I intend to propose a reflection on the new evangelization in the light of the Synod of Bishops held in Rome in October, 2012, a reflection filetered trough my feelings. I  articulate my proposal into four steps: representations of "evangelization" emerged among the participants; the "conversion" happened place during the Synod, and the religious life as a "place" of evangelization: three traits of the style of the new evangelization.

Three representations of evangelization

The Synod of Bishops was an assembly of the Church of continental breath. It must be seen first of all from this point of view: a formidable listening space, of stories, of sharing of different experiences. Different diagnoses on the current culture and different views of the Church have emerged. It was an education workshop to the complexity and partiality of different points of view. And it was not difficult to recognize different representations on evangelization and the conditions that can make it new. I shall mention three, which help us to think.

Evangelization
as personal testimony of faith

A little anecdote is more eloquent than any explanation. The first night of the Synod, at  dinner, there is a lively dialogue between a secular Mexican, founder of a Movement that aims to train the new evangelizers and a French lady engaged in an Association for the evangelization of the family. "I have a dream -  the layman explains to her-. I dream that this Synod may not be a debate on the subject and it will not close with a document. I dream that we all go out in St. Peter's Square and in the suburbs of the city of Rome, we proclaim Jesus Christ and in the three weeks we convert three thousand Romans."

As you can see it is an imaginary of evangelization which rests everythings on two pivots: the subjective experience of the witness and the inherent trust in the Word that he announces. This is often a new convert or otherwise of a person protagonist of a strong spiritual experience. The announcement coincides with the experience of faith experienced by the witness and is done regardless of the persons to whom it is addressed, whether three thousand Roman or three thousand Eskimos, it is the same. Nothing to do with all the attention to the recipient that, for years, we have put in place in catechesis,  anthropological or experiential catechesis. There's a strong witnesses impact, because the subject is totally involved in the words he utters. The enthusiasm and confidence characterize this representation.

Evangelization
as a reaffirmation of the deposit of faith

If the first conception of evangelization is based on the subjective experience of faith, the second is focused on its objective side. It is a position that typically starts with a negative diagnosis of the current culture, which, moving away from Christianity, should be towards its progressive dehumanization. The current failure of evangelization is attributed at least in part to the post-conciliar catechesis, too keen to respond to the needs of the people and lax in presenting the Christian message in its organic and completeness. To bridge the gap between culture and faith it is necessary to return to proclaim with clarity and force the truth and values ​​associated with it (the dogmas and morals). As it can be seen in this perspective (as in the first) it is not put in place a real listening of culture and recipients, but  the implication of the personal testimony of faith remains also in shadow. The pivot of evangelization is the transmission of the deposit of faith, worry so strong as to leave no more sense how much this "deposit" touches the life of one who announces it.

The evangelization as inculturation

The third representation can be summed up in the term inculturation. It is originated not only by the contribution of the continents like Africa, Asia and Latin America, but also from Europe, especially from central and northern Europe. The invitation that comes from bishops who live in a culture marked by secularization of the institutions and secularism of the mentality is to bring a glimpse of hope to the world and do not think that a secularized culture is less suited to the Gospel than a sociologically Christian culture. That means to preach the Gospel in this situation? The evangelization appears as a complex process of not naïve engagement of some cultural elements for an ad audible, credible, feasible announcement.

This requires a rethinking of the Gospel itself (the Gospel of the time, but always understood again by the community that proclaims), a new reformulation and a renewed proclamation of the Gospel. In this case, it is the term "dialogue" to prevail: a giving and receiving that enrich both the witness that he who hears the word. This location makes more complex the act of evangelization, it requires a reinterpretation both of the subject who announces, and of the announced content. It does the recipient not only the subject of an action of the Church, but the subject that somehow helps to shape the evangelization itself. It takes place in an area of ​​"weakness" and freedom.

