Evangelizing to Family?

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Love_St_Auggie

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Hi,

My mother is an atheist. My brothers are agnostic. My father and his fiance have started to go back to Church, which is great, but without disrespecting his privacy, I still worry about them.

I love my family. Over the past couple years, I took the approach of doing my best to live the Gospel and be a witness in their presence. I don’t hide my beliefs or my involvement in my parish, but I don’t force it on them, either. I pray for their conversion. I spend a lot of time praying to St Monica for guidance and patience.

I’m curious- would this be considered the best route to take in regards to evangelization by the Church at large? I have difficulty finding clear answers online. What do you think?

Some additional info: My mother holds some very strong beliefs that are not in line with Christianity. About a year ago, she asked me why I need Jesus Christ and why I go to church, I told her that I am a sinner and I need that strength to help me from committing sin (I’m simplifying the conversation for the sake of this forum, btw). I explained that the church believes we are born with the capacity to sin. She said she has never sinned or done anything wrong in her entire life.

(By the way, if you know of any other patron saints for conversion and of family in particular, let me know!)
 
I can’t tell you to say what you don’t experience in Christ. First you must find the positives of Jesus’ relationship with you, then you can answer more positively rather than as a means to avoid sin.

In all other parts of your explanation you have done well enough for your mother to ask. That is well indeed.
 
I have an understanding of where you are coming from. I am the only Catholic in my family, and i too struggle with how best to evangelize. Many times I find is best to bless what I can bless in my family’s current beliefs. By doing this I acknowledge that they are doing good, but I do so in a way that doesn’t put them down.

Evangelization is tough and it becomes even tougher when dealing with family. I take a lot of solace in the old saying that a journey of a 1,000 miles begins with a single step. Keep doing what you are doing and trust that God is working through you.

God Bless.
 
There is no one right way to evangelize, no “one size fits all”. Every situation is different, and especially when it comes to evangelizing to family. Evangelizing to family is probably the hardest group of people to evangelize to, which is why praying and living the Gospel through example are the best ways, IMO, to evangelize to family members.

And if your mom says she has never sinned (or done anything wrong) again, its easy to rebut with questions like “So, you’ve never stolen anything? Or lied to anyone? Or hit anyone out of anger? Or wished someone dead?”
 
And if your mom says she has never sinned…

I’d mention the Prodigal Son’s older brother.
 
wmw said:
I can’t tell you to say what you don’t experience in Christ. First you must find the positives of Jesus’ relationship with you, then you can answer more positively rather than as a means to avoid sin.

In all other parts of your explanation you have done well enough for your mother to ask. That is well indeed.
Click to expand...
WMW,

You’re absolutely correct. There’s not much good that would come out of only emphasizing personal sin in the act of evangelizing. Not sure how many people could be led to Christ that way.

There were other parts of that conversation with my mother, where I told her about the joy of being a part of the Body of Jesus Christ. I just cut all those out for brevity’s sake.

Thanks again.
 
Thanks, everyone. That’s kinda what I figured. I continue to pray for my family and love them as they are now.

God bless!
 
When we talk about evangelizing to family members , we have to realize that there is “baggage” that always goes with the evangelization. For example, if a sibling tries to evangelize to another issues of sibling rivalry, birth order, etc. usually come to a head. If a parent tries to do so to a child or young adult, all the young adult might hear is the “nagging” voice and not teh message. And a child may face the question by a parent of"who are you telling me that I wrong?"

Sometimes the people we love the most are the ones it is most difficult to evangelize to. Pray for them, love them, be an example.
 
Love_St_Auggie said:
Hi,

My mother is an atheist. My brothers are agnostic. My father and his fiance have started to go back to Church, which is great, but without disrespecting his privacy, I still worry about them.

I love my family. Over the past couple years, I took the approach of doing my best to live the Gospel and be a witness in their presence. I don’t hide my beliefs or my involvement in my parish, but I don’t force it on them, either. I pray for their conversion. I spend a lot of time praying to St Monica for guidance and patience.

I’m curious- would this be considered the best route to take in regards to evangelization by the Church at large? I have difficulty finding clear answers online. What do you think?

Some additional info: My mother holds some very strong beliefs that are not in line with Christianity. About a year ago, she asked me why I need Jesus Christ and why I go to church, I told her that I am a sinner and I need that strength to help me from committing sin (I’m simplifying the conversation for the sake of this forum, btw). I explained that the church believes we are born with the capacity to sin. She said she has never sinned or done anything wrong in her entire life.

