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Komunikat Nru 6 mis-Sinodu tal-Isqfijiet dwar l-Evanġelizzazzjoni Ġdida
biex innisslu l-Fidi Nisranija
Mibgħut lilna
mill-Eċċellenza Tiegħu
Monsinjur Mario Grech, Isqof ta' Għawdex.
22 Ottubru 2012
(1) H. E Mons.
Filippo SANTORO, Archbishop of Taranto (ITALY)
The New Evangelization
is thirsty to meet Christians who are distant now and enter into
dialogue with current culture in the world. But very often the world
has no wish to enter into dialogue with us and, if it does, it is
only in battles it has arranged according to the spirit of the time.
But also at the
beginnings of Evangelization nobody was interested in having
dialogue with Christians, with that small group of strange men who
believed that a crucified man had risen from the dead. But in fact
it was to this world that they turned, showing those who ignored or
persecuted them the experience of a changed life and the proposal
for salvation. They did not answer this world with a speech, but
with the miracle of a transformed humanity.
(2) H. E. Mons. José
Guadalupe MARTÍN RÁBAGO, Archbishop of León (MEXICO)
The Latin American
magisterium makes frequent references to the pastoral value of
popular piety. We recognize that evangelization and purification of
popular piety presents challenges that must be faced with pastoral
creativity, because this, left at the mercy of pure sentimentalism
and folklore, impedes the creation of a truly evangelizing culture
able to transform the structures of sin, such as the social
inequalities, violence, injustice and other manifestations that
contradict human dignity and fraternal cohabitation.
(3) Card. TURKSON,
Pontifical Council for justiceice and Peace (VATICAN CITY)
Now, in consideration
of this historical moment, there is an urgent need for even a new
evangelization of the social, not only because it is an inescapable
content of new evangelization, but also because it is, obviously,
its effective instrument.
In fact, many persons
are more sensitive today to questions of human rights, ecology, the
fight against poverty, the themes that touch upon the concrete life
of the individual and the common life of nations. This is a reality
that can be drawn as an authentic opportunity for new
evangelization; and for this reason, the opening of evangelization
can effectively be the “social” one.....
It would be opportune
to make the great tradition of “social sanctity” more greatly known.
For example: the priests Arcangelo Tardini and Jose Maria
Arizmandarrieta (Social pastoral), the Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo
(employment), Robert Schuman, Alcide De Gasperi and Julius Nyerere
(political field).
As Blessed John XXIII
stated in the Encyclical Mater et Magister - that is, that “it is
not enough merely to formulate a social doctrine. It must be
translated into reality”.
Why not think about
consecrating a Synodal Assembly to the theme of the (New)
Evangelization of the social?
(4) Card. George
ALENCHERRY, Archbishop Major of Ernakulam-Angamaly of the
Syro-Malabars, Head of Synod of the Syro-Malabar Church (INDIA)
New Evangelization
calls for a self evaluation within the Church. It is a fact that
there are many in the Church who do not know who Christ is and what
cost they have to pay to be his disciples. The Church has to become
more and more a communion of persons who have encountered Christ and
thereby volunteer by the power of the Grace of God to pay the cost
of discipleship of Christ. The universal call to holiness has to
become a fundamental awareness for all the Christian faithful. The
uniqueness of Christian faith and the ever-renewed commitment to
Christ in the Church has to become the driving force for the life of
every Christian. Jesus Christ the unique savior is the one who works
both in the evangelizer and the evangelized. He has said of himself:
“I am the truth, I am the light, I am the way, I am the door, I am
the bread, and I am the life.”
During the 50 years
after Vatican II, the renewal of the Church has been multifaceted
and highly productive. At the same time the lives and ministry of
priests and men and women of consecrated life have become more
functional than spiritual and ecclesial. It would seem that the
present-day formation of priests and the religious personnel tends
to make them functionaries for different offices in the Church,
rather than missionaries inflamed by the love of Christ. ...
Secularization has impacted the lives of individual Christians and
also of ecclesial communities. New Evangelization demands a thorough
renewal of the lives of individual Christians and the reevaluation
of the structures of the Church to empower them with the dynamism of
the Gospel values of truth, justice, love, peace and harmony.
(5) H. E. António José
DA ROCHA COUTO, Bishop of Lamego (PORTUGAL)
The Church of
yesterday, today and always must have the characteristics of the
face of Jesus Christ. It must therefore be filial, fraternal,
loving, near and welcoming. It must have the dynamics of the first
Christian communities, as the author of the book of the Acts of the
Apostles presented them; always attentive to the Word of God,
communion, the breaking of the bread and prayer (2:42-47, 4:32-35,
5:12-15), a permanent atrium of brotherhood open to the world in
such a way as to be and to reflect a young, agile and beautiful
Church, so young, agile and beautiful that people fight to enter it.
