Root it in baptism:
65. Faith, by means of which (a human being) responds to the proclamation of the Gospel, requires Baptism. The close connection between the two realities is rooted in the will of Christ himself, who commanded his apostles to make disciples of all nations and to baptize them. “The mission to baptize, and so the sacramental mission, is implied in the mission to evangelize”. (Catechism 1122)
Those who have converted to Jesus Christ and who have been educated in the faith by means of catechesis, by receiving the sacraments of Christian initiation (Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist) “are delivered from the powers of darkness through the sacraments of Christian initiation and having died, been buried, and risen with Christ, they receive the Spirit of adoption as children and celebrate with the whole people of God the memorial of the Lord’s death and resurrection”. (Ad Gentes 14; cf. Catechism 1212, 1220)
This is very Pauline, alluding to Romans 6:3-9 of the Easter Vigil, as well as the notion of adoption as co-heirs–brothers and sisters of the Lord.
We do not shy away from the direct goal of evangelization, that is, initiation into Christ. Faith, of course, has to come first. Tending to both the intellect and the neophyte’s newborn activity in the world as a Christian–this comes later.
