What Does the Feminine Genius Have to Do With Evangelization?

I’d love to say that I’m the model example of sharing my faith with others in my daily life.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you about the time that I have dodged conversations about my faith with others because it wasn’t what I had penciled in my calendar for that time slot.

So just what does evangelization mean for us as Catholic women living in today’s culture?

How does our feminine genius play a role in the way we talk about the Lord with those in our ordinary, daily lives?

Why don’t we share our faith?

When you think of someone sharing the Catholic faith, does your own story come to mind? If not, what are some reasons that you don’t share your faith with those around you?

Maybe you feel under-qualified. You wonder if you’ll have all the answers to questions someone may have about Catholicism. You wish you had a theology degree. Or maybe you (like me!) wish you were able to make it through more than a couple sentences of Aquinas before having to go unpack it for the next few days.

Or perhaps you wonder if evangelization is something you need to even worry about. There are people out there who do have theology degrees, after all. People are drawn to the witness of consecrated religious - isn’t evangelization something that’s their job?

Or, maybe you, like me, are just plain worn out. Trust me, as the mother to a nine month old baby, I’ve been exhausted for the past eighteen months. I’m not sure I’ll ever make up for the lack of sleep, and my to-do list is growing by the minute.

I know you’re busy, too.

You’ve got homework, volunteer commitments, and to-do lists of your own. You need to go grocery shopping, finish that pile of laundry, and you’re working on a big project at work. You may spend your evenings in Bible studies, or are working through a book for that book club you just joined.

Taking evangelization off of your to-do list

If you know the lengthy to-do list battle all too well, I want to do something for you today.

I want to take evangelization off your to-do list.

That doesn’t mean you’ve just been given a free pass to not share your faith. What it means is that you have to take evangelization off of your to-do list because it doesn’t belong there.

Sharing your faith and the Lord with others isn’t something you get to check off on a Friday night at the end of the week and breathe with a sigh of relief. Check. Done.

Instead of something to do, evangelization is something you live.

It’s a way of life.

Living out evangeliziation in your ordinary, daily life

But just what does sharing your faith in this way of life look like?

I think we make evangelization too complicated.

You don’t have to have a degree, or all the answers, or just the right job description to share your faith.

You simply have to encounter others around you in authentic friendship, have meaningful conversation with them, and invite them into the beauty, truth, and goodness of the Catholic faith through the Rosary.

You’re called to live a life that’s on fire for the Lord, and as you journey back to His Sacred Heart, you’re called to invite others into that journey with you.

The feminine genius and evangelization

As women, we have a unique way that we share our faith.

Pope Saint John Paul II thought so, too.

“Perhaps more than men, women acknowledge the person, because they see persons with their hearts. They see them independently of various ideological or political systems. They see others in their greatness and limitations; they try to go out to them and help them,” he wrote in his Letter to Women that he penned in 1995.

As a woman, you’ve been created by God with a unique ability to see people with your heart.

While some of us are called to pack up our bags and journey to far-off places to share the Gospel, most us are surrounded by people whose hearts are broken, whose hearts are gaping with God-shaped holes.

And you can see those broken hearts.

They’re hearts that beat within the walls of your own home - the hearts of your spouse, your kids, your siblings, your parents.

They’re hearts that are broken and bleeding in the line for coffee, school pick up, or the grocery store.

They’re bleeding out in the lives of your best friends, the people you don’t get along with at work, and the people who live beside you in your neighborhood.

We’re surrounded by people who are dying from loneliness.

So how do we make evangelization a way of life?

Maybe you’re aware of the brokenness in your own story and in the story of those around you. But what does it look like, this way of life that includes evangelization and an intentional growth in the feminine genius?

You can see those broken hearts and those wounds and those stories in a special and particular way simply because you’re a woman.

You’re a beloved daughter of God, and you can encourage others to recognize and embrace their true identity as beloved sons and daughters, too.

Not primarily because of something you do (although your words and actions do matter), but because of who you are.

“Thank you every woman, for the simple fact of being a woman! Through the insight which is so much a part of your womanhood, you enrich the world’s understanding and help to make human relations more honest and authentic,” Saint Pope John Paul II continued in his Letter to Women.

You don’t have to have all the answers, or a completed to-do list in order to start sharing your faith.

Instead, the Lord is inviting you into a way of life that requires magnanimity, boldness, vulnerability, and courage.

Will you enter into this way of life? Will you invite others into it?