 What
is Evangelization?
 According
the Pope Benedict XVI Human
life cannot be realized by
itself. Our life is an open
question, an incomplete project,
still to be brought to fruition
and realized. Each human’s
fundamental question is:
How will this be realized—becoming
human? How does one learn
the art of living? Which
is the path toward happiness?
To
evangelize means: to show
this path to teach the art
of living. At the beginning
of his public life Jesus
says: I have come to evangelize
the poor (Luke 4:18); this
means: I have the response
to your fundamental question;
I will show you the path
of life, the path toward
happiness rather: I am that
path.
The deepest poverty
is the inability of joy,
the tediousness of a life
considered absurd and contradictory.
This poverty is widespread
today, in very different
forms in the materially rich
as well as the poor countries.
The inability of joy presupposes
and produces the inability
to love, produces jealousy,
avarice — all defects that
devastate the life of individuals
and of the world.
This is
why we are in need of a new
evangelization if the art
of living remains an unknown.
Nothing else works. But this
art is not the object of
a science. This art can only
be communicated by [one]
who has life; he who is the
Gospel personified.
Why
do we need Conversion?
 The
Greek word for converting
means: to rethink—to question
one’s own and common way
of living; to allow God to
enter into the criteria of
one’s life; to not merely
judge according to the current
opinions. Thereby, to convert
means: not to live as all
the others live, not do what
all others do, not feel justified
in dubious, ambiguous, evil
actions just because others
do the same; begin to see
one’s life through the eyes
of God; thereby looking for
the good, even if uncomfortable;
not aiming at the judgment
of the majority, of men,
but on the justice of God
in other words: to look for
a new style of life, a new
life.
All of this does not imply
moralist; reducing Christianity
to morality loses sight of
the essence of Christ’s message:
the gift of a new friendship,
the gift of communion with
Jesus and thereby with God.
Whoever converts to Christ
does not mean to create his
own moral autarchy for himself,
does not intend to build
his own goodness through
his own strengths.
Conversion
(metanoia) means exactly
the opposite: to come out
of self-sufficiency to discover
and accept our indigence—the
indigence of others and of
the other, his forgiveness,
and his friendship. Unconverted
life is self-justification
(I am not worse than the
others); conversion is humility
in entrusting oneself to
the love of the other, a
love that becomes the measure
and the criteria of my own
life. (Benedict XVI)
|
Love
of God
