 I am just such a fan of everybody here, really, like Bob Rice, I wouldn't have survived my first year in youth ministry without Bob Rice, then I wouldn't have been out in ministry altogether. Scott Hahn, I've been listening to his voice since I was a kid, I actually hear his voice in my head whenever I think something profound. It's in his voice. So I'm grateful for his voice in the church, and I'm just grateful for all you guys, man. It gives me hope for the church. Praise God. Yeah. I was just filming a real-life Catholic episode a couple of hours from here at a teen camp called Damascus, if you know about it, it's amazing. So underneath this nice outfit, I'm covered in paintball welts. Tune in for season three, you'll see me and five guys take on 40 girls or be taken on and destroyed by 40 girls at a violent game of paintball. So anyway, anyway. In the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, amen. Lord, we praise you, and we thank you, that you've given us yourself, that you've given us the best news ever, and that you've given us your life. We ask you to help us be faithful and effective at sharing that life with the whole world. Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end, amen. Mary, our mother, pray for us, in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, amen. I'm going to talk about how to share the best news ever with a world that seems to want it less and less, right? You know, some people tell us that the world we find ourselves in is a lot like the world the first Christians found themselves in, because no one really seems to be interested or know about Jesus on a societal level, and I don't really agree. You see, throughout history, human beings have had a sense, a natural sense, that we should worship something. When the Catechism talks about public worship, it says it doesn't just fulfill divine law, but natural law. There's something within human beings in our very DNA that wants to look for the source of all this, and then publicly return some sort of thanks. My travels and speaking and filming have taken me all around the world. You know, if you go to the ancient sites of the Western world, you'll see altars where people offered sacrifice to God as they understood him. In the Catholic world, altars everywhere. Go to the other side of the planet in Hawaii. You see Heiaos, temples, with altars in them. Here's cultures that had no contact at all. And not only were they worshiping God and looking for the source of all this, they were doing it in the same way. Human beings aren't just vaguely spiritual. You know, I overhear that saying, you're spiritual but not religious, right? By the way, the devil is spiritual but not religious too. Where does that get you? Human beings aren't just vaguely spiritual. We're also profoundly religious. In every culture throughout history, people have looked for tangible ways to express gratitude to the source of all this life that we find ourselves in. And for the first time in history, we have this unique problem where people aren't worshiping anything. I think that we're the first Christians found themselves in. Evangelization was way easier. You had to convince people to go from worshiping a lightning bolt-wielding jerk to Jesus. That's an easy sell. And now we find ourselves convincing people to worship anything at all. G.K. Chesterton said that men today have lost their way, which isn't surprising because they've always lost their way, except today they've lost their address. That sense of justice, the religiosity Thomas Aquinas talked about being a subset under the virtue of justice. That sense of justice that I owe something to God. That even if church doesn't feel good for me, I'm going anyway because God deserves that. That's gone. That sense of obligation to family is gone. I've had countless young people tell me, Chris, should I really be confirmed just for my parents? You know what I say? Yes. Unless you're going to tell me with all the worldly wisdom of a 15-year-old, you're about to throw away what's been handed on to you for 2,000 years. Get confirmed for your parents, and we'll talk about your doubts later. Go through the motion to honor your family. And you act like you have faith. Guess what? You start to have faith, don't you? Amen? That sense of nostalgia for things in the past is gone. And we used to have this faith that people would come back if they left the faith. They'd come back when their kids were born. They'd come back when they were married in no particular order, right? That's not even happening now. I talked to a priest in Canada recently, a young priest, and he looked down and said, Chris, may I have been a priest for a year and a half? I've had a single wedding. We've not only lost our way, we've lost our address. And you know, this isn't this peaceful coexistence of people who worship God and people who don't. You see, when people don't worship God, you know, who ends up on the throne of their hearts? It's themselves. And people who worship themselves don't get along with people of faith. Have you noticed this? Pharaoh didn't peacefully coexist with God's people because their presence was annoying to him. Why? Because their presence said to him, maybe Pharaoh, there's something bigger than you that you should bow to. Our very presence sometimes annoys people. It reminds them, just the fact that we worship God reminds them that maybe there's something bigger than you, but people don't want to bow to anything today. People don't even want to bow to their own DNA today. We could forge our own identities. And so we see this growing tension between, well, there's not one Pharaoh now, there's billions of Pharaohs and the people of God. We have a couple options at this point, right? What are they? Let's go through a few of them. Maybe one is the get really angry option. That