All three positions are to be listened to because they point out/draw the essential. Without the involvement of the witness there is no announcement that reaches the hearts of the people; without fidelity to tradition we don’t announce the Gospel, but ourselves; without cultural mediation the Gospel will not be heard either as "good news" or as "call to conversion" by nobody.

Three conversions for a new evangelization

A second aspect concerns the meaning given to the term "new". The bottom line seems to me this: what can make really "new" the evangelization? How should we become new  (the witnesses) so that evangelization becomes new? During the Synod took place on this point three shifts, three conversions perspective that outline the very conditions of the newness of evagelization.

New evangelization
as a return to the Gospel

The most consistent and most shared result of the Synod was the passing of an instrumental idea: that is, to think that the renewal of evangelization is a change in the methods and strategies or even just a renewed commitment by the evangelizers. If the words of the Church do not pass in the current context it is not primarily because people do not understand or are more evil than those of the past; nor because the methods of evangelization are exceeded (they are, but it is a second issue), but because the words of the Gospel no longer speak to the Church herself. The crisis of faith’s communicating refers the Church to a renewed listening. The problem of evangelization is not a problem of catechesis, but ecclesiological.

Benedict XVI used the term "tactic" to avoid any misunderstanding: "It is not here to find a new tactic to revive the Church. It is rather to lay all that is only tactics and seek full sincerity ... bringing faith to her full identity, removing from it what only appears to be faith, but in truth it is convention and habit" (Address to the Catholics involved in Church and in society, trip to Germany, September 25, 2011).

In this perspective, the crisis of evangelization and the need to come back "new" send decisively in the direction of a test of the faith of the Church. The Synod has made it clear sense of this new evangelization through the call to conversion, of all and of each of its members. It regained the term "holiness." The new evangelization calls for a renewal of the Church, a year of faith for her. "We feel genuinely having to first convert ourselves to the power of Christ, who alone is able to make all things new, our poor lives first. With humility we must recognize that the poverty and weakness of the disciples of Jesus, especially his ministers, weigh the credibility of the mission" (Message, 5).

New evangelization
as reform of the Church

But there might be a risk, to reduce the conversion to an individual matter and not knowledgeable boldly extend to the figure of the Church, to the way with which she is in the world. The recovery of spirituality (evangelization as self-evangelization) should not therefore lead to a shortcut spiritualist.

It should be recognized that within the Synod it was answered mainly personal and spiritual: the call to conversion of individual members. The demand for "reform" has simplified in the personal response of "conversion." That this is a decisive aspect of the matter, no one doubts that. It should not be forgotten, however, the other side of the issue, that mentioned by Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi and called by some Synod’s Fathers: the Church has constantly need to be evangelized and evangelizing is not only with what she says, but in her way of life, to organize, to exercise the authority, to use her human and economic resources, to exploit inside the different charisms and ministries, to establish relationships, to judge the culture and to enter into dialogue with women and the men of today, to feel a "Church in the Modern World" and not a Church "in the face" to the contemporary world ... The spiritual subjective "conversion" must also courageously become "structural reform", because the Gospel is communicated by the Church in a consistent manner both by her words and by the figure that she gives in history.

What makes obstacle to the Gospel in people, including believers, it is the fragility of individual people, priests or bishops or Christians. The biggest obstacle comes from the Church’s structures, fron her inner workings. It is worth mentioning here a key statement of the Encyclical Ut unum sint of John Paul II in 1995: "In the teaching of the Second Vatican Council there is a clear connection between renewal, conversion and reform. It states: "The pilgrim Church is called by Christ to that continual reformation of which she, as a human institution on earth, is always in need ... '" (n. 9). The link conversion-renewal reform is crucial because the Church is the "sacrament," a sign and instrument. In our case, the renewal of evangelization ("new") first requires the conversion of individual believers (self evangelization) and takes shape as reform of the figure of the Church, so that everything in her speaks of the Gospel, so that the words are visible in the form of life and the way of life is explained in words. It is the consequence of the same style for the Church of God: "Events and words having an inner unity so that the deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the mystery contained in them" (Dei Verbum, 2).

