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The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)
Pope Francis’ Catechesis; The Passion for Evangelization No. 28
Paul VI Audience Hall – Wednesday, 29 November 2023
Catechesis. The passion for evangelization: the apostolic zeal of the believer.28.
Genesis 11:1-9
“Now the whole earth had one language and few words.
And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.”
And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens,
and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built.
And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”
So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth;
and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. “
“Christian evangelization is for today”
Dear brothers and sisters,
In the last catechesis, we have seen that Christian evangelization is a joy, and Christian evangelization is for everyone; today we will see a third aspect: Christian evangelization is for today.
We almost always hears bad things about today. Certainly, with wars, climate change, worldwide injustice and migration, crises of family and crises of hope, there is no shortage of reasons for concern.
In general, today seems to be inhabited by a culture that places the individual above all else and technology at the centre of everything, with its ability to solve many problems and its gigantic advances in so many fields. But at the same time, this culture of technical-individual progress leads to the affirmation of a freedom that does not want to set itself limits to itself and is indifferent to those who fall behind.
And so, it surrenders great human aspirations to the often voracious logic of the economy, with a vision of life that discards those who do not produce and struggles to look beyond the immanent.
We could even say that we find ourselves in the first civilization in history that globally seeks to organize a human society without the presence of God, concentrated in huge cities that remain horizontal despite their dizzying skyscrapers.
The account of the city of Babel and its tower comes to mind (see Gen 11:1-9 above).
It tells of a social project that involves the sacrifice of all individuality for the efficiency of the collective.
Humanity speaks only one language – we could say that it has a “single way of thinking” – as if under a kind of universal spell that absorbs the uniqueness of each person into a bubble of uniformity.
Then God confused the languages, that is, He restored the language differences, recreated the conditions for uniqueness to develop, revived the multiple where ideology would like to impose the single.
God also distracted humanity from its delirium of omnipotence: “Let us make a name for ourselves”, say the exalted inhabitants of Babel, who want to reach up to heaven, to put themselves in God’s place.
But these are dangerous, alienating, destructive ambitions, and God, by confounding these expectations, protected mankind, prevented an impending catastrophe.
This story really does seem topical. Even today, instead of fraternity and peace, cohesion is often based on ambition, nationalism, homologation, and techno-economic structures that make us believe that God is insignificant and useless: not so much because we seek more knowledge, but above all for the sake of more power. It is a temptation that permeates the great challenges of today’s culture.
In Evangelii Gaudium I tried to describe other scenarios (cf. nos. 52-75), but above all I called for “an evangelization capable of shedding light on these new ways of relating to God, to others and to the world around us, and inspiring essential values. It must reach the places where new narratives and paradigms are being formed, bringing the word of Jesus to the inmost soul of our cities” (no. 74).
In other words, Jesus can only be proclaimed by inhabiting the culture of one’s own time; and always bearing in mind the words of the Apostle Paul about the present: “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). There is therefore no need to contrast today with alternative visions from the past. It is not necessary, therefore, to contrast the present with alternative visions from the past. Nor is it enough to simply repeat acquired religious convictions that, however true, become abstract with the passage of time.
A truth does not become more credible because one raises one’s voice in proclaiming it.
It becomes more credible because it is witnessed with one’s life.
Apostolic zeal is never a simple repetition of an acquired style, but testimony that the Gospel is alive today here for us. Aware of this, let us consider our age and our culture as a gift.
They, our age and our culture are ours, and evangelizing them does not mean judging them from afar, nor does it mean standing on a balcony and shouting the name of Jesus, but rather going down to the streets, going to the places where one lives, visiting the places where one suffers, works, studies and reflects, inhabiting the crossroads where people share what is meaningful in their lives.. It means being, as a Church, a leaven for “dialogue, encounter, unity. In fact, our own formulations of faith are the fruit of dialogue and encounter between cultures, communities and various situations. We must not be afraid of dialogue: on the contrary, it is precisely confrontation and criticism that help us to prevent theology from being transformed into ideology” (Address at the Fifth National Congress of the Italian Church, Florence, 10 November 2015).
It is necessary to stand at the crossroads of today. To leave it would impoverish the Gospel and reduce the Church to a sect. Passing through it, on the other hand, helps us Christians to understand in a new way the reasons for our hope, to draw and share from the treasure of faith “what is new and what is old” (Mt 13:52).
In short, more than wanting to convert the todays world, we need to convert pastoral ministry so that it better embody the Gospel in today’ world (cf. Evangelii gaudium, 25).
Let us make Jesus’ desire our own: to help fellow travelers not to lose the desire for God, to open their hearts to Him and find the only One who, today and always, gives peace and joy to humanity.
