The sorrowful soul of an effective evangelizer

Good News ReflectionFriday of the 30th Week in Ordinary TimeOctober 30, 2009
Tomorrow is Halloween. What are you doing with it to bring God's kingdom more fully to earth?http://wordbytes.org/occult/halloween.htm
Today's Readings:Rom 9:1-5Ps 147:12-15,19-20Luke 14:1-6http://www.usccb.org/nab/103009.shtmlUSCCB Podcast of the Readings:http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/09_10_30.mp3
The sorrowful soul of an effective evangelizer
Does anyone cause you "great sorrow and constant anguish" because of their lack of faith in Jesus Christ? We, like Saint Paul in today's first reading, should care about the eternal souls of others so much that when they make bad decisions that reject Jesus, instead of feeling condemnation for them, we feel great inner pain.
When we know what others are missing in their refusal to turn to the healing love of Christ, it hurts to see them continue to turn away from it. When we know that their sins are destroying them and hurting others as well, if we truly care, we feel tremendous sorrow.
Before we can do much good in evangelizing these people, we have to get in touch with this pain. If their sins are making us angry, our efforts to help them come across as judgmental. We must first go through a process of forgiveness and letting go of the anger. Only then can we reach the spiritual state where we actually feel sorrow for them.
If their unhealthy behaviors are triggering our own unhealthy reactions, our love for them gets warped and twisted into a sick counterfeit that enables them to continue in their erring ways. We must first turn to God and let him strengthen our holy, healthy understanding of the issues.
This leads to a deep, inner anguish over the sorrowful condition of their souls. This kind of pain is not something to avoid! It gives us a pure, holy motivation to pray for them and evangelize them.
If you've forgiven them but don't yet feel such anguish, meditate on God's love for them and then let that love become your love for them. Yes it hurts when we love them that much. The tears of love for those who reject the love of God are indications that we are experiencing an advanced degree of holiness.
This is the same depth of caring that Jesus felt for the man with dropsy in the Gospel passage today. In this case, it was someone's physical suffering that triggered an outpouring of love. But how did he feel about the scholars of the law and the Pharisees who condemned him for breaking a religious law? We can be sure that Jesus suffered deeply in his soul over their legalism and lack of Godly compassion. It's what motivated him to die for them.
Often when we read about Jesus dealing with the Pharisees and scribes, we see his condemnation of their sins but neglect to read between the lines to get in touch with the utter anguish he felt over the emptiness in their souls. When we're aware of sins being committed, we are called to speak up as much as possible to condemn the sins and help the sinner find the redemption of Christ. But we won't succeed if we don't first reach the depth of love where we feel anguish over the damage that the sinners are doing to themselves.
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