Pope Francis: Evangelization must start with encountering Jesus

November 30, 2019 CNA Daily News News Briefs 1 Print

Vatican City, Nov 30, 2019 / 03:02 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis on Saturday called for a “free and simple Church” which shares the Gospel without worrying about appearance or profit, but is motivated by an authentic encounter with Christ.

“I would like to tell you very simply: the joy of the Gospel comes from the encounter with Jesus,” the pope said.

“When we meet the Lord, we are inundated by that love of which he alone is capable,” he said. This love transforms our whole life, and “the need to announce it arises spontaneously, it becomes irrepressible.”

Pope Francis spoke Saturday to participants in a Nov. 28-30 international meeting on “Evangelii Gaudium: The Church which goes forth.”

The meeting, organized by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, gathered bishops, religious and laity from across the globe to discuss the pope’s 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.

In his address, which took place in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, the pope pointed to the example of Mary Magdalene, who becomes the first to share the Good News of the Resurrection.

While Mary Magdalene came to the tomb filled with pain and sadness, her encounter with the Risen Lord changed her sorrow into joy, which she in turn shared with the Apostles, the pope said.

“The experience of so many people today is not far from that of Mary of Magdala,” he continued. “Nostalgia for God, for an infinite and true love, is rooted in the heart of every man.”

Evangelizing means meeting these people in the journey of life, Pope Francis said. Those who evangelize “can never forget that they are always on the road, searching together with the others…He knows no enemies, only traveling companions.”

He urged those present not to hold back due to a fear of making mistakes, noting that everyone has weaknesses, but when we prioritize the Good News, we allow God’s grace to work through our imperfect efforts.

If we truly believe that God is love, he said, we come to realize that no effort carried out with love and patient generosity on our part will be wasted.

Pope Francis also cautioned against the temptation to discouragement when things do not go as planned.

“Sadness is not a Christian virtue,” he said, giving the example of the early Christians who were persecuted yet maintained joy and did not fall into defeatism.

This can be a difficult task, the pope acknowledged, but keeping the proper perspective allows Christians to return again and again to Christ, the source of their hope.

He encouraged them to pray daily to the Holy Spirit that they may maintain “the missionary ardor that makes life a love story with God.”

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Pope Francis tells German Catholics to focus on evangelization

June 29, 2019 CNA Daily News 6

Vatican City, Jun 29, 2019 / 03:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis sent a 5,700 word letter to Catholics in Germany Saturday calling for a focus on evangelization in the face of the “erosion” and “decline of the faith” in the country.

“The current challenges as well as the answers we give demand a long maturation process and the cooperation of an entire people over years,” Pope Francis wrote in a letter published June 29.

“This stimulates the emergence and continuation of processes that build us as God’s people, rather than seeking immediate results with premature and medial consequences that are fleeting because of lack of deepening and maturation or because they do not correspond to the vocation we are given,” he continued.

In his letter, Pope Francis issued a warning about the “synodal path,” a process announced by Cardinal Reinhard Marx. The pope said,“What this entails in concrete terms and how it unfolds will certainly require further consideration.”

The German bishops’ conference decided in March that the issues of priestly celibacy, the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, and a reduction of clerical power would be subject to a process  “synodal progression” that could lead to a binding, but as yet undetermined, outcome.

“Synodality presupposes and requires the action of the Holy Spirit,” Francis said in the letter.

The pope warned, “despite all serious and inevitable reflection, it is easy to fall into subtle temptations … therefore caution should be exercised, since they, anything but helpful to a common path, hold us in preconceived schemes and mechanisms that end in alienation or limitation of our mission.”

“What is more, if we are not aware of these temptations, we easily end up with a complicated series of arguments, analyses and solutions with no other effect than to stay away from the real and daily encounter with the faithful people and the Lord,” he said.

The pope also reiterated concerns he raised with the German bishops during their ad limina visit in Rome in November 2015 in which he had already noted a grave lack of participation in the sacraments among Catholics in Germany. He challenged bishops to “pastoral conversion” and warned of “excessive centralization.”

“To accept and endure the present situation … is an invitation to face what has died in us and in our congregations, which requires evangelization and visitation by the Lord,” Francis said. “But this requires courage, because what we need is much more than structural, organizational or functional change.”

The church in Germany has been embroiled in a number of controversies in recent months, several of which have also led to tensions with the Vatican, in particular pertaining to the practice of giving communion to protestants who are married to Catholics — a practice now officially established in several German dioceses — along with the practice of giving communion to divorced and remarried Catholics.

According to research recently published by the University of Freiburg, the number of officially registered Catholics in Germany will halve by 2060.

“The forthcoming process of change cannot respond exclusively to external facts and needs, such as the sharp decline in the birth rate and the ageing of communities, which do not allow a normal generational change to be considered,” Pope Francis said. “A true process of change … makes demands that arise from our Christianity and from the very dynamics of the evangelization of the Church; such a process requires pastoral conversion.”

“Pastoral conversion reminds us that evangelization must be our guiding criterion par excellence, by which we can recognize all the steps we are called to take as an ecclesial community; evangelization is the real and essential mission of the Church,” he said.

Anian Christoph Wimmer contributed to this report.

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1 Comment

  1. The Good News is healing and empowering. Being on journey and encountering fellow mortals on the road is far more relaxing than contemplating on how to get in the box.

    Reply

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