works for bringing the world back to Jesus, doesn't it? And you know, it's worth calling that one out because it's a temptation for everyone in this room. It's really painful and frustrating to watch what's happening in the world. It's painful and frustrating to watch how that stuff has gotten inside the church at every level. It's really frustrating. And there can be a just anger. Don't get me wrong. But I'll tell you what, man. When anger isn't directed, and Jesus felt a just anger, he looked at the crowd with anger. The Gospel of Mark tells us, I would hate to be in that crowd. But he wielded his anger for good. We often really stink at that, don't we? And then it becomes a destructive fire in our lives. And it becomes something that turns people away from the faith. If there's anger, it's gotta be in brief doses and under our control. The get really angry option is not a good one, right? How about this option, number two? The blend in with everybody option. Come down from that cross, then we'll believe in you. Jesus, you don't have to say the things that got you up there. Why don't you retract those statements that divide us from you, that separate you from the world? Then we could all just get along. We've seen mainstream, mainline Protestant churches that have done that. Has their attendance boomed since they've done that? They might get some points with mainstream media, guys, but that's it. They're not converting anyone, because not inviting anyone to anything different than what they're already doing. Jesus' mission was not just to come give us a pat on the back and hand out warm fuzzies. A religion that attracts people is one that also challenges people, amen? The blend in option doesn't work. There's something beautiful called the Benedict option. There's a book written about this recently. And it follows the example of St. Benedict. The Western civilization was crumbling, and he said, you know, I'm not gonna engage at all. I'm gonna go out and do the Christian thing with the intentional community of people who are doing it. And it's not that he was angry at the world or pushing the world away. Hospitality is a hallmark of Benedict and spirituality to this day. But they just focused on doing what they, living on who they were as Christians keeping Western civilization alive. Not just keeping Christian civilization alive, but Western civilization itself. You know, if you read the classics today, it's because those things were protected from barbarian raiders and Benedictine monasteries. You're welcome, world. We don't get much credit in the secular history books, do we? But as wave after wave of tragedy and invaders and barbarians swept over Europe, they just held on to who they were. And when those waves subsided, there's the church still alive. Amen? It's a beautiful option. But you know, I'm not sure I agree that we're quite at that point yet. I call it for a different option. Maybe let's call it the apostolic option. The decision to be radical, the decision to be joyful, the decision to be like the first apostles and to go out and win the world for Jesus Christ. I think that's the option we have to go for right now. See, because we're not quite dead yet. The devil would like us to retreat, to give up, to disengage way ahead of the end of the battle. There are 70 million Catholics in the United States. There's over a billion of us on the planet. I'm not dead yet. We still got it in us. Can I hear an amen to that? Amen. Some might talk about the seven habits of modern day apostles, the seven habits of highly effective evangelists. All right, and these, we'll go through some practical ways to convince people to come into a relationship with Jesus Christ. Some practical illustrations. But you know, I'm calling these habits for a reason because if evangelization, if sharing the faith is something that feels forced and put on for you, it's not gonna work. People could see a salesman coming from a mile away nowadays, can't they? But if it's, what comes from who you are because of how you live your everyday life, because of habits you've formed, it'll be natural and you'll be effective. So habit number one, habit number one is to keep first things first. What's habit number one? Stay on point, keep first things first. The main thing is keeping the main thing, the main thing, isn't it? That's really hard to do. That's hard to do with our own marriages. That's why we have weekly date nights. Even in those times that we don't really like each other. By the way, date nights are cheaper than marriage counseling. If you think that $50 plate is too expensive, marriage counseling is double that and not nearly as enjoyable. You have to fight to keep first things first. What's first things in our Catholic faith? And I'll tell you, the world doesn't associate us with this first thing anymore. The world thinks that we're the church of various scandals, various issues, various statements and politics or history, tradition, theology, all these things that we should engage in as a church, but where does all this Catholic stuff come from? What's this all about? The first thing is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the charigma, the core message of the gospel. And it's summed up beautifully in John 3.16, for God so loved the world, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever should believe in him would not perish but have eternal life. I get chills when I say that. I just said the best thing that human ears have ever heard. This is the gospel. We need to be known as the church of the gospel again. Amen? Amen. There's nothing that compares with the gospel of Jesus Christ. That God is, shows us that life has purpose. This is the best news ever. This atheist was trying to debate me. He was giving a talk at MIT. He said, Chris, I don't need to believe in an imaginary