 Thank you. It's so great to be with you. As a doctor, I can prescribe Motrin, Ibuprofen, and other forms of aspirin. So I'm excited about that. But it was a tremendous honor to be here in May. It's a tremendous honor to be back with Scott. It always is to be able to spend time with you. You know, Scott, being a little bit humble, we gave Scott our Lifetime Achievement Award at Focus in January for his work in the New Evangelization. And I think back, Scott, to the 30 years that we've been friends. And it really is extraordinary. The church was struggling then in different ways. People didn't know their faith. Now there's a growing number of people who know the faith, and the devil has attacked us and tried to slow us down because he's frightened of us. He wasn't afraid of us in the 1980s. We were lost in asleep. There's a growing mountain and energy of faithful Catholics, and you are at the tip of the spirit. It's exciting to be able to spend some time with you today to share really a simple idea with you of what I would call the little way of the New Evangelization. St. Therese, the little flower, gave us her little way for spirituality. And it was based on the idea that she believed she couldn't do great things for God, but she could do ordinary things with great love. Now anybody who's known St. Therese, the little flower in your devotional life knows she actually does great things also. But that sense that in order to get big, we need to get small to recognize that. And so I want to begin in prayer, and then I want to kind of give a preparatory comment because I'm going to try to make some bold assertions in our time together. But I want to make bold assertions about the great work of Jesus Christ, not about you or me. We have a very, very, very, very small role to play, but it's very important. Let's pray in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Lord God, you have shown us that you want us to trust you, to entrust ourselves to you, to allow ourselves to be called by you, to be taken in places we may not want to go, but you've called us. And first, you built the life of trust. You came in flesh and allowed yourself to be taken places that no human would want to go, but you wanted to demonstrate your trust and your love of the Father so that the world would know that you love the Father. And so we want to entrust ourselves to you. We want to trust ourselves for our own sake and our own salvation, but also, Lord, for the expansion and the new evangelization and really reaching the world with your gospel and good news so that every man, woman, and child on earth would know that they're known and loved and cared for by you, and that you have an eternal, everlasting plan for them. We entrust our lives to you through the Queen and Mother you've given us. We pray together, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. I want to just a preparatory comment. As I said, I'm going to make some bold assertions. I would say that in order to understand them, we have to understand our role. You and I are kind of like a pencil in God's hand. Now, we don't get any credit for what he does any more than the pencil gets credit or the pen. Nobody sits back and says, you know, that pen deserves a lot of credit. It was Shakespeare's pen. The only reason it's important is because it was Shakespeare's pen. He could have used any other pen, and it would have been, his writings would have been just as great. But the one thing that's interesting about a pen or a pencil when it's used, the only way that it can be useful is if it gives of itself. It actually has to be diminished. Somebody has to be taken away. There's less lead in the pencil once it's used. But the only difference, and this is a big, big difference, the only difference between you and a pencil, me and a pencil is that pencils don't choose to be used. We actually get to choose whether we'll be used or not, and that's an ongoing decision. It's a big yes followed by many, many little yeses, and sometimes some other big yeses along the way. And so we do deserve some sense of cooperation. So when it comes to holiness or evangelization, it's God 99.9999% of the time, but it is you and me 0.0001% of the time, and actually that's pretty extraordinary when you figure out who we're collaborating with. And so what I'd like to do is I'd like to kind of emphasize that the kind of theme we're going to be going after is we want to do what he told us in the way that he showed us, and to be able to recognize there's a way. And so we can divide Jesus's life into kind of two basic categories of things that he did in his public ministry. Jesus did two types of things in his public ministry. The first thing he did is he made the extraordinary ordinary. Jesus walked around doing amazing things all the time. Healing, at times the passages say he healed everyone who came to him. We hear of healings, and there are healings at Lourdes, but not everyone who comes experiences of physical healing. There was a period of time for three years when Jesus walked around healing people. He walked around raising the dead. He walked around multiplying loaves and feeding the hungry. He did amazing, amazing things, miracle after miracle after miracle. And if you can do that, go for it. I want you to be really, really generous. Jesus was generous. He made the extraordinary ordinary. And you know people, I know people, I would argue that Scott Hahn has the gift to be the extraordinary ordinary. Scott has been able to travel the world and teach people things that very few other people could teach. He's an extraordinary world-class scholar. He's been very, very generous in the 30 years that I've known him. He's been all over the world. He has emptied himself to be able to share what God has given him. And at the same time, he's never stopped learning. I was sharing yesterday that when I studied under Scott, he was smarter than I was, and he knew more than I did, and he was learning faster than I was. He was very intimidating because every day, even though I worked hard, the gap was increasing. And that's okay. He's got extraordinary gifts. And there are others who do. And you might have those extraordinary gifts. I'm not going to talk about that today though. I want to talk about the other thing that Jesus did. Jesus rendered the ordinary extraordinary. And I believe that everybody can