The Surprising Truth About Zeal for Souls (And Why You Might Not Have It Yet)

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“Do you have zeal for souls?”

My mentor asked me that question point-blank, and I wasn’t quite sure what he meant.

I was switching careers and moving across the country to begin serving as a campus missionary. Surely I had zeal for souls…right?

I knew that I had zeal for Jesus. I had recently fallen in love with reading the Bible, particularly the New Testament, and prayer wasn’t the drag it used to be. I was actually enjoying it for the first time in my life.

I knew that I had zeal for the Gospel. As someone who studied screenwriting in college, I found the story of the Gospel to be easily the most captivating of all stories.

I knew that I had zeal for the Catholic faith. As I was falling in love with Scripture, I was also falling in love with what the Church taught. It was all making sense to me. The dots were all connecting.

“Yeah, but are you zealous for souls?”

His question stumped me and bugged me for months. I found myself constantly examining myself: Was I zealous for souls? 

Or was I zealous for being “right?” 

Could my renewed excitement for the faith be confused for zeal for souls?

I obviously wanted people to go to Heaven. On an intellectual level, I didn’t want anyone to suffer the pains of Hell. Only a crazy person would actually want someone to experience that. But was I passionate about getting people to Heaven? Was I convicted of the desperate need to help them get to Heaven?

I didn’t know if I was…

Over the next year, as I immersed myself in campus ministry at the University of Colorado Boulder, I started to understand what zeal for souls actually felt like. As I led Bible studies for college students and walked with guys in discipleship, a burning desire for them to encounter Jesus began blossoming. As time went by, I increasingly longed for them to fall in love with the Lord. I wanted them to be excited about the faith we shared.

That passion I had for them slowly began spreading out to the whole campus. CU took on a whole new light. Everywhere I turned, there were thousands of students who hadn’t encountered Jesus of Nazareth.

There were thousands of souls in need.

As my zeal for souls increased, the fruit in my ministry only ripened. My reach expanded, my efforts grew focused, and my work became even more life-giving.

When it comes to Kingdom-building, the Holy Spirit is the principal agent (Evangelii Nuntiandi 75) and zeal for souls is his greatest tool. Simply put, we can’t effectively evangelize without genuinely caring about peoples’ souls. 

And yet, so many of us lack this essential quality. I myself became a campus missionary without really knowing much about it.

If we lack zeal for souls, it’s oftentimes because we lack one (or multiple) of three things:

1. Conviction in the afterlife

2. Conviction in an all-just God

3. Conviction that God can use us

This isn’t an exhaustive list. These are simply the things I found that I needed to address within myself.

So!

I’d like to address each of those.

A Lack of Conviction in the Afterlife

Sometimes, we allow the afterlife to be an afterthought. We assume it’s too far off and too mysterious to consider seriously.

But we need to remember: If there’s no eternal destination, then there’s no point to evangelization. If there is an eternal destination, then evangelization should be one of our top priorities, and we should be oozing zeal for souls.

As C.S. Lewis once famously wrote, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”

Put another way, everyone who has ever lived, is currently living, or will ever live has an eternal destination: Heaven or Hell. (Yes, there’s purgatory, but purgatory is a temporary destination.)

There is more — much more — than just this life. So often, though, we forget to keep this at the forefront of our minds. We allow the worries of this world to grow bigger than our concern for the world to come. The more focused we are on the fact that each of us is headed somewhere, the greater our impulse to evangelize becomes. The more fruitful our evangelization becomes.

Zeal for souls is born from a mind attuned to the eternal realities of this life.

A Lack of Conviction in an All-Just God

Sometimes, we’re aware of the reality of the afterlife, but we assume we know how it will turn out.

We make the mistake of thinking that God, being all-loving and all-merciful, will surely never condemn anyone — at least not anyone trying to be a good person. 

“If you’re good, you’re good to go!”

We readily accept the all-merciful God, but we discard the all-just God.

But God is both. Both and.

In past generations, the Church leaned too heavily into preaching the “fire and brimstone” message. We thought scaring people into repentance was the way to go. As a result, the Church has overcorrected in our modern times and swayed too heavily into the “free and breezy” message. We’ve diminished the need for repentance.

We need both the fire and the freedom. Both and.

God wants all souls to live with him forever, but as Jesus himself says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven…” (Matthew 7:21). The more convicted we are of God's justice, the more expansive our evangelization efforts become.

Zeal for souls comes from a clear picture of who God is.

A Lack of Conviction that God Can Use Us

Sometimes, we lack confidence that we can actually be God’s instrument of salvation for other people.

Or worse. Sometimes, we pridefully assume that he can’t use us because we don’t know enough, aren’t as holy as we should be, haven’t received the best training, etc.

We forget that Jesus used twelve of the unlikeliest men to change the world forever. We forget that he chose a hot-headed fisherman (Peter), a Jewish traitor (Matthew) and a natural skeptic (Thomas), among others.

Our Lord works wonders with incapabilities. It’s kind of his thing.

Or as St. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “…whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). 

When we recognize our own weaknesses, we recognize the areas where God can move with force. The more we humbly accept our limitations, the more energized our Kingdom work becomes.

Zeal for souls is the result of embracing our own fragility.

God can certainly use us to help build his Kingdom, and he wants to use us! Whether we have zeal for souls or not, he can and will use us. But for those of us actively trying to respond to the call to help build his Kingdom, zeal for souls focuses us. It allows us to serve freely and fruitfully. It allows us to really love those we minister to.

So.

I’ll sign off by asking you the same question posed to me so many years ago: “Do you have zeal for souls?”