Year of Faith: The New Evangelisation

WHAT IS THE NEW EVANGELISATION?

It has six characteristics:

POPE FRANCIS’ VISION FOR THE CHURCH:

A Church of the heart: For Francis, faith enters the church through the heart of the poor, not through the heads of intellectuals. Francis confessed that “perhaps we have reduced our way of speaking about mystery to rational explanations, but for ordinary people the mystery enters through the heart.” This leads him to understand the missionary role of the church not as winning an argument but as offering something beautiful. “Only the beauty of God can attract. God's way is through enticement, allure," he told the bishops. “He reawakens in us a desire to call our neighbours in order to make known his beauty. Mission is born precisely from this divine allure, by this amazement born of encounter."

What is it exactly?

A CHUCH OF THE HEART

In speaking to the coordinating committee of the Latin American Conference of Bishops, Pope Francis fleshed out his agenda for the bishops.

  1. "Do we see to it that our work, and that of our priests, is more pastoral than administrative?”

  2. “Are we creating a proactive mindset? Do we promote opportunities and possibilities to show God's mercy?”

  3. “Do we make the lay faithful sharers in the mission?”

  4. “Do diocesan and parish councils, whether pastoral or financial, provide real opportunities for laypeople to participate in pastoral consultation, organization and planning?”

  5. “Do we give the laity "the freedom to continue discerning, in a way befitting their growth as disciples, the mission which the Lord has entrusted to them? Do we support them and accompany them, overcoming the temptation to manipulate them or infantilize them?"

Bishops must be pastors, close to people, fathers and brothers, and gentle, patient and merciful. Men who love poverty, both interior poverty, as freedom before the Lord, and exterior poverty, as simplicity and austerity of life. Men who do not think and behave like "princes." Men who are not ambitious, who are married to one church without having their eyes on another. Men capable of watching over the flock entrusted to them and protecting everything that keeps it together, guarding their people out of concern for the dangers which could threaten them, but above all instilling hope, so that light will shine in people's hearts. Men capable of supporting with love and patience God's dealings with his people.

The bishop has to be among his people in three ways: in front of them, pointing the way; among them, keeping them together and preventing them from being scattered; and behind them, ensuring that no one is left behind, but also, and primarily, so that the flock itself can sniff out new paths.

Pope Francis will make pastoral qualities a high priority in the selection of new bishops. If the Church is successful in finding such bishops, a new style of leadership will spread from Rome throughout the Catholic world.

ONE

It focuses on a personal sense of encounter with Jesus.  Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI repeatedly emphasised faith as a personal encounter with the risen Lord.  An essential aspect of this encounter is love for the Word of God, the Scriptures, the living Word, the Word-made-flesh.  Any evangelisation or outreach is going to involve getting people to encounter the Word of God, and Jesus Christ in a personal way.

TWO

The new evangelisation calls for a rediscovery of the missionary spirit that was characteristic of the early Church.  During the 2012 Synod of Bishops many of the bishops called explicitly for renewed efforts at evangelisation to the world at large yet warned that if we do not learn from mistakes made in earlier evangelisation efforts, or if there is no internal change of heart within the Church’s own reception of the gospel message, we risk repeating the same errors and losing people all over again.

THREE

The new evangelisation is not merely directed outwardly.  It is simultaneously inwardly directed to those who have already encountered Jesus Christ but who for various reasons have abandoned their faith or are lukewarm or inattentive to it.  In one sense, this is a call to re-evangelisation in areas and among people where a prior evangelisation has encountered challenges to growth, much like Jesus’ parable of the seed.  Not all of the “word of the kingdom” fell on good ground!

FOUR

The new evangelisation is targeted not only to individuals but to whole cultures.  It involves an attempt to bring modern cultures into contact with Jesus Christ and to afford them a conversion to the gospel message.  This is a bold enterprise.  It entails much more than merely preaching the gospel message to people.

FIVE

The task of evangelisation is not merely intended for missionaries, the ordained, or specialists.  It is a task for the entire Church.  No one is exempt.  All of the baptised are called to the mission of making disciples.  Again, in a Catholic context, this is a challenge, as many Catholics are less than enthusiastic about proclaiming their faith publicly, a trait more at home in the Evangelical Protestant tradition.  The bishops stated this point clearly:

The responsibility of announcing and proclaiming is not the work of a single person or a select few, but a gift given to every person who confidently responds to the call of faith.  Nor is transmitting the faith a specialised work assigned to a group of people or specifically designated individuals, but an experience of every Christian and the entire Church.  Through this work, the Church continually rediscovers her identity as a People united by the call of the Spirit, who brings us together from the countless areas of everyday living to experience Christ’s presence among us and , thereby, to discover God as Father.

SIX

The new evangelisation promotes an entire process of Christianisation whereby people engage the risen Lord to such a degree that their whole life changes.  This vision is very Pauline in conception, since Paul obviously speaks of “new creation” in relation to his (and others’) new life that is found in Christ.  The goal of the new evangelisation is a total transformation inward and outward to become a new person in Christ.

Extracted from Rekindling the Word: Verbum Domini and the new evangelisation by Ronald D Witherup PS