do that. It is the little way of the new evangelization. Something that each of us can do and all of us can do. And the beautiful thing is in the midst of all the greatness, I actually watched Scott do this as well, to get small. He spent hundreds of hours with me in the seven years that I lived here in town. We moved in on the Feast of the Assumption, and seven years later on the Feast of the Assumption, we moved out. And during that time, I lived across the street from Scott for much of that time. And it didn't take me seven years to get to graduate school. Two years and then I stayed and worked for five more years. But we were together on a regular basis, and he spent time with me in crazy sorts of ways. And it would be creative. He was working on his dissertation, and so he'd need to go to Pittsburgh. They had a better library than here in town. And so he needed to get to Pittsburgh. But he would invite me to go with him. And we get to drive in and time at Pittsburgh, maybe grab a snack and then get back and the time out and we get two or three hours. In the midst of him doing something great, working on his dissertation, he also was able to be small and be relational. And I want to talk to you about how you can be small and how we can be relational. And that everybody we know can do this. It's a beautiful thing that we can all participate. We might be able to do great things for God, but all of us can do small things for God with great love. They'd be intentional, not like the pencil, but like a human participant in the work of God. Yes, we are an instrument in his hands, but we're a living human choosing instrument. And to be able to sit back and say, I can choose to live for you. And being intentional about what we're going to talk about is so critical to be able to recognize that there is a way to fulfill the great commandment to love God and love neighbor and the great commission to go make disciples of all nations by simply being intentional with the life you already have. So many sisters, nuns lived the life of Saint Teresa, the little flower and didn't become canonized saints. It wasn't the lifestyle that made her a saint. It was the love with which she lived it. And you're living in the midst of relationships right now. I want to talk about what that looks like, because Jesus's model of evangelization is crazy. I mean, it's really, the more you think about it, I hope to shock you a little bit when you think about the way Jesus saved the world. We get in trouble in Genesis chapter three. In Genesis chapter three, we get in trouble. And it's the third page of the Bible. Makes sense, Genesis chapter three. And this is the Old Testament. And this is the New Testament. The vast majority of the book is the Old Testament. And if I were God and my created sons and daughter got in trouble, like Adam and Eve did, I would have punished them also. But I probably would have put them in a timeout until maybe Genesis seven or 11. That's not God's plan. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. I mean, it goes on and on. And we're talking generation after generation. Now, he doesn't abandon us. We are always, he's always extending and renewing covenants. But as time goes on, the number of people living outside of the covenant continues to increase. And people within the covenant find themselves unable to maintain faithfulness, and they fall out. And so there's more and more people living in deep, deep darkness all over the world. And they're waiting. And even the people in covenant are waiting for this definitive fulfillment of God's promises that come in Jesus Christ and to recognize this. And so he waits an incredible amount of time. It's extraordinary to think of all the thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of people who lived and died without ever getting a chance to hear the great news of Jesus Christ. The first group because it hadn't happened yet. And the second group because we haven't told them. And to recognize we have to have an evangelical imperative to recognize that this generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of people. We don't believe in reincarnation. The people in this world that are in poverty are really poor right now. They're hungry today. A 500-gear plan to figure out how to feed the hungry doesn't do the people on earth who are hungry today any good. The ones that are thirsty, no good. The ones that don't have even basic health care. We've got to get to them. The ones that are in slavery, there are more people enslaved right now on earth than ever in the history of the world. They're being tormented. And they're waiting to be rescued. And as important as all of those things are, it's even more important that they would come to know God's plan for them. And that they have an everlasting destiny with God, the blessed Trinity. And they won't know that unless we go to them. So there must be a sense of urgency. We do not believe in reincarnation. In fact, my favorite note in the Catholic Church, back in the index, it says reincarnation? No. That's it. And so to be able to recognize this, and sometimes I think we act like, oh, they'll get a mulligan. They'll get a do-over if it doesn't go well. No, this is it. We have to have a sense of unbridled urgency. And then we have to have a sense of, okay, the urgency needs to be channeled to something realistic. And I'm going to share with you the method modeled by the Master, which allows us to recognize that by getting small, we can also get big. Just like Saint Therese, who didn't think she could do big things for God, and then becomes one of the most active miracle workers from heaven of any of the saints out there, doing enormous things. And by you and me getting small and trusting that it's 99.9999% God, and just that .0001% us, but that .0001% is so, so critically important that if we would entrust him and do what he told us the way that he showed us, then we could live radically. Think about what Jesus did. So Genesis 3, generation after generation after generation, thousands of years go by, and finally, as Saint Paul tells us in Galatians at the fullness of time, God is sent and becomes man. And he's here, and we've been waiting, and he's the savior of the world. He's the only savior of all the world. There's no other savior. He's the only one. He's the savior of all the people on earth, all