The most attentive observers have interpreted the meaning of resignation to Pope Benedict XVI just as strong a call for the Church to engage not only the path of personal conversion, but also the reform of its structures.

New evangelization
in the sign of reciprocity

In the Synod has emerged a third sense of the novelty of evangelization as new. We should unconsciously think that we have the Gospel and the problem is to pass it to others. There is here the delicate question of the relationship with the cultures: the view that the Church carries on the culture and the process of inculturation which put into place. One of the developments taking place within the Synod was this: the transition from a Church that stands at the window of history, and judges and determines the therapy to a Church that is inside the history as a traveling companion, ready to build on available to the gift of the Gospel, but equally ready to receive a word of the Gospel that God has for her in women and men of today, believers or not.

This sense of reciprocity is based on the belief that God acts through the Church as canonical way, but He doesn’t let circumscribe His love in the confines of the Church herself. In a mysterious way, yet powerful the Spirit was poured out in all hearts. It is the recovery of the prospect of Gaudium et Spes: the Church has much to give but also to receive. Honoring this perspective means understanding by the Church as culture is not only the object of evangelization, but contains in herself, thanks to the action of the Spirit that precedes her, a word of Gospel for her.

A real dialogue takes place, in which the Church rests on the culture, some of her elements and thanks to these sees herself and includes the Gospel in a different way and then learn to live differently, to think and to propose it in an unusual way. The Gospel of the time, but really "new." In fact, only if faith rests on some elements of their own culture can rethink, reformulate, become plausible and reasonable, culturally viable. Leaning so to  the culture to make reason of herself, faith "saves" culture (integrates her in the dynamism of salvation) and she locates herself as a possible and desirable in her own context.

This conception of the relationship with the culture was implemented in the Message: "This calm courage also supports our view of the contemporary world. We do not feel intimidated by the conditions of the times in which we live. Ours is a world full of contradictions and challenges, but it is God's creation, yes wounded by evil, but still the world that God loves, his land, in which may be renewed sowing of the Word because you come to fruit. There is no room for pessimism in the minds and hearts of those who know that their Lord has conquered death and that his Spirit works with power in history" (Message, 6).

These three mentality’s conversions (return to the Gospel, Church’s  reform, dialogue with the culture in an attitude of reciprocity) can really make new the evangelization. They are more precious than a prescription-book of pastoral act. The serious question: What should we do to evangelize? His answer here digs deep: who we want to be?

The evangelization is new if stars from a renewed listening to the Gospel (conversion), reformulates the face of the Church so that it becomes icon of the Gospel (reform), leads us to live happily and in a dialogic way into our history and our culture (inculturation).

 

The religious life as a "place" of the new evangelization

Having these three explanations becomes clear that the first in evangelization is not explicit words announced, but the personal and community witness implemented. This is the crucial question: not what to do again, but how  being in ourselves places and spaces of the Gospel. We can then introduce the notion of religious life as a "place" of evangelization. In this regard there is a valuable indication (a real surprise) already by the Message of the Synod, at number 7.

The text, after the first 6 numbers of introduction, produces in a surprising manner, placing them at the mirror, the two "places" (as defined) in which the Gospel is manifested, it takes the body, it gives: life in the family and the consecrated life. Family life is defined as the place where the Gospel enters in our routine and shows its ability to trasfigurarne our lifes on the horizon of love. This is of course, the text says, through gestures typically Christian (signs of faith, first truth, prayer), but primarily through the experience of love given and received. If family life is the "first place" of ordinary experience of the Gospel, the second is that place additional showing in advance the fulfillment of life's journey and "relativized" (makes about the final communion with God) all human experience, even the most successful ("a sign of a future world that relativizes all good things of this world," says the text.)