God to tell me life has purpose. I make up my own purpose. I said, you know what that's called, right? It's called make believe. If there's no God, there's no purpose. Except the one you made up and you know what your core, you made it up. Which is make believe, which is not real, right? You know the difference between real and fake. Amen? Amen. We have the best news ever. There is a God, so therefore there is a purpose. But it gets way better than that. We believe that God, so love the world. Cause God is love. Look, the Greeks and Romans believed in lots of God's. Was that good news? Was it the best news ever? No, they believed in lots of jerks. Really powerful jerks. We believe in a God who is love, that that immaterial force that started space and time that breathed life into the void is love. One of my dear friends was an atheist. He became a Catholic. I got to be his Godfather. And one night, he told me after many late nights talking to him about the faith, he said, Chris, I don't know if there's a God. But if there is, he's Catholic. Cause I can't imagine him being anything less than the love that you say he is. A lot of people would tell us if there's a God, surely he's not this God you religious people put into your little boxes and categories. He's more vast than that, more vague than that. Let's call that religion vague. Vagu. As if vague is profound. Vague is not profound. Love is profound. A God who would stay hidden behind the cloud is not profound, but a God who would literally put himself in a box for me is, one who loves me so much, he'd become my food, give me a face to recognize, a name to call him. A God who would almost risk becoming so ordinary that people get bored of him. That's profound. God is love. That when we wandered from our created purpose, that relationship he created us for with him, the relationship that is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons, one God, how did he do that? That he entered space and time for God, so loved the world that he gave his only son, amazing his love for us. I see the smallest glimpse of that love in my heart as a dad, it's downright terrifying. I'm not a perfect dad, right? We've insured the coverage counseling for my kids. But they all know I love them enough to die for them. They don't often share their story when I'm preaching the gospel, that my worst 20 minutes in life, I lost my son, we were camping in the Rocky Mountains, he ran off after some family thinking it was us, he's four years old, right? And he's finding himself surrounded by these big trees, he sits down, the sun's starting to set, we're screaming his name, he was too afraid to respond to us. And there was a pond where we were camping, I thought he must have drowned, so I ran there thinking I was gonna find his body, I'm knee-deep in this water looking for him, and his prayer just exploded from my heart, from the heart of an imperfect father, an echo of who God is, though. Say, God, you've done so much good for me, you've given me a great life, you've given me so many blessings, I want you to take it all back right now, and give me my son. That's how the father's looking at you, right now. That when you and me wander into the forest of sin, he's never saying, destroy yourself, be lost. No, no, every time, take everything, take my life, I'll be your food in the Eucharist, I'll be waiting for you in confession, I just want my son, I just want my daughter, I will do anything to get my son or my daughter home. And when you mess up for the thousandth time, if you've been filing the Lord for years, and you're becoming scrupulous, and you're getting burnt out in yourself, I just want my son, I just want my daughter to come home. That's what he sees in us. By the way, we found Joey and God did not kill me. But these little glimpse through parenthood of what it means that God is love. Man, it's mind blowing. That love died for us. That love rose from the dead for us. That love calls us to participate in the life of the church. That love destined us for eternal glory. Brothers and sisters, this is the gospel. Outside of this simple message that we're created by love, that we want it from our purpose, love died for us, that he calls us to life in himself, that he calls us to experience that in the church, that he calls us to mission and eternal glory. That simple message. It's like the Big Bang Theory, man. All matter in the universe was compacted to a singularity. Exploded from there, but it was all already there. Everything it means to be as a Catholic is already there. All the history, the tradition, the liturgy, the smells and the bells and the saints and everything. It's all right there. I just summed it up in three minutes. It's all right there. But outside the context of that gospel message, brothers and sisters, everything else we give the world doesn't make any sense. Pope Francis recently said, we're in the midst of a love story and if we don't understand that, we've understood nothing of what the church is. Outside the love story, nothing makes sense. It's like marriage. Remove the love story. What do you got? I gave this talk recently. I asked that question. An old guy in the front row said, a to-do list. That's what you're left with, man. And when the world sees us coming with our Catholic thing, you know what they see? You're coming at me with a to-do list. I have doctrines to memorize that have nothing to do with real life. I have rules to follow that are burdensome. I have rituals I have to keep alive to keep my community happy or my grandma happy. No thank you. Ask the average university student. Not here, we're not at the average university. Praise be Jesus Christ. Ask the average university student where are you gonna look for enlightenment? They might give you a top 10 list. They might give you a top 40 list. The Catholic church