Befriend others with the love of Jesus

Sixth in a series

By John and Therese Boucher |  Special to The CFP

The second step in missionary evangelizing involves the way we are “caring” or not caring for people. It is the most common step Christians can take to connect others with Jesus – caring shows them God’s love in a concrete way. It involves befriending people in need, listening, and being truly present, encouraging them, serving them, and performing the acts of mercy and justice that are the fabric of daily life. It is in this arena of caring relationships that we can become transparent witnesses to the loving presence of God.
Consider the many times when Jesus stopped what he was doing because someone’s needs touched his heart and triggered prayerful compassion: the widow of Nain, whose only son and means of support had died (Luke 7:11-17); the woman with an incurable hemorrhage (8:43-48); and Nicodemus, who came to him with doubts and questions (John 3:1-21). This is how God wants us to see the needs of the people in our lives – especially those of our family and others, who need a special kind of caring. Jesus lived this love for others
by listening, accompanying,
forgiving, feeding, healing, and delivering others from sin and evil. Yet, this was only the beginning of missionary evangelization. He then shared the good news of God’s infinite love for them and invited them to follow him.
This holy compassion is not primarily about what we give or do. At its foundation, caring is about who we are in Jesus. Only our ongoing, vital relationships with God can turn our acts of caring into acts of holy compassion. Then holiness acts like a beacon and will attract the people around us who are in need of God’s good news. We call this “evangelizing as you go through everyday life, instead of going out to evangelize.”  
Here is an example: our newly divorced neighbor, Harriet, lived in a small dark, two-room basement apartment. All she could see was a barren strip of dirt beside her driveway. Harriet loved the outdoors and the sunshine so much that she transformed that strip of dirt into a garden. She spent hours removing weeds and lugging wheel-
barrels full of good dirt. She carefully planted beautiful flowers around a turquoise birdbath. Her final project was building a spiraling stone path through the garden that ended at the birdbath. The last stone she needed was the hardest to find. Its absence reminded her of the nagging loneliness that came with her divorce.  
Therese was away at a wooded retreat center and thought of Harriet when she discovered a stone that was just the right size. “Harriet, I found this for your garden, while I was praying for you at a retreat house,” she explained. Harriet was pleased and ceremoniously placed it beside the birdbath. A few weeks later we overheard her giving a friend a tour of her garden. The tour ended with, “And this is my holy rock. When I sit in my garden, I look at each flower, then the birdbath, then at my holy rock and I find myself praying.”
Our combination of faith and compassionate concern, as well as the relationship that we have with someone, lays the groundwork for the next two steps involved in missionary evangelizing: “sharing” our faith with words and “inviting” people to Jesus and our faith community. Friendships that grow through our acts of compassion and love create a bridge of trust that helps make people more open and willing to hear about how Jesus has changed our lives. It may even give them the hunger to be a part of our community of faith.

(This article was taken from the June 2020 issue of The Word Among Us magazine, wau.org. Used with permission. The book Sharing the Faith That You Love, by John and Therese Boucher, from which these articles were adapted, is available at www.bookstore.wau.org.)


PHOTO: CNS photo | Paul Jeffrey
At the “House for the Dying,” a hospice run by the Missionaries of Charity in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sister Paula is pictured in a 2009 file photo supporting a patient.