A Little Evangelising

I've been spending a few hours a couple of times a week at the 40 Days For Life Vigil in Doncaster. The other day I found myself there alone for a few minutes while the other person on duty moved their car. Inevitably someone came up to me. I assessed him at once: gaunt, scruffy, terrible teeth, can of beer in hand. Prison, tick, drugs, tick, I suppose he'll ask me for money. But no: he wanted to know if it was unlucky to wear a rosary as a necklace. I explained that a rosary was for praying with, so wearing it probably was rather irreverent. It turned out he had one at home and didn't know what to do with it, apart from a hazy notion that he should say 'that Hail Mary' with it. Then he asked why the beads were set out in different ways and I explained about the different prayers and mysteries  and how he could use it. Was there any way he could research this more? I dug out one of the 'How to say the Rosary' cards we'd been using and gave it to him and I think it's true to say his face lit up. And off he went, promising to pray for us.

I found the whole episode really moving, partly because, who knows, I may have sown a little seed, or watered an existing one - and this is why we need to be upfront and out in the world, not having endless parish discussions about the New Evangelisation. But also because, not for the first time,I was willing to judge someone by their appearance and write them off. I don't do charity at all well. Come to think of it, who evangelised whom? Perhaps I learnt more than him.

And another sort of evangelisation story: I went to a Latin Requiem in another parish this week for someone who had been a regular at Latin Masses in the area and a usefully active presence in the parish for many years, without ever becoming a Catholic (his wife is Catholic). But a few days before he died, he asked the parish priest to visit him and requested reception into the Church. The labourer called at the eleventh hour, whose reward will be as great as those who worked in the heat of the day. As one who skived off for the day and only returned in the evening I rejoice for him. And for the priest who had accepted him as he was and never pressured him, but whose example must have helped in the end.