Malcom Uggeridge closed his biography of Mother Theresa of Calcutta with this word: “It will be for posterity to decide whether she is a saint. I only say of her that in a dark time she is a burning and shining light; in a cruel time, a living embodiment of Christ’s Gospel of love; in a godless time, the Word dwelling among us, full of grace and truth” (Something Beautiful for God, p. 146).

I assume Muggeridge is using the word saint in a specialized way. For me there is no question left for posterity. Mother Theresa is a Saint. The Christian saint is a Christian individual in full degree. That is the end toward which we all move – to be Christian in full degree, to be a Saint and that means to be alive in Christ. Jacopnone da todi put it clearly: “a saint is one in whom Christ is felt to live again.” Mother Theresa would not claim it, but her life is a transparent witness of it, and her words ring authentically because of who she is and what she does.

Listen to her testimony: “Because we cannot se Christ we cannot express our love to him; but our neighbors we can always wee, and we can do to them what if we saw him we would like to do to Christ.

It is a danger; if we forget to who we are doing it. Our works are only an expression of our live for Christ. Our hearts need to be full of love for him and since we have to express that love in action, naturally then the poorest of the poor are the means of expressing our love for God.

Because it is a continual contact with Christ in his work, it is the same contact we have during Mass and in the Blessed Sacrament. There we have Jesus in the appearance of the bread. But here in the slums, in the broken body, in the children, we see Christ and we touch him” (Something Beautiful for God, pp 113-114)

Mother Theresa knows and is living out the thrilling possibility that each one of us can be Christ to and/or receive Christ from very person we meet. What Christ has been and done for me, we must be and do for others. Our life and our ministry in his name are inseparable.

That sort of attending is the context in which the Spirit comes alive in relationship and evangelism takes place. It is a listening with mind and heart out of which comes revelation. When I listen in this fashion, the gap between the other person and me is bridged. A sensitivity comes that is not my own. I feel the pain, frustration, and anguish. Healing, reconciliation, strength, guidance are the miracles of love which take place when I attend, when I listen and look in the spirit of the indwelling Christ.

Jesus no only listened and looked, he touched the leper. To be an affirming presence in the style of the indwelling Christ and to be an effective witness we must touch. We cannot remain aloof; we must deliberately reach out, touch, and become involved.

Dr. James Lynch of Johns Hopkins has written a challenging book entitled The Broken Heart. In it he expresses his absolute conviction that loneliness is the one physical killer in America today.

Using actuarial tables from ten years of research, Dr. Lynch tells us that individuals who lie alone – single, widowed, divorced – have premature death rates from two to ten times higher than those of persons who live with others. Living alone, he says, does not necessarily produce loneliness, but the two often are related. Here are some of Dr. Lynch’s revealing comparisons:

Twice as many white divorced males under age seventy die from heart disease, lung cancer, and stomach cancer.

Three times as many men in this category die of hypertension; seven times as many from cirrhosis of the liver.

Among divorced people, suicide is five times high, and fatal car accidents are four times higher.

People who live alone visit physicians more frequently and stay in hospitals twice as long for identical illnesses.

What does all this mean? Dr. Lynch convincingly argues that loneliness produces physical illness and that a person can literally die of a broken heart.

Do you see what a call to evangelism ministry this is? I’m not saying that all people who are living alone are lonely. Many of the most vibrant, alive, dynamic persons in the congregation live alone. They have found the answer to loneliness. But I am saying that my city and your city and your community is filled with people who live alone and are lonely. The question is; do you really care? I have a hunch that, as dynamic as our singles ministry is and tits one of the most dynamic aspects of our church life. We are probably only scratching the surface of deep need.

But it is not only those who live alone who are lonely and need our touching relationship. People from all stations of life need the caring, healing touch of Christ, and that touch must come through you and me.

Jesus looked, he listened, he touched. Those are the essential elements of affirmation and affirmation is one of the essential works of Christ in our lives which we must provide for others.

That’s evangelism.

We can be those channels of Christ’s forgiving grace in many ways, not least of which is non-judgmental listening. Such listening requires a humility on my part, and an honest recognition that I am never immune to “falling,” that no mater how secure I may be in my present “walk with the Lord,” I may slip and stumble, and fall into snares as damaging and as destructive as those about which I am hearing from another who has honored be by sing his or her confession. So I must listen without judgment. If we enter a relationship, or listen to a confession more intent on curing than caring we will not be a channel f Christ’s forgiving love. If we care we will listen nonjudgmentaly, and allow the Spirit to work the miracle of repentance and forgiveness in the life of the other.

We must also announce the good news of forgiveness. A primary function of a priest, which we all are as Christians, is to say the word: “In the name of Christ you are forgiven.” I have seen it over and over again: persons who have been earnest and sincere in their prayer for forgiveness, and who are themselves forgiving persons, yet cannot get relief fro their own guilt; they are not assured of Christ’s forgiveness. Then the word is spoken by another Christian, “you are forgiven,” and that doe sit. Release and relief comes to others when we are given the grace to hear their confession, and take the authority to announce, “In the name of Christ, you are forgiven.”

A woman engaged me in a conversation following a brief two hour conference I had given on The Shaping Power of the Indwelling Christ. The sharing that had already taken place in the conference provided a setting of openness that enabled her to move quickly into deep confession. Her father had died two years previously and for the last year of that time she had been committed to a life of spiritual discipline, involved with a very meaningful prayer group, and had experienced some exceedingly helpful pastoral counseling. In it all she had discovered a deep reservoir of anger toward her father. Tears came to her eyes as she talked about it, her face was strained and her entire body grew tense. The Spirit said to me, “Speak the word.” I did…with love and tenderness, but with the strength of solid conviction: “Mary, I the name of Christ, you are forgiven.”

Now it doesn’t always happen this way, but it happens often enough to cause us to know the power of it and to experience the joy of it. Tears flowed even more down Mary’s face, but now they were tears of love. Her face relaxed and lightened, and her eyes sparkled through the tears. “Thank you,” she said, “Oh, thank you.” It was the expression of overflowing release and relief. The love and care of her pastor and prayer group had no doubt prepared her to hear that explicit work. To be channels of such freeing grace is our opportunity.

There are people all around us: neighbors, friends, fellow workers, family members, relative, people in our Sunday School Classes, in our Bible Study groups, who need us to look at them and to listen to them, to touch them – to announce the good news of forgiveness. To be Christ to them, by affirming and forgiving.

That’s evangelism.