It must be, moreover,
a herald church, completely bound to its Lord, not seduced by the
novelty of the latest fashion, but rather firm in faithfulness to
its Lord, which translates in a total gift of itself, in a lifestyle
that is poor, humble, bare, happy, passionate, audacious, near and
dedicated. Yes, we need proclaimers of the Gospel who are without
gold, silver, copper, bags, two tunics.
(6) H. E. Mons.
Bonifacio Antonio REIMANN PANIC, Apostolic Vicar of Ñuflo de Chávez
(BOLIVIA)
From the viewpoint of
believers, we focus particularly on the phenomenon of the
disintegration of the family. The absence of the father may be
explained in many ways and in the light of many anthropological,
cultural and economic factors. We believe that the proclamation of
God the Father as given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ must be the
source of the new evangelization. The phenomenon of the absence of
the father and its importance for social and personal life reflects
the experience of the paternity of God and on the loss of typically
Christian values, such as selflessness, fraternity, responsibility
and forgiveness.
The encounter between
Jesus Christ and the Samaritan woman (Jn 4:4-43) throws new light on
the difficult situation that every woman experiences today within
the family. This encounter reveals the profound human identity of
the Lord. ... It reveals the human identity of the woman, prostitute
and without husband, who becomes a disciple and witness of the
truth. And it is this type of encounter with Jesus that linethe New
Evangelization refers us to - the New Evangelization must therefore
be addressed to the Bolivian woman, as a mother and wife, often
abandoned, undervalued and mistreated, so that through the encounter
with Christ she too, like the Samaritan, might live in true dignity.
(7) F. Marco TASCA,
O.F.M. Conv., Minister General of the Order of Friars Minor
Conventual
Today we live in
culture that has truly been “mass-media-ized”. Today the majority of
men and women organize their working and emotional, recreational and
relational lives with reference to the media (think of the internet
and smartphones) and yet the media undoubtedly represent a great
opportunity. “In the communications media - writes Blessed John Paul
II - the Church finds a precious aid for spreading the Gospel. The
Church willingly employs these media to furnish information about
itself and to expand the boundaries of evangelization, of catechesis
and of formation, considering their use as a response to the command
of the Lord: ‘Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to
every creature’” (Mk 16:15) (Apostolic Letter, The Rapid
Development, 24 January 2005, no.7).
This is about
discovering that “there exists a Christian way of being present in
the digital world” which today has to increasingly characterize
itself as a proposal for an identifying profile (digital as well)
that is coherent and at the same time welcoming.
The New Evangelization
is a question of new relationships starting with those from which it
is then possible to steer the explicit message of Jesus Christ as
the one and universal saviour. If the world of the media is by
definition massifying, the Christian perspective that has to operate
in it is that which leads to welcoming the person in his
individuality, in his being the recipient of the revelation of God.
We therefore have to rejoice in the many opportunities that the new
frontiers of the communications scenario offer us.
(8) Rev. Julián
CARRÓN, President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation
(ITALY)
We can no longer
“think of the faith as a self-evident presupposition for life in
society”. In fact, “not only can this presupposition no longer be
taken for granted, but it is often openly denied” (Porta Fidei,
2)....
All the efforts made
until today are having trouble generating e newness of life that
will arouse curiosity on how the baptized live. How can the fracture
between faith and life be overcome, a fracture that makes it harder
for faith to be found in a reasonable way, and therefore,
attractive? Without rediscovering and welcoming the precious gift
that is faith, new evangelization risks being diminished to being a
question for experts.
To incite this
interest, we have an ally in the heart of man from any culture and
condition. We know that the heart of man is made for the infinite.
Awaiting its achievement remains in him. Because there is “no false
infinite that can satisfy him”. “What, then, will anyone gain by
winning the whole world and forfeiting his life?” (Mt 16:26).
A doctrine, a group of
rules, an organization cannot answer this expectation, only an
event. As Fr. Giussani said during the 1987 Synod, “What is lacking
is not as much the verbal or cultural repetition of the
proclamation. Today’s man perhaps awaits subconsciously the
experience of the encounter with persons for whom the fact of Christ
is such a present reality that it has changed their lives”. A place
where everyone is invited to verify what the first verified on the
banks of the river Jordan: “Come and see”, because “a faith that
cannot be evidentiated and found in present experience, confirmed by
it, that is not useful in answering its needs, will not be a faith
capable of resisting in a world where everything, absolutely
everything, says the opposite”.
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