The Great Commission — Every Baptised Person Is Sent

The last words of the risen Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew are among the most momentous in the New Testament: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18–20). These words are known as the Great Commission — and they have driven Christian mission for two thousand years.

Three things deserve attention in this command. First, the basis: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” The commission is grounded not in human enthusiasm or institutional momentum but in the universal sovereignty of the risen Christ. The evangeliser goes with the authority of the Lord of the universe behind them — which is both humbling and emboldening. Second, the scope: “all nations.” There are no exceptions, no reserved territories, no people groups beyond the reach of the Gospel. Third, the promise: “I am with you always.” The commission is never undertaken alone. The one who sends is also the one who accompanies.

The Great Commission was not addressed to the eleven disciples as a professional mandate for ordained ministry. It was addressed to the whole Church — to every person who receives the Gospel and is sent, by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, to carry it into the world. The Second Vatican Council made this explicit: evangelisation is “the essential mission of the Church” and the responsibility of every baptised person, not only of priests and religious. To be Catholic is to be sent.

Evangelii Gaudium — The Joy of the Gospel as the Source of Mission

In 2013, Pope Francis issued his programmatic apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium — “The Joy of the Gospel” — and with it set the tone for his entire pontificate. Its opening sentence announces the theme: “The joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness.” And its implication is immediate: a person filled with this joy cannot keep it to themselves. The impulse to evangelise is not an external obligation imposed on believers from outside — it is the natural outward pressure of an interior joy that has nowhere else to go.

Pope Francis is equally direct about the failure mode of the Church when evangelisation becomes a burden rather than a joy: “There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter.” He describes the “sourness” that comes from a faith received as obligation rather than gift, from a Gospel preached without joy, from an evangelisation undertaken out of duty rather than overflow. His remedy is not a new programme but a renewed encounter: to go back to the source, to meet Jesus again as if for the first time, and to let the joy of that encounter overflow naturally into every relationship and conversation.

Paul’s “Woe to me!” is the apostolic version of the same impulse — not joyless obligation, but a compulsion that comes from having been seized by something too important to be silent about. The evangeliser who has truly encountered the risen Christ does not calculate the cost of speaking. They calculate the cost of not speaking — the cost of watching people live without the Good News that has changed everything for them.

Pentecost — The Birth of the Evangelising Church

The Acts of the Apostles begins with a group of frightened disciples behind locked doors — people who had seen the risen Jesus but were not yet ready to go anywhere. Then the Holy Spirit comes — “a sound like the blowing of a violent wind… tongues of fire… all of them filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:2–4). And everything changes. Peter, who had three times denied even knowing Jesus, stands up in front of a hostile crowd of thousands and proclaims the crucified and risen Christ with a boldness and clarity that cannot be explained by anything in his previous character. Three thousand people are converted in a single morning.

Pentecost is the moment when the Church becomes what she was made to be: a community gathered by the Spirit and sent by the Spirit, carrying the Good News of Jesus Christ into every language, every culture, every corner of the world. The reversal of Babel — where languages had divided humanity — begins at Pentecost, where the Spirit enables the Gospel to be heard in every tongue. The locked room becomes an open door. The frightened disciples become bold witnesses. The same Holy Spirit who animated that first evangelising community is given in every Baptism and Confirmation — and is the power that the New Evangelization depends upon.

The Samaritan Woman — Accidental Evangelists and Unlikely Witnesses

One of the most charming and instructive accounts of evangelisation in the Gospels is the story of the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1–42). She meets Jesus — a Jew who should not have been speaking to her, a woman with a complicated personal history — at Jacob’s well in the heat of the day. He asks her for water; she asks him about living water; the conversation deepens into one of the most theologically rich exchanges in the Gospels. And at the end of it, she runs back to her village.

What she says to her neighbours is notable for what it does not contain. It does not contain a doctrinal treatise. It does not contain a carefully prepared apologetic argument. It contains a question: “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” (John 4:29). It is the evangelisation of astonishment — the report of someone who has encountered something and cannot quite believe it and needs others to come and verify it with her. And its effect is extraordinary: “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” (John 4:39).

The Samaritan woman was not a trained evangelist. She was not theologically educated. She had no plan and no programme. What she had was an encounter — something had happened to her at that well, and she needed to tell somebody. This is the prototype of all authentic evangelisation: not expertise but encounter; not argument but testimony; not confidence in one’s own ability but the irresistible compulsion of someone who has seen something and cannot keep it to themselves.