the people who ever were on earth, and all the people who ever will be on earth. And we wait, and we wait, and he shows up, and his strategy is mind boggling. He's waited a long time. I think I've tried to make that clear. But even when he gets here, he's 30 years old, and he's living at home. Oh my goodness, I have nine children, and I would never... In fact, when my son Thomas, who's actually Scott's godson, when Thomas got married a couple of years ago, his two brothers, the oldest and the one right behind him, got up and toasted him at the wedding. They said, we all agree that Thomas is the most Christlike among us, which is kind of funny because Thomas was probably the black sheep. He's in a great place. He married a great Catholic girl, and he's going to have to go to heaven now. But it was so funny because when they said, he's the most Christlike of all of us, we're like, what? And he says, because he was almost 30 and living at home. And to be able to see, you would like, oh my goodness, and I remember years ago talking to Scott and saying, you don't always want to see if you saw the Messiah and knew who he was. You'd be like, get on with it. Oh my goodness, what are you waiting for? And I think he would respond and say, oh, I have been. I don't know if you've noticed what's going on in this house I live in. I'm God made man. My mother is perfect, and my earthly father is a just man. Humanity has never loved each other like we've been loving each other. Every human heart has longed to be loved the way we have loved one another for the last 30 years. It's been extraordinary. And by the way, I am redeeming the world as I live this way with them. But I will get on with it. But his next strategy is almost as scandalous as the first one, 30 years old living at home. He's got the most important job in the world. He's in no rush. Now when he comes to implementing his strategy, he finds 12 guys and he goes camping for three years. What? All of the world, all of time, 12 men, three years. What are you doing? And then he spends three hours dying for us to unleash the grace of the Holy Spirit into our lives. I'm going to talk about how I believe that it's not unusual to find 12 and go camping for three years. I'm going to argue that in a little way, God is calling us to imitate his Son with the method modeled by the Master that each of us would find a small number of people. Not too many. A small number where you can actually know them deeply. You don't just know their name. You know what's going on in their lives and they know you. Jesus had the big life. He worked for the multitudes but when he fed the thousands, the 12 were right there. When he gave the sermon on the Mount, the 12 were right there. They were watching him and he invested in them in crazy sort of ways, not the ways that I would do. I, for example, would sit back and say, I don't know how many of you have been to Pittsburgh, into the city. One of the things when you fly into Pittsburgh and come here, you don't get to go into the city. When you go through the tunnel and you see the three rivers, it's spectacular. One of the prettiest cities I think in the country. Really, really beautiful. But see, if I was more Christ-like, I wouldn't tell you about it. I'd say, let's go for a walk. And we'd walk all the way there and we'd come out of the tunnel and say, see, it's amazing because this is what Jesus did all the time. He'd be like, we're up in Galilee. I need to show you something. I want to make a point about Jerusalem. So let's go for a five-day walk to Jerusalem. I'll make the point and then we'll walk back. Oh my goodness, who does that? But here's the deal. It wasn't about the thing he wanted to teach them in Jerusalem. It was that, too. It was about the 10 days of walking. Can you imagine going on a walk with Jesus for 10 days? Oh my goodness. I mean, you're walking along in a couple of miles. He's talking to Peter and then something happens and now he's talking to James and oh my goodness. The timelessness that Jesus invested in these 12 men. It's scandalous. But you think about it, we already know this is true because that's the way we're supposed to parent, right? We're just supposed to spend so much a ridiculous amount of time with these children and win their hearts. Yes, to our family, but even more so to God's family. And so God has implemented this in his own life, but he's blueprinted it into the family life. But he wants us as evangelists, as disciple makers, he wants us to live this in our friendships. You know, there's only, there's two kingdoms, two cities, seeing Augustine talks about in the city of God. You can call them cities or kingdoms. And one is the the city of God. The other one is the city of man. In the city of God, as we heard before, people love God so much they're willing to deny even themselves. And in the city of man, people love themselves so much they're willing to deny even God. And there's only two ways to grow the city of God. Evangelization and procreation. And even in procreation, you still need to evangelize. We need to raise them up to become disciples of Christ. It's the only way. And it's all that matters. It's all that matters. See, if you die and you live in the city of man, you'll be separated from God for the rest of eternity. And if you die in the city of God, you'll be united to God for the rest of eternity. As Cardinal Newman, soon to be Saint Newman said, everyone who ever lived still does somewhere. And this is the only thing that matters. Oh, I know it matters. Everybody here probably has heartache. I could raise my hand and talk to you about heartache. I know the world hurts. And there are things I'd like to get fixed. There's things I'd like to do. There's things I'd like to have that I don't have. There's things I have I don't want. We all have issues. And none of them really matter except this one. Because here's the deal. If you got all of the money and all the wealth and all the fame and all the friends, you lived in the best neighborhood and you had the best house and the best car and all that was good and you died and went to hell, you're a total failure at a cosmic level. And if you never had all of those things, maybe you never even had any of them and you died and went to heaven, great success. Because here's the conversation that never takes place in hell. Hey, when I was