Barber Shop Drops

Barber Shop Drops

The Divine Mercy image.  The St Francis Prayer.  The exorcism medal of St Benedict.  The Miraculous Medal.  We could go on and on.  Are you nervous to evangelize?  Do you get “jammed up” and even make a fool of yourself (though God still uses our goofed-up efforts!) when you try to talk about God with others?  Do you feel you may repel more than attract when talking about God?  It may seem cowardly, but dropping off leaflets and holy images is a “mushroom cloud” of holiness against the spiritual enemy of ours and the advancement of Christ’s Kingdom.

Boy, do our separated Protestant brethren drop off and pin to boards their leaflets, just look at the “sinner’s prayer” and Our Daily Bread leaflets and booklets in public places to this day.  How many of these Daily Bread publications have brought peace to someone’s mind in a laundromat after a family crisis?  On the other end of the spectrum, how many awful Jack Chick booklets, filled with attacks on the Catholic Church the Lord Jesus founded, have at least stirred a soul here or there to repent of a life of debauchery?  Let’s get to it, fellow Catholics!  We have the fullness of the faith, and we’re hitting the snooze button with Jesus while many separated brethren going about with leaflets are filling churches with fallen away Catholics, now singing praises to God in various Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist Churches!  They flew the coop, and we sit idly by.

G.K. Chesterton once stated a retort to the cry of Protestants being “on our side.”  He retorted that the Scripture of Christ “he who is not against us is for us," with the other Scripture of Christ “he who is not with us is against us.” My apologies for bursting anyone’s ecumenical bubble, but we cannot water-down untruths to “keep the peace” with truths, it doesn’t work that way.  However, we should never war with what we have in common with our separated brethren, let’s build on the scriptures we agree on, and challenge the ones we do not, otherwise we live in falsehood. (cf, CCC 905, UNITATIS REDINTEGRATIO para #2)

Even in the “Information Age,” people are still hungry to pick up leaflets, booklets, cards, etc.  One I saw not too long ago, looked strikingly like a $100 paper money bill, and had Catholic evangelistic efforts written thereon, very clever!  “One for the team!” 

We make all kinds of excuses to not “talk about Jesus,” whereas disturbing agendas continually descend on our families via the internet and in education modules with force and intensity.  This reminds me of where Jesus states His agitation with the Children of Light lounging around and being minimalists, while the children of this world are much shrewder and more clever in general for their own advancement. (cf, Luke 16:18). 

Our Lord warned us that he shall hold us to task on how we used and squandered his gifts and abilities He gave us for the advancement of His Kingdom. And it is a stern warning ending with only two results, “well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of Thy Lord!” or “thou worthless, lazy lout!... throw this worthless servant into the darkness outside, where he can wail and grind his teeth!” The choice is ours.  May we choose wisely. (cf Matt 25: 14-30).  May Our Queen Mother beseech God on behalf of our fears and sloth.

A closing thought. In the mid 1900’s, Fr Walter Pelczynski of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception went door-to-door in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, on foot, with holy cards of the Divine Mercy image. The community had great success leading people to The Divine Mercy from his efforts.  Many Protestants still win converts with the door-to-door technique, in fact, perhaps it appears as a breath of fresh air in the information age; in fact, the Legion of Mary is a mostly lay group that visits parishioners who haven’t been to Church in a while, similar to Fr Walter's efforts.

Wherever you find yourself, bring a holy card of the Divine Mercy or the Blessed Mother along, or a medal of Mary, in your shirt pocket, pocketbook, and even many holy cards fit well in wallets (or behind your cell phone case?).  Again, we remember Jesus’ parable of the steward who was too lazy to dig or work hard, he was “scared” if you will, comparable to those of us too nervous/or just possibly not “cut out” to evangelize by conversations that easily... That steward, in cleverness, went about and lowered his manager’s debts for him in an act of shrewdness, thereby collecting all for him in one swoop! (cf Luke 16: 1-8).

I had a Christian coach in a sport years ago, and he used to say: “when you’re good at making excuses, it’s hard to be good at anything else.”

In a word, Our Lord is saying to us 2,000 plus years later... “Let’s get to it!”