Invitation and Encounter: Evangelizing Through the Sacraments

“Sacramentalized, but not evangelized” is a phrase often used by those in the Church involved in pastoral outreach and evangelization efforts. While the phrase gets at a truth — many Catholics who have received the sacraments are still in desperate need of evangelization — it is theologically and spiritually imprecise. The problem is not that people have “only” received their sacraments, but that we do not fully understand the evangelizing work of the sacraments themselves.

In Invitation a...