Recently I was talking with this young man. He's like, I just want to share the gospel, but I don't know how to do it.

It seems like I fail every single time. I said, well, here are some things to take a look at.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is The Scent of Resents. As an example, he was talking with one of his buddies about his buddies drinking.

He's like, you can't live this life like this. You can't follow Christ and be drinking in this particular way.

And he's like, my friend just totally got offended by this and said I was judging him and all these kind of things.

And we're still friends, but it caused some tension. And he's like, how do I desire to follow the Lord?

I desire to be evangelized. Why am I so bad at it? First of all, the fact that you're willing to share.

Do you have to be willing to have a difficult conversation with someone? It's a good sign. It means that not only do you have charity, you have love, but you also have the courage to be able to speak.

So it's not just I care, you also have courage. That's really good. So that's positive sign.

On the other hand, what you had done in this conversation with your buddy was not evangelization.

Like evangelization is introducing people to the person of Jesus. And it takes all different forms. It can be introducing to people to Christ himself, to his church, to the sacraments, to like the avenues of grace that God has given us.

Like all those things, what you are doing is you're not evangelizing, you're correcting.

Which is not a bad thing, but that's not evangelization. You have to just keep that in mind.

You are offering your friend a correction, but you thought it was like, I can't even share the gospel with anybody.

That will show that drink is not the gospel or that will show that get drunk is not the gospel. That is a correction that you are offering to your buddy.

Now again, not bad. One of the spiritual works of mercy is instructing the ignorant. And so calling for repentance. That idea turning away from sin.

Great. But not evangelization. I can only offer correction if I have a particular relationship with someone.

This is another video. I don't know, made a bunch of years ago. But when it comes to offering correction, I think we typically do that when we have a particular relationship.

Like my relationship with you is such that no, it's kind of my role is to offer correction. So as a pastor or a priest to congregation, probably, but not as a priest necessarily to the person who served in a coffee at the coffee place.

Kind of things as a Christian, a man or Christian woman, to amongst your friends, maybe you do offer that correction and maybe they do get offended.

Our relationships a lot of times dictate the degree to which we can offer correction. They dictate our responsibility in that sense.

A parent to the kids got it. Okay. But when it comes to evangelization, when it comes to actually sharing the gospel, so many people find it difficult.

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