Vatican City, 01 June 2013:The Mission intention of Pope for the month of
June: that where secularization is strongest, Christian communities may effectively
promote a new evangelization. Making my own the concerns of my venerable Predecessors,
I consider it opportune to offer appropriate responses so that the entire Church,
allowing herself to be regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit, may present herself
to the contemporary world with a missionary impulse in order to promote the new evangelization,
wrote Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. Above all, he continued, this pertains to Churches
of ancient origin, which live in different situations and have different needs, and
therefore require different types of motivation for evangelization. This variety
of situations demands careful discernment; to speak of a “new evangelization” does
not in fact mean that a single formula should be developed that would hold the same
for all circumstances. And yet it is not difficult to see that what all the Churches
living in traditionally Christian territories need is a renewed missionary impulse,
an expression of a new, generous openness to the gift of grace. Indeed we cannot forget
that the first task will always be to make ourselves docile to the freely given action
of the Spirit of the Risen One who accompanies all who are heralds of the Gospel and
opens the hearts of those who listen. To proclaim fruitfully the Word of the Gospel
one is first asked to have a profound experience of God.
How, in our present
cultural and ecclesiastical context, can we respond to the challenge of the new evangelisation?
As the Lineamenta of Synod of Bishops on ‘the New Evangelisation’ in 2012 said: ‘the
evangelisation process becomes a discernment process; the proclamation requires first
of all a moment of listening, of understanding, of interpreting’ the profound historical
and cultural changes that we are living. In this context, the ‘new evangelisation’
is ‘a commitment not to re-evangelise’ ‘but to a new evangelisation’. New in its enthusiasm,
in its methods, in the way it is expressed. The new evangelisation is not a new version
of the first, a simple repetition, but it is the courage to dare new ways, in the
face of the new conditions at the heart of which the Church is called to live today
the proclamation of the gospel’. It begins in our heart.
The point of the ‘new
evangelisation’ is thus ‘to rekindle the spark of faith in Jesus Christ, a spark which
becomes a fire and awakes the desire to share the Good News. Faith is born of meeting
the Risen Christ at the heart of our lives, in recognising his presence by the burning
in our hearts. ‘The new evangelisation is above all a spiritual action, the capacity
to make our own, in the present, the courage and the force of the first Christians.’
Where the influence of secularisation is strongest, the ‘new evangelisation’
ought to open the ways of hope. source: VR Sedoc