on earth, I used to drive a Ferrari. Because the response would be, who cares? You're on fire. And here's the conversation that never takes place in heaven. When I was on earth, I used to drive a Ferrari. Because the response would be, who cares? You can fly. Nothing on this earth matters at all unless we get the heaven thing right. Nothing. All the sufferings of all the people throughout all of time will be evaporated in the first instant of heaven. It goes on forever, but the amount of goodness is so much greater than the amount of badness in this life and to recognize this is all that matters to live in a way to imitate Christ. Yes, if you can work the miracles, please work the miracles and we should trust God and pray to God and ask him to work miracles. When the church goes through explosive times of growth, there are miracles and we should pray for that. But all of us can live this little way of investing in a few, of being able to love them and get to know them and be intentional and say, I want to go to heaven and I want to go with you. Do you want to come with me? Because saints, they come in clusters. When there's a St. Francis, there's a St. Clair, when there's a St. Augustine, there's a St. Monica, and the St. Anselm. Sometimes there's just St. Charles, the Lwanga and companions. But it's really hard to find a saint that got there by themselves because getting to heaven is really difficult and when you start to pursue it seriously, the devil opposes you like he doesn't oppose most people. Because most of them he doesn't worry about. And to be able to recognize we need one another, Jesus asked the disciples to live in community, in friendship with one another, to be able to recognize this and to see that he's going to ask us to do crazy, crazy things. I want to read from a passage about what it means to follow Jesus and maybe you'll resonate with this. It's from Matthew chapter 14. And when you always want to set up the context when you're reading a passage in Scripture, so Matthew 14, this comes in verse 22 and following. What's just happened is that Jesus has just fed the 5,000. So this is the immediate passage after that. And so recognize that's the case, he's fed the 5,000. And I just want to read just for a second, but a little portion of this passage. Then Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds he went up to the hills by himself to pray. And when evening had come he was there alone, but the boat by this time was many furlongs distant from the land beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea they were terrified. It's a ghost! And they cried out for fear, but immediately he spoke and said, Take heart, it is I have no fear. Now let's think about this for a second. I resonate with being a disciple in this situation. So Jesus has just done amazing things. He's probably done amazing things in your life also. And it's incredible. So this is what happens. He's fed 5,000 people, actually they're men, so if it's a regular religious gathering there's probably twice as many women. So that's 15th. And then there's kids. So it's like 20, 25, 30,000 people. Who knows how many people are there? A lot of people. And he's just fed them. And so as soon as they're done he says, All right guys, get in the boat and go. He's got a task for them, some kind. And then he dismisses the crowds. Well, I've never seen Scott Hahn feed the multitudes. Well, at dinner Kimberley feeds the multitudes. But I've never seen Scott do it miraculously, but I have watched Scott speak to thousands of people. And it's very hard for him to dismiss the crowds. Because everybody wants to talk to him. Oh, Dr. Hahn, let me tell you about this and that and this and it's really hard to say goodbye to 15, 20,000, 30,000 people. I don't know how many people were there. A lot of people. And everybody wants to talk to him. That was amazing. I can't believe, oh, by the way, I don't know if you know this, but you healed my cousin. Everybody wants to share their story. And so it takes a long time to dismiss the crowds. Oh my goodness, a super long time. And now the boat's way out there. Now, four of the guys in the boat are professional fishermen, so they're pretty good with the boat. But that's out there and there's a storm. And then Jesus knowing there's a storm, because he's not only the savior of the world, he's also God, so he caused the storm. And so the storm's out there and he says, I think I'll go pray. It goes up in the mountain to pray. He's in no hurry. See a theme, no hurry? Maybe sometimes when you pray, you're worried he's not hearing you. He's in no hurry. He's never late. But he doesn't come early. He waits. And so finally, he's done praying. I don't know how long he prayed. I mean, it could have been hours. All I know is that in the middle of the night, he's like, oh, probably about time to go get those guys. So out he goes, walking on the water and it completely freaks them out. And then he calms them. And here's the deal. I don't even know that Jesus wanted them to get to the other side of the lake. What Jesus wanted from them is the same thing he wants from you and from me. He wanted them to trust him. To trust him. And he could have sat on the side of the lake and said, I really want you to trust me. And it would have taught him this much. But by letting them get out into the sea and being in the midst of the storm and having the bejeebers scared out of them to the point that they think they're gonna die. And then he walks out on the water and shows them that they can trust him. That's a whole different level of learning. And what we learn from books, from teachers is really, really important. It's foundational. It's necessary. It's essential. But it's not sufficient because Christianity is not a set of doctrines. It has a set of doctrines and they're all true. They're all true. But they're not enough. We actually, it's a way of living. And that's modeled for us. See, I really believe deep, deep down that holiness is a lot like your first language and your ability to walk. You didn't go to a class to learn how to speak your first language. You learned how to speak it, then you went to a class to learn how to speak it well. You didn't go to a class to learn how to walk. You lived in a house where people who walked. These things were modeled for you and you grew into them. And I believe that