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VATICAN CITY (CNS) – To evangelize means to help people understand that God himself has responded to their questions, and that his response – the gift of salvation in Jesus Christ – is available to them as well, Pope Benedict XVI said.
“Our role in the new evangelization is to cooperate with God,” the pope told the more than 260 cardinals, bishops and priests who are members of the world Synod of Bishops on the new evangelization. “We can only let people know what God has done.”
In a 21-minute, off-the-cuff reflection during morning prayer at the synod’s opening session Oct. 8, Pope Benedict spoke of the importance of prayer in the church’s push for a new evangelization, the meaning of evangelization, and sharing the Gospel through both proclamation and charity.
The pope examined the use of the word “evangelion,” the Greek term that is the root of the English word “evangelization,” and which is itself translated as “Gospel.”
Announce a victory
In the Book of Isaiah, he noted, the Hebrew equivalent of the word describes “the voice that announces a victory, that announces goodness, joy and happiness,” transmitting the message that “God has not forgotten his people,” and that he intervenes with power in history to save them.
In the New Testament, the pope said, “evangelion” is the good news of the incarnation of Christ, the coming of God’s son into the world to save humanity.
For the people of Israel suffering under Roman rule, it was truly good news that God spoke to his people and came to live among them, the pope said. News of Jesus’ birth was the answer to those who questioned whether there really was a God; whether he knew his people and the circumstances of their lives; and whether he had any power to change their situation.
People today have the same questions, the pope said: “Is God a reality or not? Why is he silent?”
When Christians evangelize, they must remember that their “faith has content,” and that what they believe and seek to share with others is outlined in the creed, he said. They must use their intelligence to reflect on the tenets of their faith and use their mouths to proclaim it.
Because faith isn’t an abstract notion, Christians also must live their faith and share it with the world through acts of charity and love, the pope said.
“Being tepid is the greatest danger for Christians,” he said. “We pray that faith becomes like a fire in us and that it will set alight others.”
The synod formally opened Oct. 7 with a Mass in St. Peter’s Square.
Evangelizing ‘essential’
During his homily, Pope Benedict said that the “church exists to evangelize” by sharing the Gospel with people who have never heard of Christ, strengthening the faith of those who already have been baptized and reaching out to those who “have drifted away from the church.”
“At various times in history,” he said, “divine providence has given birth to a renewed dynamism in the church’s evangelizing activity,” as happened, for example, with the evangelization of the Americas beginning late in the 15th century.
“Even in our own times, the Holy Spirit has nurtured in the church a new effort to announce the good news,” the pope said.
The modern effort to proclaim salvation in Christ to the modern world found “a more universal expression and its most authoritative impulse in the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council,” which opened 50 years ago this Oct. 11.
The pope said the synod is dedicated to helping people strengthen their faith and to helping those who have drifted away “encounter the Lord, who alone who fills existence with deep meaning and peace; and to favor the rediscovery of the faith, that source of grace which brings joy and hope to personal, family and social life.”
Long after the bishops have expressed their diverse views, Pope Benedict XVI will have the last word in an authoritative document of reflections called a post-synodal apostolic exhortation. In the meantime, none of the participants has a better overview of the Vatican gathering, or of the questions it will examine, than Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington.
As the synod’s relator, Cardinal Wuerl has reviewed preliminary suggestions from bishops’ conferences around the world and synthesized them in a speech he will deliver in Latin at the first working session Oct. 8. The cardinal will address the assembly again 10 days later, once more in Latin, to summarize hundreds of speeches by his fellow bishops.
Initiated by Blessed John Paul II and eagerly embraced by his successor, the new evangelization is a project aimed at reviving Catholic faith in increasingly secular societies, especially the wealthiest Western nations.
Addressing culture
For Cardinal Wuerl, it is also an opportunity to fulfill the goal for which Blessed John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council: a faithful presentation of Catholic teachings in a way “attractive to a very rapidly changing culture.”
It’s no mere coincidence, the cardinal said, that the synod overlaps with the 50th anniversary of the opening of the council, Oct. 11, which Pope Benedict has designated as the beginning of a special Year of Faith. Like Vatican II, the cardinal said, the synod will emphasize continuity with the church’s ancient traditions.
“There is a continuum of Catholic faith going all the way back to the creed, going all the way back to the apostles,” Cardinal Wuerl said. “That continuum is where we find the articulation of our faith.”
Although Vatican II was faithful to the church’s traditional doctrines, the cardinal said, implementation of the council’s teachings in the 1960s and 1970s coincided with a “current of secularism sweeping the Western world,” especially Europe.
“It’s almost as if a tsunami of secularism washed across Western Europe and, when it receded, it took with it all of those foundational concepts: family, marriage, right and wrong, common good, objective order,” he said.
In Europe and beyond, the cardinal said, that secular wave accompanied a loosening of standards in Catholic religious education.
“Somehow we were to be catechizing without content,” the cardinal said, describing what he called a widespread attitude at the time. “Somehow there was supposed to be communicated some experience, some idea that God loves us, we love God, but it wasn’t rooted in the creed.
“As our Holy Father has pointed out so many times,” the cardinal said, “if you are not proclaiming the Christ that the church knows and lives, then you could be proclaiming a Christ that you’ve created.”
The cost of poor catechesis, Cardinal Wuerl said, was a “diminished allegiance from two generations” of Catholics.
Catechism to be celebrated
A key part of the church’s response to that development was the “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” whose compilation was overseen by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when the future pope was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In another non-coincidence, the 20th anniversary of the catechism’s publication will also be celebrated Oct. 11.
The cardinal said the catechism has been the basis for dramatic improvement in religious education over the last two decades, especially in the United States. When he and other U.S. bishops met with Pope Benedict earlier this year during their “ad limina” visits, Cardinal Wuerl said he was happy to report the sound state of Catholic education at the elementary and secondary school levels.
Tags: evangelization, Synod of Bishops, Uncategorized