Some people say, “Money talks.” They tell us that money can buy elections, build armies, sell products, and conquer the world.

Even Christians sometimes fall for that line. They think their Church can grow only if it’s raised enough money … bought enough real estate … booked enough bandwidth … and conquered enough of the airwaves. They think what we need is more programs.

But you and I know better, because we know a young woman — hardly more than a girl — who proved otherwise.

We call her the Blessed Virgin Mary.

She lived in obscurity. That might as well have been the name of her little town of Nazareth. It’s quite possible there are more people living in your city block than there were living in her entire village. If you live in a high-rise, you probably have more people living in your building.

She was nobody — from nowhere. And God chose her to bear the Messiah into the world.

What’s more, he didn’t force her. He gave her the freedom to say no, if she chose — and all of human history would turn on her decision.

Mary said yes, and so began the first evangelization of the world. Mary bore the Gospel because she bore Jesus Christ. The Three Kings went looking for the newborn king, and they found him with his mother. They were pagans, from places where idols were worshipped, but they found their way to Jesus and worshipped him in his mother’s arms.

It was not easy for Mary. Soon after she gave birth, government agents came looking for her baby. King Herod wanted to kill the infant Jesus. So the family had to run away. They had to live in hiding, live as migrants — live as foreigners in a faraway land.

But look at what happened as a result of those years of extreme hardship. The Holy Family fled to Egypt — and, in the person of the baby Jesus, they brought the Gospel to that pagan land. Christians in Egypt still rejoice over that fact: that Jesus came to them first.

The Blessed Virgin Mary was the first to evangelize. She held Jesus for those who came to call, whether they were shepherds or kings, Israelites or Egyptians.

She is always the first to evangelize. Consider what happened in the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The native people in the region we know today as Mexico City suffered much. They suffered conquest first by the Aztecs and then by the Spanish. The Aztecs offered the conquered people as human sacrifices to the snake god Quetzalcoatl. Their lives were burdened with natural and supernatural fears. Yet, they resisted conversion to Christianity. The best efforts of brilliant missionaries proved ineffective. The laws of the Spaniards proved ineffective. You can’t legislate a change of heart.

Then Mary appeared to a peasant man named Juan Diego at Guadalupe and soon many millions of peoplecame to faith in Jesus Christ. A continent came to faith.

Mary had no resources, no money, no programs, no army, no bandwidth. She never had her own TV show. When she appeared, she didn’t go to the powerful. She appeared to a poor man.

And she won the world for Christ. If we stay close to her — if we follow our mother’s lead — we, too, will win many souls for Jesus. Is it any wonder that the popes have called the Blessed Virgin “the Star of the New Evangelization”