holiness is intended to be the same way. The challenge is, is we don't live in a culture with a lot of holiness. And so we have to pray to God that he would allow a renewal to take place first in our own hearts. And then in hearts of people near us so we can share life, so that we can begin to radiate out what it means to be holy. And to be able to recognize, I want to love you with a great love, with a powerful love. To be able to see that holiness is what God has called each of us. We live in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. And I think the argument can be made very strongly that the central theme of the Second Vatican Council is the universal call to holiness. That every one of us is called to be a saint. It's not just for the people on the postcards as great as they are and as inspirational as they are. It is meant to be for all of us. And when we believe that and we begin to live that way and be able to say the only way I can do that is to entrust myself to you because here's the deal. Have you ever been in a situation where you're doing exactly what God asked you to do? And it's not going well at all. At all, it's really going quite badly. And you're tempted to not trust. Did I miss discern? Does God not care? And this is exactly what he was doing for the apostles. I want you to get there. I actually want you to be tested in this. I want you to have to learn how to trust me. Not know that you ought to trust me. Everybody in the room knows we ought to trust him. But when you're facing, when I'm facing temptation, the two big threats are temptation to sin and the experience of suffering. In those two realities, we are tempted to step back and not trust God. And he wants to sit back and say, are you kidding me? Have you read my book? I do this all the time. Did you see how I got the entire Israelite nation out of Egypt? Right next to the Red Sea, by the way, there was no bridge. Then I inspired Pharaoh to change his mind and come get him. And it was the most powerful military force on earth at the time. And they were coming and Israel had no weapons. And he waited until they could see each other. And then he told Moses, wait, wait, wait, see a theme. And then how about you put your arms out like this? And boom, the Red Sea parts. And the parting is so amazing, so devastating that the Egyptians who don't even believe in God, they're not faithful to God. And they're like, okay, we can walk through there. Oh my goodness, are you kidding me? You're not on God's side. Why would you think you could walk through there? Or I watch my older kids wrestle with my younger kids and they'll start. So my older kid will lie down on his back, already pinned, and then the younger one gets a chance to try to wrestle him. And that goes on here, because I don't know if you saw this picture, but there was Jesus on the cross and he laid down on his back for three days. And it was like, boom, I win. He's the conqueror. He's the conqueror of the world. He is our savior to be able to see the power of Jesus. Sometimes I think we think that Jesus is meek and humble and we think that means weak and humble. And he's not weak. He's not weak at all. I love this passage from the end of John chapter 14, verse 30. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me, but I do as the Father has commanded me so that the world will know that I love the Father. The devil didn't do anything to him. He thought he was doing something to him. Jesus was in complete control. A little bit later in chapter 18, verse 5, he's in the garden and more than 100 soldiers come armed and they're ready to take Jesus. And Jesus turns to him and says, whom do you seek? Jesus of Nazareth. And he says, I am he, and they all fall to the ground. He knocks an entire cohort of soldiers to the ground with the words, I am he. He's in complete control. And I know it doesn't feel like it because we need to learn to trust him. Because if you want to live this way, you're going to have to trust because it's not going to look like it's going to have the impact. I mean, how many people were there at the resurrection appearances? Maybe 500 were told in Corinthians. Not a big group after three years. But within weeks of the sending of the Holy Spirit to the thousands began to come. And the church has never stopped growing. The church has never stopped growing. It's not growing. It's shrinking in the first world right now. And that's unusual. You know, in the 1500s, about 9 million people left the Catholic Church in one decade during the Protestant Reformation. In the same decade, 9 million people joined the Catholic Church in Mexico because our Lady of Guadalupe appeared. The church doesn't shrink. It's against her nature. She is light and she shines. And so you and I are living through a weird situation right now where the church that we're experiencing is experiencing shrinkage. It's against her nature to do that. And she won't do it for very long. But when we begin to grow again, we'll need an army of people to welcome our brothers and sisters home. You know, I talked to priests all the time about the new evangelization. I'll say, what do you think about the new evangelization? All of them sit back and say, oh, I'm all in favor. I love it. And I said, well, let's get practical for a second. How would it be if you're parish doubled in size? And they go, oh my goodness. I have no capacity. I can barely serve the people that are here. We better change the way we're doing it. And there's a point in time where the patriarch, Joseph, is talking to Pharaoh. And Pharaoh's been having some dreams and I'm paraphrasing, obviously. And Pharaoh says, what do you think of these dreams? And Joseph says, you need to build bigger barns because you have unbelievable harvest right now. But you don't have big enough barns. And there's going to be a huge famine. And so you better store now. And then when you do store, you're not only going to protect your people, but you'll enrich your nation because nations all around you will have to come to you for the food and your barns. And I would argue that in the Catholic Church right now, we may be tempted to sit back and say, what do we need to close next? And I don't think that's where we should be at all. I think we should be getting ready for an avalanche, a tsunami of souls coming in because you could sit back and say, oh, the