Humility, 'small steps' are keys to evangelization, Pope tells Wednesday audience
November 28, 2012
“How do we speak of God in our times?” Pope Benedict XVI asked the crowd in the Paul VI auditorium as he opened his weekly public audience on November 28.
The Pope answered his own rhetorical question by saying that we “encounter the face of God” in the Person of Jesus Christ. “God has spoken to us,” he said, “not an abstract or hypothetical God, but a real God, a God Who exists, Who entered history and remains present in history.”
In the work of evangelization, the Holy Father said, “we must return to the simplicity and essential nature of proclamation: the concrete Good News of God Who cares about us, the love of God which Jesus Christ brought close to us, even unto the Cross, and which in the Resurrection opens us to life without end, to eternal life.”
In spreading that Good News to our world, the Pope continued, Christians must be mindful that the Holy Spirit will supply what our efforts lack. “To speak about God, we must make space for Him, confident that He acts upon our weakness.” He recommended taking “small steps, trusting in the leaven that makes the dough rise.”
The best possible model for evangelization, the Pope remarked, is Jesus Himself, and Christians today should recall how Jesus communicated his message to the world. “In Him, proclamation and life were entwined: Jesus acted and taught, always taking as a starting point His intimate relationship with God the Father.” All Christians should follow the same pattern in communicating with their neighbors, the Pope concluded.
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Posted by: koinonia -
Nov. 28, 2012 8:32 PM ET USA
"In the work of evangelization, the Holy Father said, 'we must return to the simplicity and essential nature of proclamation: the concrete Good News of God Who cares about us, the love of God which Jesus Christ brought close to us, even unto the Cross, and which in the Resurrection opens us to life without end, to eternal life.'" This describes true love. In these words is life, and it is our vocation to share this life with others. There is something quite old in this new.
