Getting started can be the toughest part of street evangelization. Recently, seminarians joined SPSE’s Wayne State University team in bringing the Good News about Jesus Christ to typical university students.
One seminarian was quite uncomfortable at first. The team had set up in a busy hallway that had classrooms on both sides. People seemed to be either in a hurry to get to class, or in a hurry to leave. The seminarian reported, “I sheepishly stood off to the side, Rosaries dangling in my hand. I felt that I was [someone] everyone tries to avoid eye contact with. I wanted the time to go by quickly so that I could pack up and head back.”
“But”, he said, “the Holy Spirit had other plans. Several people came up to me, without any sort of interaction on my part. ‘Can I have one of those crosses?’ ‘Is that a Rosary?’ ‘Are you Catholic?’” Each question provided a stepping stone into a conversation about the Faith. “Once the conversations began,” he said, “I was much less nervous and felt more free to speak openly and with boldness in the Spirit.”
One student who asked about the Rosary was a young woman. She wanted to know about Mary, was a non-Christian, and understood Jesus as merely a prophet. So the seminarian talked with her about how Jesus is truly God. His basic point was: if Jesus is important, as her religion also claimed, “then we need to pay attention to how He identified Himself. If He is God, then that is obviously very important.”
Once she understood, the seminarian explained that the Gospels are the earliest references to Jesus’ life. At that, she was excited to accept a copy of the New Testament. She also wanted to learn more about the Rosary so that she could pray it with residents of the nursing home where she works.
The seminarian tells us, “Jesus is the main message and He gives us the way to follow Him”. Thank you, Jesus! And thank you, seminarians of Sacred Heart Major Seminary, the Wayne State SPSE team, and all of our evangelists! How about you? If you haven’t joined SPSE yet, please pray about doing so today.