won't even be on the top 40. You know why? We've forgotten the love story. And outside the context of the love story, not only does the rest of Catholicism not make sense, the rest of life doesn't make any sense. I wanna read you a couple of Pope quotes that really drive this home. Religion itself without the experience of the wondrous discovery of the Son of God and communion with him who became our brother becomes a mere set of principles which are increasingly difficult to understand and rules which are increasingly hard to accept. John Paul two said that. Pope Benedict the 16 said the church can't become identified with certain commandments of prohibition because if it does quote we give the impression that we're moralists with a few somewhat antiquated convictions and not even the hint of the greatness of the faith appears and Pope Francis said we as a church cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage, the use of contraception. Though I think God he has spoken on those things. I'd like him to speak more often but hey I'm not the Pope. But he has. All right we can't insist only on those things. He said when we speak about these issues we have to talk about them in a context. We have to talk about them in a context. What like a context is the love story. It's the gospel. We have to keep first things first. People have to see us and know right away what we're about. They have to see Catholics and say you're the church of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Oh and the rest of that cool stuff too. Outside that context nothing makes sense. I was at a theology on tap event that I put on when I worked for the Archdiocese at Denver and my bishop was there talking and someone started heckling him from the crowd. He was talking about pro-life issue. And of course my wife in an attempt to get me in a fight to see how tough I was went right up to the guy at the end of the theology on the tap and started correcting him, right? But I'm kidding obviously about the fight part. But she's ready man, right? But we had a long conversation. It was a great conversation but after about an hour we're talking to this guy explaining the logic of the church's teaching and the life issue. You know what he said? He said yeah, you know what? I think my mom should have aborted me. And I realized here I'm talking to a guy trying to explain the inner logic of the church's teaching on the pro-life issue and this guy doesn't even know that he should exist. I'm trying to convince him that a fetus has inherent value and should be legally protected and he has no idea that he has any inherent value at all. Guys outside the gospel, not only does the church's teachings not make sense, all of life doesn't make sense. This is the one solution to every problem mankind's ever faced. This is the only thing that makes life beautiful that shows us who we are, what we're worth, what it's all about. We have to lead with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have to position everything we say within the context of the gospel or it'll fall on deaf ears, amen? So what's that mean? You know, it means that we're not just selling an ideology, we're selling a person and a relationship with that person. You know, when I was in Steubenville, I sat in an RCA with Barbara Morgan, legendary catechist, love this woman. Pray for her, she's very sick right now if you happen to know her. But when she would debate with atheists, she'd always landed on this. Hey listen, if you don't believe in God, I'd encourage you to ask him if he exists. He reframed and personalized the whole debate. Isn't that amazing? Keep it first things first, means we keep it centered on a person. We're not just selling an idea or a philosophy or a path to life. We're first and foremost selling Jesus Christ. Do we have faith that that's enough? That that's gonna work? Because he is enough. Second, we have to stop presuming that people get it already because they don't. I travel the world to give a multi-generational parish renewal events called Reboot. And we typically get like a thousand people even at small parishes because we have a six month lead up program of invitation, inviting people who don't usually come to church to come and pack these events. But my cousin came to one of these events and afterwards he said, Chris, I never before thought of my faith as a Catholic as having to do with my relationship with God. We presume people get it because they have the badge that says Catholic. We need to stop presuming that people get it. My dad's a very quiet guy. My mom is not. Slovak, Irish, right? Jim, do you love me? Well, you know that I love you? I mean, I work. I don't cheat on you. I come home every night. Jim, I want you to say I love you. Okay, I love you. We have to stop presuming that people get the obvious. And we have to repeat the obvious again and again and again. And we don't move past the obvious. The primary proclamation of the gospel is from Evangelicale Gaudium. Pope Francis talked about how it's not primary just because it happens first when we move on to more important things. It's primary in importance. And it has to come out again and again and ring on our message again and again and again. So we don't presume people get it. We personalize our message. And it means that we make things clear again. This is amazing. The Synod on Young People. This is a quote. People, we were summing up the responsive youth to the church and how they perceive the church today. And this summary's a little disturbing. A large number of young people, mostly from secularized areas, are not asking the church for anything. They don't see here as a significant interlocutor in their lives. Some expressly ask to be left alone because they feel her presence to be bothersome or even irritating. Irritating. See, we live in a world where