The New Evangelization — Reaching the Already-Baptised

The term “New Evangelization” was coined by St John Paul II and has shaped Catholic missionary thinking for four decades. It refers specifically to the evangelisation of those who have already been baptised but who are living at a great distance from the faith — “those who, having received the faith, have in large part, however, lost a living sense of it or even no longer consider themselves members of the Church.” This is not mission to those who have never heard the Gospel. It is mission to the lapsed, the indifferent, the cultural Catholic, the person who was baptised as an infant but has never had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.

This is arguably the most urgent evangelising task facing the Church in the Western world today. Surveys consistently show that a significant proportion of Catholics attend Mass rarely or never, that many who were raised Catholic no longer identify as such, and that a generation of young people has grown up in Catholic homes without experiencing the faith as a living, transforming encounter with a person — Jesus Christ — rather than a set of cultural practices and moral rules. The New Evangelization asks: How does the Church reach these people? And its answer begins not with new programmes but with renewed personal witness.

The most effective evangelists of lapsed Catholics are not strangers with pamphlets. They are friends, family members, and colleagues who live their faith with such genuine joy, such evident transformation, such authentic love, that those around them begin to wonder what they have found. The New Evangelization begins in the home, the workplace, the friendship group — in the ordinary encounters of daily life lived with the fragrance of the Gospel.

St Paul — The Prototype of the Apostolic Evangelist

No figure in the history of Christianity has embodied the evangelising impulse more completely than the Apostle Paul. His conversion on the road to Damascus — the sudden, blinding encounter with the risen Christ who asks “Why are you persecuting me?” — was immediately followed by a commission: “Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.” (Acts 22:21). From that moment, Paul’s life was entirely organised around the task of bringing the Gospel to those who had not heard it.

What is striking about Paul’s evangelising method is its cultural flexibility combined with its theological rigidity. He accommodates everything he can — “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22) — but he never compromises the content of the Gospel itself. He speaks to Jews from the Scriptures. He speaks to Greeks from philosophy. He speaks to Athenians from their own altar inscription. He meets people where they are, in the language and thought-forms they bring, and from that starting point draws them toward the scandalous, transforming, irreducible claim of Jesus Christ crucified and risen.

Paul’s theology of evangelisation in Romans 10 remains as sharp as the day it was written: “How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:14–15). The chain runs from the sender to the sent to the speaker to the hearer to the believer to the saved. Every link matters. Every person who shares the Gospel is a necessary link in that chain.

“Preach the Gospel at All Times” — Witness Before Words

The saying widely attributed to St Francis of Assisi — “Preach the Gospel at all times; use words when necessary” — is almost certainly not his exact formulation, but it captures something genuinely Franciscan and deeply Catholic about the relationship between witness and proclamation. The most powerful form of evangelisation is a life visibly transformed by the Gospel — a life so different from what the world expects, so marked by joy and love and forgiveness and compassion, that it raises a question in those who encounter it.

Pope Paul VI expressed this in his 1975 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi: “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” The word that is backed by a life carries a weight that argument alone cannot produce. The person who speaks of forgiveness and is seen to forgive; who speaks of joy and is visibly joyful; who speaks of love and sacrifices themselves for others — that person’s words about Jesus carry a credibility that no amount of theological precision can manufacture without the corresponding life.

This does not mean that words are unimportant — Peter tells us to “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15). But the asking presupposes the noticing — someone must first notice that there is something different about this person, something that looks like hope, something worth asking about. The life precedes the word. The witness creates the question. The answer gives the Gospel.

Kerygma — The Core Message That Must Not Be Lost

In the New Testament, the basic proclamation of the Gospel has a name: kerygma — from the Greek word for “proclamation” or “herald’s message.” It refers to the core content of the apostolic preaching: that Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, died for our sins, was buried, was raised on the third day, appeared to witnesses, and is now Lord of all — and that in response to this, every person is invited to repent, believe, be baptised, and receive the Holy Spirit. This is the heart of what the apostles preached at Pentecost, on the Areopagus, in the synagogues, and before kings.

Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium, insists that the kerygma must remain the centre of all evangelisation: “We must not think that in catechesis the kerygma gives way to a supposedly more ‘solid’ formation. Nothing is more solid, more rich, more nourishing and more wisely nourishing than that initial proclamation.” The danger in both preaching and catechesis is the tendency to move too quickly past the core proclamation — to assume that people already know and accept the basic Gospel — and to focus immediately on moral teaching, social doctrine, or liturgical instruction. But if the kerygma is missing, everything built on it will lack foundation.

The kerygma is always personal before it is propositional. It is not merely information about historical events — it is the announcement of a living person who is present, who loves, who has conquered death, and who is offering new life to every person who receives him. An evangelisation that reduces the Gospel to moral teaching or social service has lost the kerygma. An evangelisation centred on the person of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, will always find a hearing — because every human heart, whether it knows it or not, is made for exactly this.

