The saints presented in this book are as fascinating as they are diverse: men and women, adults and children, scholars and mystics, ancients and moderns. Many of these saints are household names (St. Patrick and St. Katharine Drexel), some are more obscure (St. Frances of Rome and St. Vitalis of Gaza), and some I had never heard of (St. Hospitius and St. Clotilde). Yet they all share a common gift for sharing the faith with humility, mercy, and purity of heart. They were not afraid to stand up for and defend “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), which is not an idea or philosophy, but the Person of Jesus Christ. They fought subjectivism, the idea that “truth is whatever I want it to be” that was rampant in their day, just as it is in ours. Like us, they lived in a world that believed that saints have no real value and that becoming a saint (i.e., living a holy and virtuous life) is a waste of time.
If we think of our world today as a vineyard, our culture tries to convince us that the rotting fruit it produces—which reeks of moral and spiritual decay—is actually good for us. The truth is, if we eat this fruit, we will become violently ill; and if we continue to eat it, we will inevitably die. This is why each and every one of us is called to be an evangelizing saint! We must share the good, life-giving fruit of the Gospel with people who are spiritually sick and dying.
The world is the field in which the word of God is sown. Through our efforts as evangelizing saints—as sowers of the seed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ—the world will bear rich fruit. Yet, like the saints in this book, we may not know what fruit we are producing, because it is God who picks and distributes the fruit of our labors. We may never know how someone was touched by something we said. We may never know how things turned out after someone came to us for advice. We may never know how someone’s life was changed when they met Jesus in us. But as his saints, members of the Body of Christ making our way to heaven, we know that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and it is in this outpouring of love that the God who wishes to reveal Himself achieves his purpose and goals.”1
You may be asking yourself, “But why am I called to evangelize? Isn’t that the job of the clergy or for incredibly holy people like the saints?”
The answer is no, and that is precisely the point of Casting Nets with the Saints—by our baptism into Christ’s death, we are called to be evangelizing disciples. A disciple is one who hears, accepts, and carries out the teaching of Jesus. A disciple follows and imitates Jesus. Each of us who has been baptized has this mission and calling: to share our experience of knowing Jesus Christ personally and to invite others to share in his life.
To be saints who do the work of evangelization, we must let God work in us. We must take our hands off the steering wheel and let God drive. We must empty ourselves of sin so that God can fill us with his love. We must die to the ways of this world so that Christ can live in us.
In this world of sin and darkness, Chris Stewart’s Casting Nets with the Saints shows how poor and humble saints shine brightly. Through them, the light of Christ ignites our hearts and inspires us to respond lovingly to the Father’s tender embrace. When we live out the mission of loving God and neighbor, we too become saints. We should rejoice and be glad, for our reward will be great in heaven.
Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, M.T.S.
Author and EWTN series host
November 9, 2016
Introduction
Whether it is academics, business, or athletics, everyone wants to excel in his area of performance. We want to get better. Athletes or sports teams that desire to improve look to the best in their sport. Remember the Gatorade ad campaign of the 1990s, “Be Like Mike?” Many argue that Michael Jordan is the best basketball player to ever dribble a ball. So basketball players studied how he played, what he ate, and how he worked out, all with the hope of playing the game as well as he did. Startup businesses do not look to companies barely keeping the doors open but instead investigate successful Fortune 500 companies. If you are a student looking to improve your grades, you are not going to ask the “D” student to tutor you—you ask the valedictorian. If you picked up this book, then you want to improve your efforts as an evangelist. So where should we begin to look for help?
It is always exciting when friends, family, or people I encounter around the country ask me for advice on how to share the Gospel. Evangelization has become what I am passionate about, and that passion is matched only by my zeal to help others become the best evangelists they can become. Because of my theology degree, line of work, and love of the topic, people perceive me to be an expert on evangelization. But I must admit that my expertise has been gleaned not just from Scripture, the magisterium of the Church, the great popes of the New Evangelization, or learned theologians, but especially from the saints.
The saints remain the experts on evangelization. When studying the lives of the saints, it becomes evident that they were oases of conversions. The saints are who I look to for inspiration, guidance, and practical lessons for effectively communicating the Gospel. Pope Francis encourages us to do the same:
It helps us to see that the Church’s history is a history of salvation, to be mindful of those saints who inculturated the Gospel in the life of our peoples and to reap the fruits of the Church’s rich bimillennial tradition, without pretending to come up with a system of thought detached from this treasury, as if we wanted to reinvent the Gospel. At the same time, this principle impels us to put the word into practice, to perform works of justice and charity which make that word fruitful. Not to put the word into practice, not to make it reality, is to build on sand, to remain in the realm of pure ideas and to end up in a lifeless and unfruitful self-centeredness.2
There is no need to reinvent the principles of evangelization when we have two thousand years of saints who have done it so well. Look to the road map that the saints have laid out for us to effectively engage our culture with the Gospel.
Some may be thinking, “Today’s culture is so radically different from the past. How could learning how a saint shared the Gospel in the thirteenth century add to our efforts in the twenty-first century?” First let us hear how Pope Francis answers the same objection:
We do well to keep in mind the early Christians and our many brothers and sisters throughout history who were filled with joy, unflagging courage and zeal in proclaiming the Gospel. Some people nowadays console themselves by saying that things are not as easy as they used to be, yet we know that the Roman Empire was not conducive to the Gospel message, the struggle for justice, or the defense of human dignity. Every period of history is marked by the presence of human weakness, self-absorption, complacency and selfishness, to say nothing of the concupiscence which preys upon us all…. Let us not say, then, that things are harder today; they are simply different.3
Yes, every point in human history is different. However, human nature never changes. Ways of sinning may change, but sin and the remedy for it remain the same. The Eternal God who transforms the human heart never changes. Therefore, the saints, whether in the last century or the first century, were communicating the Truth that is the “same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb 13:8).
Saints shine not just as teachers by example of evangelization but also as participants with us. Our brothers and sisters in heaven are presently interceding for us. They are cheering us on and praying for our salvation. If they are doing this for us, you can also be certain that they are praying for those we are trying to evangelize.
This book presents the wisdom of fifty-six saints and how they evangelized. I encourage you to do two things while you read it. First, think about which saints speak personally to you. Their background, circumstances or personality may remind you of yourself. Follow up with those saints you feel an attraction to. Study them and begin to form a relationship with them in