people get about 3,000 advertisements per day thrown at them. And if that advertisement isn't clear right away about what it does for you and your life and what message are you bringing, I'll tell you what, it's logged into the category of one of the 3,000 ads and it's annoying. We have to be overt, we have to be clear, we have to be personalistic. How do you do this in your daily life, brothers and sisters? We have to make a habit out of talking about the person of Jesus. Do you really believe he's a real person who's there in your life? You need to start talking about him with your friends, with your family, with your coworkers, especially if you're a ministry, as if he's actually there. You need to be comfortable pausing a conversation to talk to him and to pray together about something. When you have that sense of his nearness, you start naturally keeping first things first because you've kept him first. Amen? Amen? The second habit of holy people, and they're not all this long or we'd be here until 10 p.m. The second habit of holy people is to make time for it. What's the second habit? Beautiful. Don't ever be so busy with evangelization that you don't have time for people. Don't ever be so busy with anything that you won't drop them for people. See, every human being, God reveals the worth, the value, the dignity of human beings because we believe in a God who thought people were worth dying for. That should impact how we make time for people, how we welcome people into our homes. I know it's a norm. We've got our little schedules we're trying to keep all the time, don't we? Make time for it. I was at a coffee shop recently and I was actually writing this talk. A woman came in sat next to me and started crying and I almost said, would you please shut up, I'm writing a talk about Jesus. My natural default is jerk, okay? But no, I didn't do that, obviously, and I made time for her and got into a conversation with her about the problem she was facing and she was a Buddhist woman. We ended up saying a prayer together in that coffee shop. Always make time for it along those lines. The ordinary forum for evangelization is friendship. I want to say that again. The ordinary forum for evangelization to happen in is friendship, not just friendship that you're friends so that you can evangelize. No, no, no, you want to share your faith with this person because you're friends. You see the difference? My buddy I told you about who converted, I got to be his godfather. He went through RCA one year here. Here, like this is the best place ever to go through RCA, but it didn't take. Then the second year, he decided on Holy Thursday to be dunked, to be baptized. But I remember leading up to that second year, I thought maybe he won't get baptized and I said, listen, Ryan, you're one of my best friends, I love you, man. And I don't want to share my faith with you just to make a point for Jesus, you know? And I'm not your friend just to share my faith with you. I want to share my faith because you're my friend and if you reject what I'm trying to share with you, I'm still your friend for life, forever. That's the context wherein people will actually listen to us. That's really hard because friendship is hard because people are annoying, and so are you. And God loves you and puts up with you anyway. See, we have a society where we're increasingly isolated where we could do friendships on our terms, on our phones, on our social media, no, no, no. God wants us to drop everything, to make time for it, to make time for people. The third habit of holy people is to give, beautiful. What's the third habit of holy people? Awesome, listen, I need you to give, I need you to start tithing 10% to God. I don't want to be legalistic about this, but if you're in the category of most Catholics where you're giving one to 1.2% of your income back to God, in my opinion you've just lost every right to complain that the evangelical church down the street is so much cooler than yours because you're the reason they're so much cooler than yours. He's like, wow, I enjoyed his preaching until just then. Nobody said amen, nobody clapped, nothing. I make a habit of giving 10% of my income back to the church. All right, even when I don't want to, my wife is holier than us, make sure that we do. You have to give back to God, but I want to challenge you on a deeper level, be discerning about how you give. Listen, we're in an era where there's a lot of historically Catholic ministries who could care less about the church existing 100 years from now. And we have to recognize the difference between those ministries and ministries that do good and charitable works and also want to see the church survive. Amen. I was talking to a president of a school district and he said, Chris, you know, we don't really emphasize our Catholic tradition. We emphasize our Lesalian tradition. What are you talking about? I mean, seriously. As if the Christian brothers can be separated from Jesus Christ. Now, this is, he doesn't represent all the Christian brothers, but one particular guy in one particular school district, right? But when you discern that, do not give to that organization, don't support them in any way. I made a really bad mistake once. There was a young person who was getting involved in her faith and thinking about becoming Catholic and she wanted to go do some volunteer corps. So I wrote her letter of recommendation, not enough discernment on my part. She came back a year later, had no interest. After a year with these people, a year they had her totally completely turned off from the Catholic faith. She said they did good charitable works, but they were sleeping together, they were drinking together. The priests who were involved in it had no interest and they had no fire for the faith at all. She went off and became some other