Fear of Evangelisation — And What Overcomes It

A Homily on Evangelization must be honest about the most common obstacle: fear. Most Catholics who have never shared their faith with another person are not indifferent to the task — they are afraid. Afraid of rejection. Afraid of seeming presumptuous or self-righteous. Afraid of not knowing enough, of not having answers to the questions that might come. Afraid of damaging a friendship, or being thought strange, or being the kind of person who “forces their religion on others.” These fears are understandable, and they deserve to be taken seriously rather than simply dismissed with exhortations to boldness.

The antidote to the fear of evangelisation is not courage as a character trait — it is the Holy Spirit as a divine gift. It is also a clarification of what evangelisation actually requires. It does not require the ability to answer every question. It does not require theological expertise. It requires the willingness to tell the truth about one’s own experience: what Jesus has done in my life, what the faith has given me, what I have found in the sacraments and the community and the Word. “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” (1 Peter 3:15). Gentleness and respect — not argument and pressure.

Evangelisation and Charity — The Inseparable Bond

One of the most important clarifications in Catholic social teaching is the relationship between evangelisation and charitable service. They are not the same thing, but they are inseparable. Pope Benedict XVI, in Deus Caritas Est, insists that the Church’s social service is not a strategy for evangelisation — using charitable works as a bait to attract people to the faith is a manipulation that disrespects both the recipient of charity and the integrity of the Gospel. Charitable service is done simply because the person in need is a human being made in the image of God, regardless of whether they ever come to faith.

And yet — charitable service, done in the name of Jesus and with explicit reference to the love that motivates it, creates a credibility for the Gospel that argument alone cannot manufacture. Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity are one of the most powerful evangelising forces of the twentieth century — not because they set out to convert people but because their service of the dying and the destitute, offered in the name of Jesus, raises the same question as the life of every authentic Christian witness: “Who is this Jesus, and what has he done to these people?” The service opens the question; the Gospel answers it.

The inseparability of word and deed in evangelisation is captured in the image Jesus uses: “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.” (Matthew 5:13–14). Salt preserves and flavours without drawing attention to itself. Light illuminates without announcing itself. The Christian who serves without speaking is salt — valuable and necessary. The Christian who speaks without serving is a noisy gong. The Christian who serves in love and speaks with gentleness is both salt and light — and that combination is, in every culture and every age, irresistible.

Seven Dimensions of the New Evangelization

The New Evangelization is not a single programme but a comprehensive renewal of the Church’s missionary identity across every dimension of its life. Here is a map of what it requires:

The Woman at the Tomb — “Go and Tell My Brothers”

The first evangelists of the resurrection were women. Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome go to the tomb early on the first day of the week and find it empty. In the Gospel of John, it is Mary Magdalene alone who lingers — weeping at the tomb, encountering the risen Jesus in the garden, at first mistaking him for the gardener, and then, in one of the most tender moments in the entire Gospel, hearing her name spoken: “Mary.” She turns and recognises him: “Rabboni!” (John 20:16).

And immediately he sends her: “Go instead to my brothers and tell them: ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'” (John 20:17). She goes. She becomes, in the ancient tradition, the “Apostle to the Apostles” — the one sent to the ones who will be sent. The first proclamation of the resurrection is entrusted to a woman who had been delivered from seven demons, whose reputation in her community would have been damaged, whose testimony in a first-century Jewish court would not have been accepted. God consistently chooses for his most important messages the people the world would not choose.

Mary Magdalene’s evangelising method is the simplest possible: “I have seen the Lord.” Not a theological argument. Not a defence of the resurrection against philosophical objections. The testimony of an encounter — I was there, I heard my name, I recognised him. This is all evangelisation ultimately is: the transmission of a personal encounter with the risen Christ from one person to another, across the centuries, in the power of the Spirit, until the whole world has heard.

St Francis Xavier — Fire That Crossed the World

Among the great evangelists of Christian history, Francis Xavier stands in a class of his own. A Navarrese nobleman who became one of the founding Jesuits, he left Europe in 1541 at the age of thirty-five and spent the remaining eleven years of his life traversing India, the Malay Archipelago, and Japan — baptising hundreds of thousands of people, establishing communities of faith, and dying on the shores of China in 1552 as he attempted to enter the last great civilisation yet unreached by the Gospel.

What drove Xavier was not romantic adventurism. It was a burning conviction that the Gospel was the most important thing in the world, that people who died without it were lost, and that the urgency of this situation made every other consideration secondary. He wrote from his missions with an urgency that has never lost its power: he called on the universities of Europe to send graduates who would “set the world on fire” for Christ — not a bureaucratic expansion of Christendom but a personal, passionate, sacrificial mission driven by love for Christ and love for the people who had not yet heard of him.

