The woman therefore left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men there: Come, and see a man who has told me all things whatsoever I have done. Is not he the Christ? They went therefore out of the city, and came unto him.
John 4:28-30

These past few weeks, I have realized that the problem within the Church are not those outside of the Church but a lot of them are those who claim to be Catholics. Let me explain. Quite often, one will hear this, “I am a Catholic, but I do not agree with this specific teaching of the Church.” We also have politicians who claim they are Catholics and yet support issues that are contrary to the gospel.

Rules, commandments, ideals, rituals – good as they are, are not the basis of the Catholic faith. Our faith is based on a person – Jesus.

This is where the confusion lies. A lot of people think being a Catholic means to be baptized in a Catholic Church. Or to be Catholic is to go to mass on Sundays and holidays of obligation. Or to be Catholic is to believe in God. Or to be a Catholic is to know the Bible and the doctrines of the Church. Or to be a Catholic, one must give to charity.

Yes, all these are good, but all useless without faith in Jesus. Our faith should be based on Jesus himself. Therefore our evangelization should be about Jesus.

When we evangelize, we do not preach about doctrines, we do not preach about the commandments and heaven forbid, we do not preach about ourselves or what we think. When we evangelize, we preach Jesus – the Way and the Truth and the Life.

We cannot get people interested in Christ if all we talk about is doing good or giving to charity. We cannot get people all excited to be Christians if all we talk about are doctrines and duties. We get people excited when we talk about Jesus AND most specially, what he has done for us and what he can do for us.

In John 4, we see the Samaritan woman talking to Jesus. She did not have a theology degree. She was not even a disciple, in fact she was very antagonistic towards Jesus. Yet after her conversation with Jesus in a span of a few minutes, she brought the entire town to Jesus. Why? Because she spoke about Jesus and what he did.

We do not need theology degrees to evangelize. Sad to say, there are a lot of theologians who do not know Jesus. We do not need to be in the Lord for years to evangelize. All we need is an encounter with Jesus and the courage to speak about him and what he has done for us.

Jesus is the reason why I am a Catholic. I did not come back to the Church not because of the beautiful liturgy. Neither did I come back because of intelligent arguments on doctrines. I came back because of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Jesus attracted me to the Church and I am very sure that he will attract others to the Church.

Lord Jesus, give us the grace to speak about you to those who do not know you.