denomination. Thank God she still was a Christian. It wasn't turned off from the whole thing all together. Because we have to know the difference between actually Catholic institutions and ones that just bear the name and frankly, drain everybody's money using that name. Give two things that are evangelistic. And I know this is a guy who's a directly evangelistic apostolate. It's very hard to raise money for that kind of thing in the church. People could put a plaque under a stained glass window. You don't get a plaque under a soul until you get to heaven. Then they'll see. Then they'll see that your donation helped get that person to heaven, right? But it's kind of intangible, guys. We have to think differently about how we give right now. We are not in a place of the church where the few people who actually bear the burden of caring about the church existing in 100 years can afford to take a step back and not give to make that happen. And I also want you to give away stuff. I'm always caring. And frankly, I write books just so I can buy them for cheap from myself and give them away to people. I was getting a bank note notarized recently and I just, you know, I didn't have any time to talk to this person. I was rushing out somewhere and I told this woman what I do for a living. I said, hey, here's a book I wrote. And I left. Two weeks later she emailed me, hey, that changed my life. I'm going to church again. When you carry stuff to give around, you don't have to seal the deal immediately. So if you're gonna buy one of my books, if you're gonna buy Scott Hans book, buy 10 and use them as frisbees on your pagan friends. Lovingly. Number four, what's number four? Don't let your fear dictate your actions. What's number four? Listen, sharing the faith can be scary because you might get rejected. No, no, hold on. You will get rejected. It's awkward. It's awkward for me. Not right now. It would be really awkward right now if I didn't talk about Jesus, right? But in my daily life, it's awkward. My most awkward time ever sharing the faith, my wife's grandma was dying of pneumonia. 92 years old, wonderful, wonderful woman. You know, her son, she took good care of him, was faithful in her marriage, but she never went to church ever. And she told my wife years before that moment on her deathbed that she thought she was gonna end up in hell when she died. So here I am by, you know, grandma's deathbed and I had to say something. This is not one of those times where I wanna rock the boat with a challenging religious discussion with grandma. And let's make it more awkward. Her son, my father-in-law is an agnostic and I'm preacher boy. Very uncomfortable moment, but I had to say something. So I got real close to her and we're face to face and I said, repent! Mission accomplished. Thank you for laughing and knowing that was a joke. I got real close to her and I said, Florence, there was a thief crucified next to Jesus. He didn't do anything good. At the end of his life, he said, remember me when you come into your kingdom and Jesus said, today you'll be with me in paradise. I said, that guy went to heaven that day, not because of the good he had done, but because of what Jesus did for him on the cross. I said, that thief can be you. The next day she was reconciled to God and received into the Catholic church and the day after that she died. What if I hadn't said anything? What if you don't? We have a God who could do everything himself, but in his plan for the salvation of the world, he has chosen to make the eternal destiny of other people contingent on your response to his call, on your willingness to step outside your comfort zone, on your willingness to leave your safe space. Millennials in the room, I'm sorry, there's no safe space in Christianity. To get out, we have a God who said, walk on water, get out of the boat, the boat of your own security, the boat of worrying about your own name, the boat of worrying about being liked by everybody all the time. Sometimes the boat of your financial security, all that get out of that boat and make me known to a world that needs me. Does that mean you have to always know the right thing to say? No, does that mean you always have to be super articulate and you've memorized all these beautiful things you've read in the theology class? No, no, no, it just means you have to be holy and then not be afraid to be yourself. The whole world's saying be yourself, be yourself unless you're a Catholic. Guys, how about we start walking around as if we have the best news ever again? Because guess what, we do. Ah, this is a great saying. I'm not saying that you'll be like a fire hydrant, just be like a sprinkler system. Just make sure you sprinkle everywhere you go. Going out of the grocery store, you get your change, open your mouth, say something, say thanks for the change and God bless you. Did I sneeze? No, I'm just a Catholic. You see a person having a horrible day, tell them you're praying for them. Someone keeps coming to mind that you haven't seen in a long time. Maybe they've become a lost sheep and strayed from the church and from life and maybe God is putting that person on your mind because he's calling you to get them. Reach out, send him a text, I'm praying for you. I love you, just want you to know I'm lifting you up to God today. Sometimes you'll be rejected, yes. That's totally okay. And you don't have to stay in that fight zone where you can get punched. If they reject, they get angry, you just step back. You just made known to that person why you love them like you do. You just made known to that person why you smile like you do and it'll bug them for the rest of their lives because they'll want what you have. Open your mouth, brothers and sisters. This is not the age for timidity. Those of us who are here, who are called, who are called to shepherd