world is hostile to the church. It's horribly hostile to the church. Why is that a bad thing for you or me? It's uncomfortable, but it's not bad. The world was hostile to Jesus. Good Friday didn't look that good on Good Friday. So we have to have trust that even if it means suffering, it's worth it. And to sit back and say, you know, whether it's Our Lady of Fatima, whether it's St. John Paul in the new springtime, we've been told it's coming. But if we're looking forward to a new springtime, what does that mean we've been living through? An old winter. It's terrible out there. But here's the deal. It's worse for the people who live in the world. We're at least in the boat. Now the storm's out there, but they have no coverage. They're suffering, unbelievable suffering. And the church has two tools to be able to welcome people in, as the tool of truth. And it's beautiful to live in the truth. But the world has turned its back on truth. And that's not bad for the church. It's bad for the world. But the other tool that we have is mercy. And there are other groups that have some of the truth. But we have the corner of the market on mercy. And as the people in the world are destroying their lives by living out of accordance with their nature and out of accordance with God's will, they are preparing themselves to hear the gospel and to want to know that you're loved, you're forgiven. And yeah, you can stand behind a podium and do that. But here's the deal. At the end of the day, I won't know most of your names. And you won't know much about me. But if we were to gather in small groups where everyone is known and loved and cared for, and we were to be able to share life and pursue Christ together where we knew each other and we prayed for one another. Not, I pray for humanity. That's a good prayer. But I pray for this specific issue. A young man who I received an email from this morning named Alex is a focused missionary. He just got back from a mission trip to Argentina yesterday and his mother was driving him home and they were in a car accident and she broke her neck. I don't know Alex very well, but I was praying for Alex. I wrote back to him this morning and said, I'm praying for you. I'll offer my rosary this morning for your mother. And I'm praying in the name of Jesus Christ, not in the power of Curtis Martin. I have no power, but in the name of Jesus Christ for full and total restoration of his mother's neck and healing. And I ask you to invite you to join me. But I can pray for Alex because we have a friendship. And I can pray even more for Ted Sree because Ted Sree and I've been walking together for 25 years. And to be able to sit back and say, I know him. He just shot me a picture of his wedding and I was honored to be his best man. And when it was time for the ring, I pretended I didn't know where the ring was. And Ted's looking going, because Ted's easily frightened. And to be able to recognize that we've been walking and laughing and crying together for 25 years and it's been amazing to watch Ted grow from a young, vibrant, zealous man of God into a mature, robust leader in the church and to be in friendship with him. And to be able to sit back and say, I'm honored to sit back and say, I'm in a discipleship relationship with my eldest son Brock who's a focus missionary and my third son Augustine who's a focus missionary. And we're meeting on a regular basis to talk about how we're gonna get to heaven. And I used to teach him as a mentor to a young child and now they've grown up to be like me. And there are times they mentor me. We're gonna try to get to heaven together. Now, the biggest way to try to get to heaven is to get as close to Jesus as possible. I've got a few minutes left. I want to talk about evangelization and I want to talk about how we've talked about being a small group and being relational. I want to talk about how it's essential to be faithful and to trust. But God's calling us beyond faithfulness and trust to fruitfulness. And we talk a lot about evangelization. You know, it's interesting to talk about evangelization when we started Focus about 22 years ago. We'd say, we're gonna be doing evangelization and people would say, I don't know if that's Catholic. And are you guys a cult? Or I don't know what's going on here. And then one time I was interviewing a guy to come work with us. There was actually a disciple of Scott from the time he was an evangelical and this guy had also converted. And Scott said, this guy could be great. And we sat down and I made the big sales pitch because I'm really good at this. And he says, yeah, yeah, no. I would love to do this. I mean, hearing you speak makes my heart burn, but I just don't believe it ever gets Catholics to evangelize. So no. And so it's amazing to watch 20 years later, people are like, yes, we should evangelize. I want to evangelize. I don't know how to evangelize. Focus evangelizes. Hey, could you do a workshop on evangelization? Yes, we could. Maybe you could write a workbook so that we could use in the workshop for the evangelization because I don't know how to evangelize. And you could do that. And it's helpful. And working with Ted, we're actually doing that kind of thing without a doubt. But here's the deal. I don't want to overstate the methodology of evangelization. It's really important, but it's not even close to the most important thing. The tools are one thing. But if Tiger Woods and I went out and played golf and we switched golf clubs, he'd beat me by just as much. I'm sure he's got the best golf clubs he can find, but they're so secondary to who he is as a golfer. And who you are in Christ is so much more important to your skills. In fact, when you think about it, evangelization is sharing good news, not just good news, the best news. And you already know how to share good news. If you went to a new restaurant and it was amazing, you're coming home and your neighbor from across the street was over there and you were like, oh, I should go tell Ted about the restaurant. But first I should probably go to a workshop and maybe have a workbook and so I can be skilled in how to share good news about restaurants. Nobody would ever do that. And so I want to talk about the best of Angelus that I'm aware of in the history of the world who also happens to be the first Christian. The Blessed Virgin Mary was perfect. She was