(By the way, if you know of any other patron saints for conversion and of family in particular, let me know!)
Click to expand...
I don’t know how much you know about Our Lady of Grace or how much
you know about Mary’s power with her divine Son. But here is an account of
one incident of her love and mercy.

Mary appeared and spoke with Sister Justine Bisqueyburu, a
Daughter of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, in 1840, about a green scapular.

Mary herself made promises to those who would keep the scapular on them, and would say a certain prayer everyday, and believe that Mary would obtain those favors from her Son. Here are the favors she promised:
  1. Conversion of those who do not have the faith
  2. Reconciliation to the Church for those who have lost/strayed from the faith
  3. Assurance of a happy death
  4. Strengthening of the faith for those already in the Church
  5. Protection from Satan for those who wear or promote the scapular
This is the very answer to your search. But on your part you must
pray, at least daily: “Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”,
once for yourself and once for each of your family members every day.

Here are the very words of Mary to Sister Justine:
“The GREATEST graces come from using the scapular but these graces come
in direct proportion to the degree of CONFIDENCE in ME which the user has.”
The user is the giver in this case, the trust depends on you for it to work well.

Fear is a sign of lack of trust.
What kind of confidence? Mary showed this herself at the annunciation of Gabriel.
“Yes, blessed is she who BELIEVED that the PROMISE made her by the Lord would be FULFILLED.” (Lk. 1;45)
St. Elizabeth extolling the absolute trust of Mary in God’s promise. Mary believed without doubt that it would happen as the angel said it would.

You may get a free one by googling “Green Scapular”. Get one for yourself as well.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=620449
(From an atheist)
How did you come to embrace Catholicism?
Strangely enough, it was the Blessed Virgin Mary. That friend of mine had sneakily
snuck in a scapular under my mattress. I didn’t know until about 1 year into my
conversion. I imagine that she had something to do with it. I think it was the
green scapular.
 
Love_St_Auggie said:
Hi,

My mother is an atheist. My brothers are agnostic. My father and his fiance have started to go back to Church, which is great, but without disrespecting his privacy, I still worry about them.

I love my family. Over the past couple years, I took the approach of doing my best to live the Gospel and be a witness in their presence. I don’t hide my beliefs or my involvement in my parish, but I don’t force it on them, either. I pray for their conversion. I spend a lot of time praying to St Monica for guidance and patience.

I’m curious- would this be considered the best route to take in regards to evangelization by the Church at large? I have difficulty finding clear answers online. What do you think?

Some additional info: My mother holds some very strong beliefs that are not in line with Christianity. About a year ago, she asked me why I need Jesus Christ and why I go to church, I told her that I am a sinner and I need that strength to help me from committing sin (I’m simplifying the conversation for the sake of this forum, btw). I explained that the church believes we are born with the capacity to sin. She said she has never sinned or done anything wrong in her entire life.

(By the way, if you know of any other patron saints for conversion and of family in particular, let me know!)
Click to expand...
Through the prayers of St Monica, St Augustine was converted.

The best method by the Church at large
  1. Live the Gospel in your own life
  2. Pray, fast and do penance for the conversion of the family member
  3. Invitation and sharing : Whehter its to church or you share the miracle of the sun at fatima
  4. If someone rejects the Gospel we continue to pray for them but we do not continually badger them. It is our duty to spread the gospel not to force people to believe it(which cannot be done anyway).
 
I can sympathize with what you’re going through. In my case, though, my family is entirely Catholic, just with varying degrees of understanding of what that really means. When I started reinvigorating my faith a few years ago, I found a desire to share it with my family but couldn’t figure out the best path. I spent some time just trying to let them see what a positive effect living my faith has had on my life. That didn’t have much effect so I’ve taken a more active role in evangelizing to them. It’s still somewhat subtle, but I do what I can to make sure they know how my faith impacts and steers my life. I’ve also taken to discussing our faith and confronting my very devout mother on a couple things where her understanding of Church teachings isn’t quite where it needs to be. It can be difficult at times and I’ve found that taking an indirect path to get to my point is often better than being blunt about things, but I’ve found that I’ve gotten some results. If nothing else, she now comes to me when she has questions about something that happened at Mass, or something someone has asked her, and she actually relies on what I tell her (I usually back it up with quotes from the CCC or some other source), which is a huge step compared to how things were just a year or so ago.
 
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