people back to God got to start opening our mouths and being bold about it. Can I hear a loud amen to that? Amen. Make a habit of doing that in your daily life. Make a habit of going there. Make a habit of having friendships and conversations that are actually deep so that when it comes time to invite someone to relate to what Jesus, you're not afraid to do it. That you go there because that's the kind of person you are. I have no tolerance for shallow conversations. I don't know how to have them anymore. It's a problem, not enough shallow in our world. Being a person who always gets right in there and loves on people, shares life with them and goes there, amen. The next habit of holy people, bring it up on the screen, is to present faith as part of life. What's that one? Nice and loud? Present faith as part of life. You know, there's something I like to call the Louisiana anomaly. Who's from Louisiana out here? Anybody? It's an amazing place. It really is. See, because the roots of culture there are profoundly Catholic. Now, in my travels around the world, there's places that are post-Christian, post-Catholic, where there's a profound resentment toward the church. I have friends who are missionaries in Europe, in certain countries, they say, if I'm wearing my collar out in public, I will be spat upon. Because their experience of the faith was something that busted into life and gave them rules and burdens. Kind of a Jansenistic experience, this moralistic Christianity. Louisiana's something different to happen. See, faith was always tied into the celebration of life. And I have a friend who lives in New Orleans right now, and he said, he called me recently, he's like, you know, I was reading an article around Lent, and it was written by an atheist, and he was talking about what he's gonna give up for Lent. There's this open friendliness toward the faith, though it's super post-Christian in New Orleans, especially you look at some of the festivals they have. There's some family-friendly ones, for sure, but I'll tell you what, all the festivals have their roots in Catholic feast days. Their way of feasting on life was connected to Catholicism. My kids all love the faith. Now, I'm not saying if your kids don't, I mean, there's a dang thing called free will. It screws everything up, right? But if I could say one big reason they're all still in love with the faith, is because they've always experienced the faith as part of the way to celebrate life. My kids like a good burger and a nice sunset, but we will pull the car over and look at it. They like listening to classical music, listening to heavy metal music, if it's good. They like all of it, and they like Jesus, all for the same reason, because life is Christ and Christ is life and it's all one big beautiful ball of wax that we gotta celebrate. The people perceiving you that you're a lover of life, that you stop and smell the roses. I took my family to some place warm this winter. I kept losing my 18-year-old who's about to join the army, God bless him. I kept losing him because, it's like, where's Ethan? Oh, he's literally smelling flowers again. It's like, Dad, you gotta smell this gardenia, man, it's amazing. Is that how we live? See, our faith in life should bleed into one another if we want it to be attractive to people. Amen? Amen? Beautiful, I was debating with Ricky Gervais on Twitter who actually responded to me on Twitter, which is kind of amazing. He's a famous comedian, an atheist. And he said to me, I'm in awe of the world, I just don't believe in God. And he said, I love this short, beautiful life without believing in God. And I said, if man is no more than a collection of molecules whose destiny is worm food, the only way to call life beautiful is to not think too hard. You gotta try awe of the world as a gift, love as eternal, life as inherently meaningful, that's something beautiful. And his response was, the magic of reality's enough for me, have a great life. And I said, I couldn't agree more. I'm just disagreeing with you about how big reality is. You see, faith doesn't limit your view of reality. It makes reality huge. It makes reality. And then I said, by the way, come to our reboot event in Soho a second, the part of London that I was at, and he didn't, but hey, whatever, we try. Amen? God's fingerprints are all over creation, truth, beauty, goodness, it's everywhere. So we gotta present the faith as part of life, the sixth habit of holy people, bring that up on the screen. I gotta talk faster now. Can you believe that? I can actually talk faster, because I'm from New Jersey. You have no idea how fast I can talk. Number six, witness with your life. What is number six? This is a scary one. You see, cause it's easy to talk about your faith, but when people see you up close and personal, you're the only Bible someone might ever read, you're the only church someone might ever enter. So if you got a rosary dangling from your car window when you're in traffic and someone cuts you off, make sure you wave with five fingers. And I know you're not perfect, so this one's really scary, and I'm not either. It's easy for me to travel the world and preach. When I come home, my kids are watching. Someone cut me off recently in a cuss foot on my mouth. I'm not proud of that, but a little voice in the back seat said, daddy, people who talk about Jesus are not supposed to use that word. So I said, shut up. No, I didn't say that. They see me mess up. They see me go to confession. They see that I'm weak, but I surround myself with friends who are strong. They see that I'm self-centered, but that I make a high priority at helping people who are poor and needy because I have read the cheat sheet for the final exam, Matthew 25. You might want to read that one. They see that I mess up, but they hear their dad say, I'm sorry. Because they