without sin, without spot or wrinkle. She was a ready and perfect receptacle for the Son of God to become man. But she didn't just become his mother in a biological way. She became the first Christian. As St. Augustine says, she conceived him in her heart before she conceived him in her womb. And she was so united. And Mary as an evangelist is a great example of the most important part about evangelization. And I interrupt that message to tell you a story. The church fathers said this about us and God. They said that we don't have really anything in common with God. It's kind of like God's this raging hot fire and we're like a cold iron beam. Nothing in common. But if you take the cold iron beam and you put it in the burning hot fire, something amazing begins to happen. Something amazing begins to happen to that iron beam. It begins to get hot and then it begins to glow. And it takes on the property of the fire. It isn't fire. Never will be fire. It's an iron beam. But it takes on the property and when you can actually take it out of the fire and touch it to a bale of hay and it would catch on fire. And Mary's like that hot, burning hot iron rod so that what happens is that two things happen. She receives our Lord and then we're told she hears about her kin's woman Elizabeth and she goes in haste. She has an evangelical imperative. I don't have time to waste. I'm gonna go. Now she's never been trained in evangelization and we're told that she walked into the house and I'm not sure exactly what she said but it was probably Shalom. And when she said Shalom, Elizabeth and John were both filled with the Holy Spirit. That's effective evangelization. What am I supposed to say? It's so secondary. It's so secondary. Start saying it. But who are you that's saying it? Are you completely trusting yourself or at least trying to completely trust yourself to Christ? Are you spending time with them? Our missionaries, our focus missionaries spend an hour a day in front of the Blessed Sacrament. They go to Mass every day. They pray the rosary every day. Divine mercy chapel. I mean, they're informal prayer for probably two hours a day because it's way more important to talk to God about college students than it is to talk to college students about God. And you actually can't effectively talk to college students about God if you haven't talked to God. But Mary was so on fire that she could evangelize with the word good morning or peace. I don't know exactly what she said. It just says, at your greeting, the baby leapt in my womb. We see from the rest of the scriptures, John was filled with the Holy Spirit and it's clear from the passage that Elizabeth was. That's power. That's the effectiveness of evangelization, that we would be close to Christ, that first method, that first habit of divine intimacy. And I talk about it in Making Missionary Disciples. As Scott said, it's short. I think it's like 60 pages. I was dyslexic as a young child, so I like short books. And so to be able to recognize the power of being close and with and entrusting ourselves to Jesus in the midst of temptation and in the midst of suffering, to be able to recognize that we've been called to impart both faithfulness and fruitfulness. I want to talk a little bit about this fruitfulness and what it means. So my encouragement was to gather a group. In fact, you learned about the quads that Franciscan's doing. And that's a great method to find a small group and make a small group. I think that's a fantastic idea. But this idea that we would gather in small groups, the part that we would highlight and focus is the importance that that group is not just faithful and together and united, but that they're open to being fruitful. The apostles were united, but after the resurrection and after the sending of the Holy Spirit, once the persecution set, they were also sent. And they went out and found others. Paul found Timothy. He worked with Mark and Silas and Titus and to be able to see that they were investing with others. And it was the same sort of situation as Paul was moving from village to village and sharing the gospel and inviting people to Christ, he would walk with a group of people, frequently Timothy. Early on, Mark, later at the very end of his life, again with Mark and Titus, and he would walk with them and he would preach the gospel, doing both and the little thing. I'm going to share life deeply with a few and the big thing. I'm going to proclaim the gospel to the masses. You know, JP too did this. When he was a young priest, he had a group of young Polish people and he was very close to them. And then he became the bishop and he stayed close with them and then he became Pope and he stayed close to them. We actually got to know one of these families, Michael Ann and I did. So we were with Cosmere and Anya and we were talking to them and while we were talking, there were pictures of their two sons, Christopher and Wojciech, playing hide-and-go-seek behind the Holy Father. And they're in the Rose Garden at Castel Gandalfo and the Holy Father is chasing them. And I mean, it's just amazing, fun pictures. And he remained friends with these people. They actually came and spent summer vacations with him when he was Pope. In fact, he was Christopher Wojciech's godfather. He baptized them. It was his god, their godfathers. He heard their first confession. He gave them First Communion. He was their confirmation sponsor. Even though he had a really big day job, right? Really big day job. He also stayed small. And these Polish families actually changed Poland. They liberated Poland from the Communists. It's changed the world to live like this. Both big and small. How big is it between you and God? But that we stay small and do this with great love. That's the call to all of us. One day I was at St. Peter's Square with Ted and I had been told that if you engaged the Holy Father in conversation, he would stop. Otherwise, he'd just keep going. And so he was going along and he got to me and I said, Christopher and Wojciech. And the Holy Father, are you not Christopher and Wojciech? I said, yes, my children play with them. I love Christopher and Wojciech. And so we talked for just, you know, 40 seconds or whatever. And then he continued, bless you. And Ted looks over and he goes, that's just embarrassing. To which I said, excuse me, were you just talking to the