“THE JOY OF THE GOSPEL” AND THE GLORIOUS MYSTERIES
But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? (Romans 10:14)
An Apostolic Exhortation is a type of communication from the Pope that is written to encourage people to undertake an implementation of a particular set of recommendations listed in the document. It is Apostolic, because it is written by the Pope who is the successor of the Apostle Peter, the visible head of the body of Christ. And an Encyclical Letter deals with specific doctrine, where the doctrine is clarified, or explained in greater details. One of the areas dealt by Pope Francis in the apostolic Exhortation “The Joy of the Gospel” is evangelization.
Evangelization is, literally, sharing with people the good news that God is a God of incredible love and mercy, who can lead us to a life of meaningfulness and joy. This is the love embodied in Jesus in his life and ministry and expressed most radically by his giving his life for us on the cross, a life that broke the bonds of death in his resurrection.
In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (Cf. Matthew 28:19). All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals, while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients. The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized”.
Evangelization must lead to the personal encounter with Jesus. This encounter must also be free, willed, and spontaneous, not purely nominal, juridical or habitual. This means that the ultimate purpose of evangelization is not the transmission of a doctrine, but an encounter with a person, Jesus Christ. The possibility of such a face to face encounter depends on the fact that Jesus, risen, is alive and desires to walk next to every believer, as he really walked with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus; more than that, as he was in their very heart, when they returned to Jerusalem, after having received him in the broken bread.
Pope Francis focuses on the challenges to proclaiming the joy of the Gospel in today's world. He mentions that consumerism, complacency, blunted consciences, excuse-making, relativism, secularist rationalism, violence, poverty, indifference, greed, narcotics, false autonomy and spiritual worldliness all weaken the impulse of missionary renewal in the Church.
The third Glorious Mysteries is the descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-4). After the decent of the Holy Spirit on the Disciples of Christ, something happened. There was a radical change in transmitting the Gospel to all the ends of the earth. Their era is gone…now it is out turn to proclaim and live the Gospel of Christ. Hence the urgency of a new evangelization, namely, of an evangelization that moves from bases that are different from the traditional ones and that takes into account the new situation. It is, in practice, about creating for the men of today occasions that enable them to take, in the new context, that free, personal and mature decision that Christians took at the beginning on receiving baptism, and that made them real, not nominal, Christians.
Go & Make all my disciples...Are you ready?
To Be Continued…
Mary, Queen of the Prophets, Pray for us!!
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