06/28/2026

A t a recent priests’ convocation, one of the speakers posed a simple but important question about evangelization: What is the message people most need to hear? Where do you begin?

For a long time, much Christian preaching often began with a variation of this: “You are broken… and Jesus can fix you.” There is truth in that. We are wounded by sin, and Christ does heal. But the speaker suggested that, at least for many people today, that may not be the place to start. Why? Because so many people already feel broken.

The data on the emotional and spiritual condition of people today—especially young adults—is sobering. Rates of stress, anxiety, loneliness, and isolation continue to climb. Many carry a deep internal conviction that something is wrong with them, that they are defective somehow, that they are simply “not good enough.”

To begin there--you’re broken—can sometimes feel less like Good News and more like confirmation of their worst fears. What many people are longing to hear first is something more fundamental: You are loved.

That insight was driven home in a striking way when the speaker shared something her young adult son once told her. He said, “I don’t need to hear that God loves me. What I need is to experience it.” That stayed with me.

He wasn’t rejecting God. He wasn’t denying God. He was simply saying: If this is real, I need to know it in a way that reaches me. That may be where many people are today. Not hostile to faith. Not opposed to God. But asking: How do I know this love is real?

And that raises an important question: How might someone actually experience being loved by God? Here are a few ways:

1. Through the love of other people. Very often, God’s love is mediated through human beings. A spouse who remains faithful. A friend who listens. A parent who sacrifices. A parish community that shows up after a funeral. Someone who forgives when they had every right not to.

Think of Father’s Day. How did you experience your father’s love? Maybe he said the words. Maybe he showed up at your games. Maybe he taught you what mattered. Maybe he worked long hours to provide for the family.

Love is often communicated through presence, sacrifice, and fidelity. And sometimes, in our moments of greatest weakness—our sin, fear, failure—we encounter something even more powerful: mercy.
Human love is never perfect. But even imperfect love can become a window into divine love.

2. In prayer and silence. Sometimes people experience God’s love not through dramatic visions or extraordinary mystical moments, but through a simple awareness: I am not alone. No voices. No visions. Just a deep interior sense of being held, accompanied, or seen.

For many people, prayer can feel dry or frustrating—especially when prayers seem unanswered. Sometimes that can even feel like rejection, as though God is silent because He does not care. But silence is not absence. God often works beneath the surface, slowly, quietly. And while mystical experiences may seem rare, the truth is this: God wants to meet us in prayer.

3. Through beauty. Sometimes beauty breaks through where words cannot: Music. Nature. Art. Liturgy. The stillness of an empty church. These moments can awaken something in us—a sense that reality is not random, cold, or meaningless. Beauty has a way of opening the soul. And often, through that opening, God’s love enters.

4. Through the Eucharist and the sacraments. For Catholics, God’s love is not merely an idea or an emotion. It is sacramental—concrete, embodied, given. Many people leave Mass, Confession, or the Anointing of the Sick with a profound sense of peace, clarity, healing, or nourishment that they cannot fully explain. Something happened. Someone was there. God’s love touched them.

Last week, on the feast of the Sacred Heart, I spoke about how we access God’s love through the human heart of Jesus. And the greatest expression of that love is His death on the Cross. Now, if that doesn’t immediately move you—you are not alone. It often takes time, reflection, and prayer before the full weight of that act becomes personal. But when it does, even briefly, it leaves behind a conviction that can sustain a person for years.

Jesus says in the Gospel: “Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge… even all the hairs of your head are counted.” In other words: God loves you. Not vaguely. Not abstractly. Personally. Intimately. You matter to Him. He knows you. He sees you. He has counted the hairs on your head.

That takes us back to that first step in evangelization. Perhaps today, the Gospel begins not by telling people what is wrong with them—there will be time for conversion and repentance. It begins where Jesus begins: You are seen. You are known. You are loved. And, as Jesus says, you are worth more than a thousand sparrows. And once a person truly experiences that—once they know it, not just intellectually but personally—everything else in the Gospel begins to make sense.

​– Rev. James F. Hurlbert