Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel

Having followed the new media adventures of Greg and Jennifer Willits from the early days of the Rosary Army podcast to their show on Sirius satellite radio “The Catholics Next Door” I am not surprised at all by the number of ideas that flow out of them.

The latest efforts is “New Evangelizers”, New Evangelizers is both an umbrella group of their other ministries and a ministry of it’s own in providing free tools to others to spread and support the faith.

Rosary Army had the wonderful motto “Make them. Pray them. Give them away” and New Evangelizers also hits on an excellent tri-part motto. “Know your faith. Live your faith. Share your faith.”

We accomplish this by creating and distributing digital (online) and physical (hard-copy) catechetical and spiritual materials and resources for individual growth and study, as well as for mass distribution worldwide. From CDs to DVDs to printed catechetical material, we want to do everything we can to help people know their faith, live their faith, and share their faith more effectively.

In a nutshell: We give away free Catholic stuff to promote New Evangelization and ask you to do the same. Goals Our primary goal is to better equip Christians with tools and

information in order to assist the Catholic Church in re-evangelizing the world for Jesus Christ.

This is an answer to the demands of the Gospel and specifically for Blessed John Paul II’s call for a new evangelization.

Over the years, I have often repeated the summons to the new evangelization. I do so again now, especially in order to insist that we must rekindle in ourselves the impetus of the beginnings and allow ourselves to be filled with the ardour of the apostolic preaching which followed Pentecost. We must revive in ourselves the burning conviction of Paul, who cried out: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor 9:16).

And as Pope Benedict XVI has said “The New Evangelization” must begin with the family. The New Evangelization remains unfulfilled as long as people don’t actually answer the call. It is fine to talk about it, but much finer still to take up the call. This is why I like the motto so much in that it distinctly states the demands of the Christian life. You can’t teach what you don’t know and you just can’t hope others will pick up the call for you. People often don’t know just where to start and the New Evangelizers site provides excellent tools for teaching and passing on the faith in a way that fully takes advantage of the new media professionally done.

Often the quote falsely attributed to St. Francis “Preach the gospel always, If necessary use words.” has been used in such a way as to diminish personal evangelization. Living the gospel in joy and simplicity is the very basis of evangelization, and it is often very necessary to use words, in fact use words, videos, books, blogs, podcasts, movies, and every single tool of media communications. This is just another of the Catholic both/and situations where actions and preaching are both required.