Jesus’ invitation was very specific go and share the good news of the gospel go to the ends of the earth, share with everyone help them to believe and be baptized that they might have everlasting life. There’s a word for this action it’s called: evangelization. The spreading of the gospel. Evangelium the spreading of the gospel to the world around us – evangelization. 

This word evangelization has been around for – well, since Jesus asked us to do it; his disciples to be evangelizers. It’s been around forever but in our catholic world we’ve on some level kind of sat back a little bit and just kind of relied  on the fact that so many millions of people are catholic maybe not taking seriously that same mandate that Jesus gave his disciples. 

The fact that we’re supposed to pick up that mandate as well. Over the last 6-7 years I’ve been studying a lot about evangelization a lot about where we are today and how we as a church specially john Paul the second many years ago, decades ago called us to a new evangelization and there’s one interesting thing that I learned about evangelization and where we are today here’s what I learned: when I was growing up I was told this is what you’re going to believe and this is how you’re going to behave and if you believe and you behave then maybe you might just get to belong. 

That’s how it was when I grew up. So I believed and I behaved and eventually I belonged. Well today it’s different. Today people very definitively want to belong first they want that to be the first step. Now we can’t really blame anybody for the state of the world today. It just is, so one of the things I think we have to work on is helping, really helping people belong to this beautiful church that we call our catholic fait 

Belong to this church and as we help people belong, you might see some new efforts at evangelization. I know at my parish we’ve begun alpha; and people are belonging and then believing and behaving in a different way but they belong first. So as we see these new efforts of evangelization 

Don’t be scared and don’t be upset we have to help people make sure that they belong to the beauty of our faith so that they might believe and then behave. I especially want to say thank you to you mothers on this Mother’s Day I want to say thank you to you for the ways that you’ve helped your children belong to our catholic faith the way you’ve passed on, with your husbands, the two of you, 

The first teachers of the faith of your children thank you to you who’ve helped your children belong and then believe and then behave. Jesus’s invitation was very clear, go share, go be evangelizers to the world around us and today that means helping people belong and then believe and then behave. Happy Mother’s Day to all of you moms and grandmothers and godmothers; happy Mother’s Day. Let us all take up that invitation to be evangelizers, as Jesus asks.