Paul VI’s exhortation “Evangelization in the New World” was at the center of Pope Francis’ catechesis at the public audience that day. He referred to three questions asked by his predecessor: “Do you believe what you preach? Do you live what you believe? Do you preach what you live?”
(Vatican News Network)Pope Francis presides over Wednesday’s public audience in St. Peter’s Square on March 22. Before the event began, the Pope and several children arrived on the stone steps in front of the Basilica in a white jeep, and were warmly cheered by groups in Florence with flags and drums. The Pope continued his catechesis on the theme of evangelization zeal, this time following the teachings of the former Pope St. Paul VI’s exhortation “Evangelization in the New World“, focusing in particular on the primary means of evangelization: witnessing . The Pope called this exhortation “the Magna Carta of evangelization in the contemporary world“.
The Pope first stated that the Gospel cannot be evangelized without a witness. What is witnessed is a personal encounter with the incarnate Jesus Christ in whom salvation was accomplished. Witness is essential, first of all because the world needs “evangelists who speak to themselves of the invisible God they know and are familiar with”. (Evangelism in the New World Exhortation No. 76) This is not to convey an ideology or a doctrine about God, no. What is conveyed is the manifestation of faith in my life: this is the testimony.
Furthermore, “a man now prefers to listen to the testimony … even if he listens to the preacher, because he is a witness”. (Ibid.: No. 41) Therefore, witnessing to Christ is “the primary method of evangelization” (ibid.), and “a fundamentally important condition for evangelization to be effective” (cf. No. 76). However, the witness of Christian life must be illuminated by faith. This faith, the Pope explained, “changes us, the relationships, the norms and the values that determine our choices”. Witnessing “cannot be separated from the unity of what is believed, what is preached, and what is lived”.
“A man is believed if what he believes and what he lives are in harmony with each other, that is, how he believes and how he lives. Many Christians only say they believe, but act otherwise, as if they were not Christians. This It is hypocrisy. The opposite of testimony is hypocrisy. We often hear things like, ‘This man goes to Mass every Sunday and then lives like that’. Indeed, it is anti-witness.”
Then, using the question asked by Paul VI in that exhortation, the Pope said, “Each of us must answer these three fundamentally important questions: ‘Do you believe what you preach? Do you believe what you believe based on what you believe? Do you live? Do you proclaim what you live?’ (cf: no. 76) We cannot be content with easy, packaged answers. We must accept the risk, even instability, in our search, trusting entirely in the Holy Spirit Action, what He does in each of us, pushes us to always go beyond: to cross our boundaries, to cross our barriers, to cross our limits, limits of any kind”.
The witness of the Christian life, the Pope pointed out, is also expressed in “walking the path of holiness”. However, “sanctification is not reserved for the few, no; it is a gift of God that demands acceptance and bears fruit for us and for others. We are chosen and loved by God, and we must bring this love to the other people”.
The Pope also emphasized that “evangelization is not only for others, not only those who profess other faiths or those who have no faith”. And “ourselves, believers in Christ and active members of the People of God” should also be evangelized. “In order to bear this witness, the Church herself ‘begins also with the evangelization herself’ (ibid.: No. 15). If the Church does not evangelize herself, she becomes a museum exhibit. On the contrary, what keeps her renewed is precisely the It is the acceptance of evangelization by oneself”.
In addition, the Pope also talked about the relationship between the Church and the contemporary world, pointing out that the word of God is the seed that nourishes the world. “The Church embraces evangelization in order to evangelize, a Church led by the Holy Spirit. She is called to walk on a demanding journey of constant conversion and renewal”. This also requires “the ability to change the way of understanding, to live out her presence as an evangelist in history, and to avoid hiding in the zone protected by the logic of ‘always so'”.
“That is to say, the Church meets the contemporary world in dialogue, dialogues with the contemporary world, but meets and talks with the Lord every day, allowing the entry of the Holy Spirit, protagonist of evangelization. Without the Holy Spirit, we only To be able to advertise the Church, not to evangelize. It is the Holy Spirit who is in us and moves us to evangelize, and this is the real freedom of the children of God.”
Finally, the Pope once again invited everyone to “read or re-read the exhortation “Evangelism in the New World“. Published after the Synod of Bishops in 1974, this exhortation focuses on evangelization. The Pope called this Paul VI’s “legacy to us for evangelism”, and his predecessor mentioned in this exhortation that “for the Church, evangelism is the bringing of the good news to mankind. All classes, transformed from within by their influence, renew the face of the same humanity”.
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