Scripture is a love story that ends with a question. God has shown His abiding love for us: will we respond in kind?
The Gospel only makes sense in the context of love. Who else but a lover would throw off power, glory, to come in the form of a slave - to take on suffering and indignity, rejection and scorn? Hear how He calls to us and woos us: Come to me, all you who labor and are weary, for I will give you rest. My yoke is easy and my burden light. There is no greater romance than this, the lover who pursues His beloved from heaven to the ends of the earth.
We cannot read the Gospel apart from this context. It does not make sense as a collection of sayings or teachings, or as a record of Jesus' comings and goings. There is a reason the Evangelists used a narrative structure in their writings: because only as a love story does the Incarnation make sense.
Stories provide concreteness, tangibility, and the story of the Gospels reminds us that God's love is real and concrete: a real love among real people, Jesus and His disciples. It is not an abstract idea of good-will for all. Even though God does love all, He loves us all concretely, personally, not in some remote philosophical way.
Christian evangelism should always be about drawing people into this love. It's not first about telling them all the rules to follow or detailed doctrine to believe. These things are important, but they come later, for they flow from the original spark of love that must be struck first in the human heart.
To evangelize effectively, we must live the story of this love. We must demonstrate the joy (not mere happiness) that comes from feeling the love of God and from sacrificing for the God we love. We must sacrifice ourselves for others to manifest the love God has for them in concrete ways.
This happens not through political action or philosophical debate. This happens in the interactions of our daily lives. We cannot force love to happen, but we can create the conditions that permit love to blossom. Our Catholic institutions must be structured in a way that encourages meaningful personal contact and that empowers loving self-gift. Parish communities must be open and inclusive. Opportunities to serve and to be served must be made available. Social events that root everyday life in a Christian cultural framework must be developed. People must be able to look inside a Catholic parish and see a community that is on fire with God's love.
Christians must be ambassadors for Christ, authentically bearing witness to God's great question for humanity. God has loved us; how will we respond? We must carry this question into the world. When others encounter us, they must feel this question come alive in their hearts. They should walk away from us wondering where we've gotten the love that we have, and they should want to experience that love for themselves. We, by the way we live our lives, must be the open-ended question of love God poses to the world.
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