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Not everyone can preach beautiful sermons or deliver learned lectures but anyone of us can make God visible.  We can paint a picture of Him with our own lives.

When a person says, “I have been saved by grace of God through Christ,” what does he mean?  The New Testament doesn’t make it something vague and abstract, but something clear and concrete.  It talks about specific qualities of life.  Jesus said, “By this shall all men know that you are my followers, that you love one another.”  The Book of Acts says, “When the people saw the courage of the disciples, they took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus.”  St. Paul writes in his Galatian letter, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.”

These are the things that having Jesus Christ in your life producing those traits of character means.  Now, you may not be able to preach about them, but you can do something much better – you can practice them.  You can so live that Jesus becomes visible in your life.  People ought to look at us, and they ought to see love, and courage, and patience, and kindness, and self-control.

Those are the things that can make Jesus real – not something mystical and magical, but something real and concrete.  And every one of us can paint a picture of Jesus with his or her own life.

There are many mysteries and complexities to our Catholic faith.  Everything about it is not always easy to explain or understand.  How did sin become such a part of God’s creation?  Why do good people hurt and suffer?  How does God save me or anyone else through the death of Jesus on a cross?

Those are tough questions, and we may never have the answer in this life.  But the doctrine of salvation – of having Jesus in your life – becomes more understandable when it becomes visible in someone’s life.  When we see love in action, we may not be able to explain it, but we know what it is.  In business, we meet a person who is both honest and compassionate.  He or she has opportunities to take advantage of us, and there would be nothing illegal about it, but he doesn’t do it.  Instead, he deals with you in a way that is fair and considerate.  We can’t explain it, but we recognize honesty and compassion when we see them. 

Here is a teacher who seems to care.  She gives extra time to a student who is having difficulty.  She comes early or she stays late.  There is no extra pay.  No one pins a ribbon on her.  She doesn’t have to do it; it just happens that she is serious about her work and cares about her students.  We may not be able to      explain it, but we recognize dedication when we see it.  These are the kinds of things that having Jesus in your life is all about.  It has to do with character and quality of life.  And the greatest need of our Church today is for that kind of preaching.  People who are real and honest and loving and kind make Jesus visible.

What possible argument can there be against a life changed by the grace of God.  One picture is worth a thousand words.  One person in whose life Jesus is real is worth a thousand arguments.

Through the life of Jesus, God was made visible for all to see.  Now we are faced with the challenge of making Jesus so real that people can see Him through us.  Will you accept this challenge today?