Xavier is patron of the missions — and his life is a standing challenge to every comfortable Christian who has forgotten that the Gospel is urgent, that people’s eternal lives are at stake, and that the evangelising impulse is not an optional extra for those with a particular charism but the fundamental responsibility of everyone who has received the Good News. His dying prayer, alone on the island of Shangchuan, still echoes: “In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped; let me never be confounded.”

How to Evangelise — A Complete Pastoral Guide for Every Catholic

Evangelisation does not require a course, a collar, or a clipboard. It requires an encounter with Jesus Christ and the willingness to share what that encounter has meant. Here is a complete pastoral guide for every baptised person called to “go and tell.”

• 1

  Deepen your own encounter with Jesus — you cannot give what you do not have. Evangelisation that flows from duty is exhausting. Evangelisation that flows from encounter is irrepressible. The most urgent preparation for sharing the faith is not a course in apologetics but a renewed, deepened, daily relationship with the living Christ through prayer, Scripture, and the sacraments. The person who is genuinely on fire with joy in their faith does not need to be urged to share it — they need to be taught to channel what is already overflowing.

• 2

  Know your own story — practise telling it simply. Every Catholic has a faith story — the account of what God has done in their life, however quietly or dramatically. Be able to tell it in three minutes: what your life was like before a deeper encounter with faith, how that encounter happened, and what has changed. Not a performance — a conversation. Not a conversion narrative — an honest account of grace received. This is the most disarming form of evangelisation: simply telling the truth about what has happened to you.

• 3

  Pray for the people around you by name — and watch what happens. Make a short list of five people in your life — friends, family members, colleagues — who are not living in active faith. Pray for them every day, by name, for one month. Ask the Holy Spirit for an opportunity to speak to them about what matters most to you. You will be surprised how often those opportunities appear. The prayer is not a technique — it is an alignment of your heart with God’s desire for the people you love.

• 4

  Invite someone to come with you — the most effective evangelism tool in the Church’s history. The single most effective evangelistic action available to every Catholic is an invitation: “Would you like to come to Mass with me?” or “We’re having a conversation about faith at my home — would you come?” Most people who return to or enter the Church do so because someone invited them personally. Not a pamphlet, not an advertisement, not a programme — a person who mattered to them, asking them directly.

• 5

  Listen before you speak — and ask good questions. The best evangelists are often the best listeners. Before sharing what you believe, ask the person where they are: “What do you think about faith?” or “Have you ever had an experience of God?” or simply “What matters most to you in life?” Most people have never been asked these questions seriously by someone who genuinely wanted to hear the answer. The willingness to listen — really listen, without preparing your response while they are still talking — creates the space in which the Gospel can be received as an answer rather than an intrusion.

• 6

  Live the Gospel visibly — let your life raise the question. The most sustained and most powerful form of evangelisation is a life so clearly shaped by love, joy, forgiveness, integrity, and compassion that those around you notice and wonder. You do not need to announce your faith constantly. You need to live it fully — in how you treat the difficult colleague, in how you respond to criticism, in how you spend your money, in how you show up for people who are suffering. That life, over time, is the most compelling argument for the Gospel that exists.

• 7

  Trust the Holy Spirit — your role is faithfulness, not results. The evangelist’s task is to sow the seed. God gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6–7). The anxiety about results — “What if they don’t respond? What if I say the wrong thing?” — is the enemy of the freedom that makes authentic witness possible. Your responsibility is to be faithful: to pray, to live well, to speak when the Spirit opens the door, to invite, to listen, to serve. The rest is God’s work, in his timing, in ways you may never see. Trust him with it. Go and tell — and leave the outcome in his hands.

“And Surely I Am With You Always” — The Promise That Makes Mission Possible

The Great Commission ends not with a command but with a promise: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20). The one who sends is the one who accompanies. The Church does not go into the world alone — it goes with the risen Christ, whose authority covers every territory and whose presence accompanies every witness. This promise is the ultimate answer to every fear that holds the evangeliser back: the fear of inadequacy, the fear of rejection, the fear of failure, the fear of not knowing enough.

The history of Christian mission is a history of this promise kept — in ways that were not always visible to those who bore witness at the time. The martyr who died with no apparent impact, the missionary who spent decades without apparent fruit, the parent who prayed for a prodigal child for years without seeing any response — the promise is for them too: I am with you always. The mission of the Church will be completed. Every person who has ever shared the Gospel in love has contributed to something larger than they could see. And the one who began a good work in the Church at Pentecost will carry it to completion on the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6). Go and tell. He goes with you. ✨ ✝