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Illustration: Pentecost by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794 –1872)
Pope Francis’ Catechesis 28 on Evangelization
VI Audience Hall – Wednesday, 6 December 2023
“It is necessary that the proclamation takes place in the Holy Spirit”
Acts of the Apostles (1:6:8)
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samar′ia and to the end of the earth.”
Dear brothers and sisters,
In the previous catecheses we have seen that the proclamation of the Gospel is joy, it is for everyone, and it is addressed to today. Now let us discover a final essential characteristic: it is necessary that the proclamation takes place in the Holy Spirit. In fact, to “communicate God”, the joyful credibility of the testimony, the universality of the proclamation and the timeliness of the message are not enough. Without the Holy Spirit, all zeal is vain and falsely apostolic: it would only be our own and would not bear fruit.
In Evangelii gaudium (no. 12) I recalled that “Jesus is the first and greatest evangelizer”; that “in every activity of evangelization, the primacy always belongs to God”, who “called us to cooperate with him and who leads us on by the power of his Spirit” (see the full text of Evangelii Gaudium, paragraph 12 in a footnote below).
Here is the primacy of the Holy Spirit!
Thus, the Lord compares the dynamism of the Kingdom of God to “a man sows seed on the ground and sleeps and rises, night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows,but he does not knows how” (Mk 4:26-27).
The Spirit is the protagonist; he always precedes the missionaries and makes the fruit grow.
This knowledge gives us great comfort!
And it helps us to specify another, equally decisive fact: namely, that in her apostolic zeal the Church does not proclaim herself, but a grace, a gift, and the Holy Spirit is precisely the gift of God, as Jesus said to the Samaritan woman (cf. Jn 4:10 – Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water”).
The primacy of the Spirit, however, should not lead to inertia.
Confidence does not justify withdrawal.
The vitality of the seed which grows by itself does not authorize farmers to neglect the field.
In his last instructions before ascending to heaven, Jesus said: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
The Lord has not left us theological lecture notes or a pastoral manual to apply, but has left us the Holy Spirit to inspire the mission. And the courageous initiative that the Spirit gives us leads us to imitate his style, which always has two characteristics: creativity and simplicity.
Creativity, to announce Jesus with joy, to everyone and today.
In our time, which does not help us have a religious outlook on life, and in which the proclamation has become in various places more difficult, more arduous, more seemingly fruitless in various places, the temptation can arise to abandon the pastoral ministry.
Perhaps one takes refuge in safety zones, such as the habitual repetition of things one always does, or in the seductive calls of an intimist spirituality, or even in a misunderstood sense of the centrality of the liturgy.
These are temptations disguises as fidelity to tradition, but often, they are responses to personal dissatisfaction rather than responses to the Spirit.
Instead, pastoral creativity, boldness in the Spirit, ardor in his missionary fire, is the proof of fidelity to him.
That is why I wrote “Jesus can also break through the dull categories with which we would enclose him, and he continues to amaze us with his divine creativity. Whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new paths are opened, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world” (Evangelii gaudium, 11).
Simplicity
Creativity, then simplicity, precisely because the Spirit takes us to the source, to the “first proclamation”. Indeed, it is “the fire of the Spirit … [that] leads us to believe in Jesus Christ who, by his death and resurrection, reveals and communicates to us the infinite mercy of the Father” (Evangelii gaudium no. 164).
This is the first proclamation, which must “be the center of all evangelizing activity and of all efforts to renew the Church”; to say over and over, “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he lives every day at your side to enlighten you, to strengthen you and to free you” (Evangelii gaudium no. 164).
Brothers and sisters, let us allow ourselves to be drawn by the Spirit and invoke him every day; may he be the source of our being and of our work; may he be the origin of every activity, every encounter, every meeting and every proclamation. He enlivens and rejuvenates the Church: we should not be afraid of him, because he, who is harmony, always holds together creativity and simplicity, inspires communion and sends out in mission, opens to diversity and leads back to unity.
He is our strength, the breath of our proclamation, the source of apostolic zeal. Come, Holy Spirit!
Footnotes from Evangelii gaudium
12. Though it is true that this mission demands great generosity on our part, it would be wrong to see it as a heroic individual undertaking, for it is first and foremost the Lord’s work, surpassing anything which we can see and understand. Jesus is “the first and greatest evangelizer”. In every activity of evangelization, the primacy always belongs to God, who has called us to cooperate with him and who leads us on by the power of his Spirit.
The real newness is the newness which God himself mysteriously brings about and inspires, provokes, guides and accompanies in a thousand ways. The life of the Church should always reveal clearly that God takes the initiative, that “he has loved us first” (1 Jn 4:19) and that he alone “gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:7).
This conviction enables us to maintain a spirit of joy in the midst of a task so demanding and challenging that it engages our entire life. God asks everything of us, yet at the same time he offers everything to us.
164. In catechesis too, we have rediscovered the fundamental role of the first announcement or kerygma, which needs to be the centre of all evangelizing activity and all efforts at Church renewal. The kerygma is trinitarian. The fire of the Spirit is given in the form of tongues and leads us to believe in Jesus Christ who, by his death and resurrection, reveals and communicates to us the Father’s infinite mercy. On the lips of the catechist the first proclamation must ring out over and over: “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.” This first proclamation is called “first” not because it exists at the beginning and can then be forgotten or replaced by other more important things. It is first in a qualitative sense because it is the principal proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another throughout the process of catechesis, at every level and moment.[126] For this reason too, “the priest – like every other member of the Church – ought to grow in awareness that he himself is continually in need of being evangelized”