Pope? I was. What we've done in focus is tried to recognize this model. So here's the beautiful thing. It took me 25 years with God's grace and the great love of my wife took us 25 years to have nine children. It's taken three years for those nine children to have five more. The second generation grows faster than the first. I'm trying to catch up with Scott. He's got a good head start, but we're working on it. And to be able to sit back and say, this is amazing, but it's human generation. Procreation takes a long time to grow. It takes a generation by the definition of the word. Whereas spiritual regeneration, spiritual multiplication, evangelization and disciple making can move relatively quickly. It is possible to work with somebody for a year and have them ready to go and work with others as well for them to go find their own small group. They can stay involved in the first small group and that's fine. And then you can get involved in another small group. You can't have too many of them. The key thing is don't get too big. As soon as you don't know people's names, you've lost your impact. And so either you've equipped the people you're sending or it'll break down. And to recognize this, it doesn't matter what number you use. You can say, I'm gonna work with two and then I work with those two for a year or two years, whatever it is. And those two go out and they work with two and that's four more. And then in a period of time, the four go out and that's eight and then 16 and then 32 and then 64. And it's pretty small numbers at two. Or it'll be five and then 25 and then 125. It doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter really how quickly you add. It doesn't matter how many you add. It's that you build authentic, enduring faithfulness and authentic, enduring fruitfulness. You share that vision. You share life. You love God. You stay close to the sacraments. You stay close to the scriptures. You pray every day. You get close to the people. You lean in when they're in need. You pray with them and you cry with them and you help them in any way that you can. And when you're in need, they do the same for you and you share life and you share faithfulness. And then you say, let's go do this whether it's also and there's fruitfulness. And it's amazing to see when that exponential growth begins to move out. We've got to reach everybody on this earth in this lifetime. This generation of Christians is responsible for this generation of people. If I were to be able to have the gift of evangelization to reach 10 million people a year, as far as I know, nobody has ever had that gift on earth. Jesus didn't have that gift. St. Paul didn't have that gift. St. John Paul didn't have that gift. Over a million St. John Paul probably while he was Pope. But here's the problem, more than 100 million people are born every year. And when St. John Paul evangelized those million plus people a year, he didn't know their names. He didn't know anything about them. He did something nice for them, really important for them. But we're supposed to fulfill the great commission to go make disciples of all nations and the great commandment to love God and love neighbor as self. And you can't love people as yourself if you don't know who they are. Whereas in a small group, in a family, you get to know each other. You know your ins and outs, weaknesses and strengths, start to share lives, you love people the way you love yourself. I love myself in the sense that I don't want to go to heaven. And I also know myself and there's things I don't like about it. I'm grateful to God that when I was 20 years old, I was able to commit my life to Jesus Christ as a prodigal and come home to God's mercy. And he immediately took big, ugly things out of my life. But I still have big, ugly things in my life. They're not as big and as ugly as the ones I got rid of the first time. But I've been walking for 35 years with these ones. So I must like them. And I shouldn't. We should always be trying to get rid of the biggest, ugliest thing in our life. With zeal. I want to run, Lord, after you with reckless abandon. But I need Ted Street's help and I need my wife, Michael Ann, who's agreed to be in a discipleship relationship with me. It's a beautiful thing to talk about who we're doing personal apostolate with and how we can move them to faithfulness, but also fruitfulness. Because there's a statement that St. Catherine of Siena teaches us about each of us. She says, if you are what you're meant to be, you would set the world on fire. And what you recognize is that I can't reach people at a million a year or 10 million a year or even 100 million a year. But when you set off this exponential growth pattern, you actually set off a wave where it's possible to reach this generation of people. It doesn't matter what number. I've done the math. If you work with two and the next people work with two and the next people work with two, in 33 cycles you reach 8 billion people. That's 33 cycles. If you did one a year in the lifetime of Jesus Christ, you could reach the world. And they're waiting to be reached. No amount of internet activity is going to do that. No amount of airplane travel is going to do that. It'll help. Thank goodness for all those things. But even if you were to reach them all, they wouldn't be known and loved and cared for and God has called us not to just make believers but to make disciples and disciples know their mentor. They share life with them, not just opinions. And to recognize that God is allowing each of you to live in such a way that you could live deep faithfulness, deep trust, even in the midst of temptation and suffering. To be able to sit back and say, Jesus, I trust in you. I think that was a prayer. Give it to the church not too long ago. Jesus, I trust in you. And to be able to say, I entrust myself to you. You're going to ask me to do things. And it's going to be horrible, but so worth it. God's ways are always, always, always the best. They're seldom, seldom the easiest. But if we're willing to trust God and live both faithfulness and impart both faithfulness and fruitless others, then you and I become who we're meant to be. We fulfill the great commandment and the great commission. And by the God's grace, we set the world on fire. Please let's pray together and work together to go set the world on fire. Thank you.