Evangelizing Between Heaven and Hell

The book of Revelation describes the Devil as the deceiver of the whole world.[1] What is significant about this description is that the Devil’s disposition is to encourage confusion, distrust, fear, doubt, anxiety, and worse hatred toward God. He is the fallen Angel who would welcome nothing more than to encourage anyone to follow in his path. In his first epistle, St. John reinforces the danger of Satan by describing him as the one who has sinned from the beginning, and that the reason Jesus appeared was to destroy the works of the Devil.

If a main reason Christ came was to destroy the works of the Devil, [2] then, how should one prepare himself to be able to speak in the name of Christ? With an understanding that every encounter with another human being is intimately bound up in a spiritual battle between good and evil, the ability to demonstrate the infinite love of Christ in humility and spiritual docility is our priority. The process and act of unveiling the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a person for the very first time requires docility of the spirit from the messenger. Our personal spiritual disposition must be properly formed to speak, discuss, teach, and express a genuine desire to embrace a Christian, sacramental way of living.

And here lies part of the battle between good and evil, where the most important foundation of any evangelizing process is to bring light to the person’s actions that may draw them further away from Christ, unbeknownst to them. The Catechism reminds us that the Devil is the one who throws himself across the plan and work of salvation of Jesus Christ.[3] This distinctive description is what can be described as the “no man's land” of the evangelization process, where you are trying to figure out how to present yourself, what to say, how to listen, and what to teach. This scenario, I argue, is very real in our evangelization and kerygmatic efforts to unveil and provide credence to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Every human encounter with someone who believes, does not believe, is indifferent, or hostile toward any mention of Jesus Christ brings us into the “no man's land” scenario. When confronted with an opportunity to both unveil and demonstrate the love of Christ to someone, it is fair to discern the context of the person’s awareness or lack thereof of Jesus Christ within the “no man’s land” scenario.

This is why understanding the nature and context of the person you speak with is important before engaging in any facet of the Gospel and the creed. There is something to be said about being under the grip of an unholy spiritual seduction, where the words and actions of the person you encounter are contradictory to the love of God. Any tension that exists in the schema of evangelizing another human being must involve a proper sense of docility and humility to the person you encounter, the message presented, and the content of the message charitably explained.

The task of evangelizing mirrors and parallels the task of catechesis because both aim to address the person and their human condition. The person is not a task that we earmark for conversion; instead, the person is a child of God who requires spiritual nurturing and nourishment through sincere Christian witness. The language used and the content taught must both proclaim and echo Jesus Christ crucified, e.g., the Paschal Mystery that explains why Christ came to save us from the evil of sin and death apart from God.

There is a binding element when caught evangelizing between heaven and hell, and that is the Incarnation. The Incarnation distinctively displays the relationship between God and man because it reveals God becoming man through the Son for the salvation of man. Jesus Christ brings to reality our nature as a human person created out of love to be united with the Father. The Catechism reminds us of the fact that the Son of God assumed a human nature in order to accomplish our salvation in it.[4] It confirms this reality by identifying belief in the true Incarnation of the Son of God as the distinctive sign of Christian faith.[5] This is exactly why the Devil will throw himself in front of the salvific process.

It is important to note that the role of the Holy Spirit cannot be understated or overlooked in our evangelization efforts within the battle between heaven and hell. Henri De Lubac describes the role of the Holy Spirit as,

the one who causes the Gospel to penetrate into the soul’s depths, and he who spreads this Gospel on all sides, He creates in man new depths which harmonize him with the “depths of God”, and he projects man our of himself, right to the very end of the earth; he makes universal and he spiritualizes, he personalizes and unifies.[6]

When faced with the prospect of evangelizing between heaven and hell, we must keep in mind that God did not disguise himself as a man. He became man; hence, our identity is not a mirage, it is a reality, one that the Devil does not want man to know and understand in relation to God the Father. The inseparability of the human and divine nature of Jesus Christ serves as the precipice of our evangelization efforts. It is the entryway towards a conversion of heart when the person recognizes that his own human nature was made by God out of love for him. Evangelizing between heaven and hell means that, as much as the devil would like anyone to view God as an alien or an opposing figure, He is the love that never ends; He is the Father whose desire is to be in constant loving communion with His children.