Perhaps our Weekend was the first time we understood the meaning and significance of the Christian Vision. This Vision changed all our attitudes—toward God, self, others and life. We had gained a new life vision that generated much energy, so necessary for the accomplishment of a mission. Then we were commissioned to work for the success of Christ’s mission to bring the Good News to others. Christ’s mission became our mission. We want to be achievers for Christ.
Likewise, Jesus lived for the success of His work. He laid out a careful strategy for success. He chose persons for special roles in His organization, and shared with them His authority and powers. He sent His disciples out two by two into the towns which He was planning to enter—today’s advance men—to prepare the crowds. Jesus was a super salesman: women provided for the whole group “out of their own resources”. Lk 8:3.Jesus wanted to be an achiever. We need Jesus as our model of an achiever, because the human tendency is to take a good quality like desire for success and push it to an extreme, alienating others rather than drawing them to Jesus.
Human Way. Committed to Jesus’ mission, we may put our goals before people. Should a conversation or meeting not seem helpful for what we want to accomplish, we may become very bored and fail to appreciate the value of simply socializing with people and sharing their interests and experiences. Unconsciously, we may repress our feelings to present ourselves as full of enthusiasm for the business at hand, sending out false vibrations to others and thus hurting relationships. We may become intolerant of our associates who seem to waste time talking or otherwise fail to give their whole souls to our goals. Because our attention is forever on our goals, we may not realize the suffering around us. Consequently, we may induce others to relate to us in terms of our role as evangelizers, rather than simply to us as unique persons. A barrier to evangelization.
Jesus Way. Jesus had but one goal in life, building God’s Kingdom, but He always put people first. The Pharisees too had a set of laws for building God’s Kingdom, such as observing the Sabbath, but Jesus looked first to peoples’ needs for healing. Further, when Jesus sought to work a miracle, He prayed to the Father, teaching us that we cannot expect to achieve success as evangelizers by depending on our own resources. And when Jesus received power, He thanked the source of that power. A reminder to us to give thanks for any of our successes. Lastly, while Jesus was a highly motivated person bent on success, God called Him to suffer a great failure. His last words were: “It is accomplished.” Jesus’ success was in His failure that burst forth into His resurrection.
Remedies. As people seeking to succeed in accomplishing Jesus’ mission, we must always remember that compassion for others, not our goal of evangelization, should be the starting point in our relationships to others. It is only when people first accept us as persons that they will be open to our messages. That is the wisdom behind the Cursillo slogan, “Make a friend. Be a friend. Bring a friend to Christ”. Evangelization is a process, and if we want to be successful at it, we must be aware of that process.
In our efforts to give people the Christian vision of life, we are bound to fail frequently. First of all, it is not our gift to give; it is the gift of the Spirit. We are only the instruments. Second, if we respond too sharply to failure, we must ask ourselves: “Whom am I serving, Jesus or myself?” Self-centeredness has a tendency to creep into both our successes and our failures. Lastly, it has been said that we are not asked to succeed, we are only asked to be faithful. Full of faith in the Christian Vision and fully devoted to the spread of the Christian Vision!