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E ven now in the 21st century, over 2,000 years after Jesus walked the Earth, God contin- ues to encounter us and "interrupt" our lives. Every Sunday, every holy day, every time we call out to him in prayer, we encounter God's desire for relationship with us and his over- whelming love for us. There's a reason that Ash Wednesday is one of the most attended services of the litur- gical year — we desire to allow God to interrupt our workdays and then return to them marked with ashes for Christ. It always serves as a great con- versation starter when people return to the secular world with crosses on their foreheads, and many of us look forward to the moment we get to answer a question about it. Why, then, is the word "evangeli- zation" still enough to make people want to run for the hills? Why does it cause us so much anxiety to share the Good News of Christ's resurrection with those around us? A lot of the fear and anxiety sur- rounding evangelization stems from a lack of understanding as to what God has called us to do. Words like "con- vince," "impose," "proselytize," and even "salesman" come to mind, along with a caricature of a fiery preacher with a table full of pamphlets and Bibles, shouting "Repent or you'll regret it in Hell!" to passersby. Replace that image with this instead: You have met the love of your life. Someone that gets you, someone that would do anything for you. Perhaps this person moved across the country to be with you. They provided you with the best life you could have imagined. And then, in a heroic act of self-sacrifice, this person jumped in front of a bullet for you, assuring you that they did it because they love you. They are pro- nounced dead at the scene. And then, after three days, they come back, in the miracle of miracles, and you are reunited with them. Isn't this the kind of miracle you would want to tell everyone in your life about? ⊲ Holy Week has always been my favorite week of the year. Since I was 15 years old, I spend Good Friday rewatching Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and still have to watch the screen through my fingers when it gets to the most brutal depictions of Jesus' torture leading up to his death. My God, someone who never misses an opportunity to try to draw me closer to himself, the God who loves us so incredibly deeply, endured pain that I still can't bear to watch all the way through, all to bridge the void in our relationship that we created through our sins. I watch this movie every year because I never cease to be touched by how far God will go to prove his love for us. By becoming man in Jesus Christ, God interrupted the world's timeline to enter deeper into our lives, entering society quietly and transforming the realities of all the people he encountered, ultimately giving his life for them. 21 DENVER CATHOLIC | APR-MAY 2024