouraged or grieving. The elderly, the chronically ill and shut-ins who suffer in union with Christ can be evangelists. It is no coincidence that in the early Church those who suffered and died for their faith were called martyrs, the Greek word for “witnesses.”

Of all human relationships none is more grace-filled than the spiritual connection between evangelist (giver of the good news of the Gospel) and the hearer (the recipient of its truth and goodness).