know that for all my flaws, I'm not the Lord and King of our home, or of myself. I'm not the boss of me. I bow to somebody else, and that gives dad a joy and a peace and a purpose that nothing else could, and there's nothing more convincing than that. You don't have to be perfect to be a witness with your life, but here's what you do have to be. Authentic. You have to be striving to be Saint, insert your name here. I do not buy into that message of, you know, it's okay, just be messy and stay messy. It's okay to be messy. Yes, it is. It's okay to be fixed too. It's okay to be washed clean. It's okay to become a saint, and to live in the power and grace of God. That's okay too. And when we're striving to live that life in all our messiness on the way, if we really want that above all else, and we can't fake that, we are a witness with our lives. And the seventh habit of holy people, bring that up on the screen, might be the most important one, is to pray. Nice and loud? Why do we do this? Because Jesus knows what the person you're talking to needs more than you do. He's got that added advantage of being able to see everything. That's why he approached everybody in the Gospels differently. He'd go up to the Pharisees who were arrogant men and say, you were like a whitewashed tomb, you're all dead bones on the inside. That is the chaos who was an unliked, unpopular little man who climbed the tree to get a glimpse of Jesus. What did Jesus do? He looked at Zekeus and said, you are like a whitewashed tomb and you're dead bones on the inside. No. He said, Zekeus, I want to come over your house for a beer. I'm paraphrasing scripture like big time right now. Zekeus, I want to come over your home. That was it. And it changed his life. He's going to the house of a sinner. And Zekeus just puffed his chest out right there. Right now, Lord, I give my life to you. Anything that I've taken from people, I give it back times too, I don't know exactly what it's about, but you can see a total conversion right there because Jesus just said, I want to come over and hang out. What's the person that you want to bring the gospel to need? If you stay tied into Jesus Christ, if you keep asking Him, He'll show you. One of my dear friends who travels the world and preaches, he's an amazing guy, gave this big weekend conference to youth and he was flying home and he was exhausted. And he's sitting next to a guy and he looks over and he sees the word adultery written across this guy's forehead. He's like, really, Lord? I'm really tired right now. I don't feel like talking to this guy. So if I look back and see it again, I know I might have to say something. He looks back, he still sees it there. And he taps the guy on the shoulder and says, I don't know how to say this, but I can see the word adultery written across your forehead. The guy's jaw dropped. He said, I'm on my way to see my mistress right now. They talked on the whole flight to Los Angeles. The guy got off the plane, bought a ticket back home. God can do extraordinary things like that. He doesn't usually, which is really annoying. But I have to believe he's got a reason for not usually doing that. So what's the reason, Lord? Here's the reason, brothers and sisters. If I could presume to speak for God right now. He doesn't make it that easy for us because he wants us to do the hard work. The hard work of listening to the person in front of us. The hard work of putting ourselves out there and not being sure what's gonna happen. The hard work of praying and listening to him and praying, Lord, please show me the right words to say. He wants us to do that hard work to stretch and expand our hearts, to let him in and to let the people around us in. Because when we do that, who do we become more like? And the end of this game, guys, in the eyes of God, isn't just to use you as tools to do stuff for him, but to make you more like his children to enjoy his glory forever. See, before preaching the gospel, we gotta be recipients of that ourselves and rest in that reality. So let's pray in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, amen. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of a living God, we thank you, we praise you, we worship you because you didn't only call us to yourself and we thank you for that. You don't only promise us paradise, we thank you for that, but even more, you raise us up and share with us the joy of spreading your kingdom, sharing with us the joy of doing what you do. Thanks for believing in us, more than we could possibly ever believe in ourselves or in you. Thank you for loving us. Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end, amen. In the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, amen. Praise God, thank you all. Thank you guys, thank you. Hey, praise God, huh? Amen. Hey, a couple of quick announcements. Number one, if you want more frisbees to throw at your friends. There's a book called Joy to the World. I would say I copied it from Scott Hahn's title, but he copied it from something else too. There's a song called Joy to the World. Anyway, short meditations about the gospel. I'll be talking about relativism tomorrow in my breakout session, there's a booklet on that. A book called I Am that I wrote. It's about how to rewire how you talk to yourself to replace the negative self-talk and self-defeating talk with the word of God. So you gotta share this stuff with people in your lives. Don't get this Catholic stuff for you, get it for other people, right? I also have free videos and media that we give out to the world. If you wanna be on our newsletter, text your name and email address to that number. So where you write the message, put your name and email and text it to 330732-5228. We'll leave that up there for a minute and then we'll prepare our hearts for Holy Mass. Thank you guys so much.