It is important that family and consecrated life are called "places" and not as agents, that is, spaces of experience: they experience the Gospel as an experience and as a promise. Before being places where it is spoken, are places where people live the grace of the Gospel with two underscores complementary and inseparable . This is to say that only two things are necessary to discover the Gospel: coming into the world in a family that lives it,  having the gift of the testimony of those other people and families, who report the fulfillment, not outside the limits of history, but to inside of them.

In this fruitful perspective let us now clarify in what sense the religious life can be a place of new evangelization. I indicate three traits that there may specify, to be "places" of evangelization.

Storing an absence

We become "place" when we assure for us and in favor of all the space of God's care. We guard an absence, because we prevent that all the time is full of things, activities, words. We protect the empty space, hollow of waiting. In religious communities is always Advent, waiting for the one who continually comes to us. The image of lighted lamps is appropriate. We are places of the Gospel, for us and for all, when we are men and women of desire. The term desire, according to Galimberti, comes from De bello gallico, The Gallic Wars. The desiderantes were the soldiers who were under the stars waiting for those who, after having fought during the day, they were not back yet. The root is sidera, stars. From here the meaning the verb desire:  being under the stars and waiting. The desire is waiting for a meeting, a reunion, of a relationship.

The term "supremacy of God" is the most used by us, but perhaps inappropriate, as the other of the radicality. Any form of Christian life in its center the primacy of God. We can say goodbye to any scheme between ministries and charisms in the order of "more" and "less," of the essential minimum and of radical. The worst service we can do to religious life is to place it in the line of "more", "more closely, more radically ...". We need, in this regard, a new theology of religious life. Our specific is to live the Christian life as all the disciples of the Lord, highlighting a dimension: that related to desire, to expectation, to the care of interiority, to contemplation.

The religious life offers the newness of the Gospel when it protects life from clogging of things and habits and keep it open to the gift that always comes to meet and that only makes life full. That's why it's essential that our rhythms of life, the environments of our communities, all of our activities become areas of storage of an absence.

Marking a difference

This second dimension concerns the possibility to experiment and to experience the christian difference in religious life, says Enzo Bianchi[i]. It is about a sober lifestyle, which is based on the essential, which protects from the superfluous, who lives in evangelical poverty. It is a consequence of the previous point. It is on hold and is manifested during the wait that only God fills our lives, he alone is worthy of our desire. Even celibacy for the Kingdom and the obedience show the Christian difference. This is a particularly eloquent sign in a world that comes back to look for what is essential. It should be in the line of the "ecology of the person" of which Pope Benedict spoke XVI.[ii] The things cannot give meaning to our lives.

Showing a promise

The third section concerns the fraternity. We become a place of new evangelization if we show that we live together, that is, if even now we show what the world will be in God's dream, a world of sons and brothers. In this sense, the life of the fraternity is the custody of a promise. The real brotherhood that we establish without choosing is a place to live of a promise and then it becomes a hope for all. The live in the religious life is not by choice, but by a call. We come from different stories, formations and sensitivities, we have several characters, we are all marked by limitations, faults, foibles. We are simply human. The composition of our communities, now international, increases the stakes. The perfection of relations can never be achieved in our communities, but this is the wound of the sign, the paschal place of the testimony. We are called not to witness the harmony of heaven on earth before original sin, but living within the limits, the differences, the fragility, the individual and collective poverty. Our communities, more and more multi-ethnic, are a formidable laboratory of this fraternity of difference. We are not called to show ideal community, but human communities, places of welcome and processing limitations. That's how you are  prophets in history.

The new evangelization as style

But there is another point that seems important to me:  the style with which we evangelize, because it counts the way and not just the content. We could say that is not enough to evangelize, but you have to evangelize in an evangelical way. The Christian faith has its own style from which he must abdicate to be even more effective. This appeal came explicitly by some Fathers. Style is a matter of spirituality and we need more than ever in this time of a spirituality of evangelization. I mention three styling traits that must be protected in the task of evangelization.[iii]

To see God in all things

The expression is of St. Ignatius of Loyola. To see God in all things is to see that he is acting in all hearts. Christians have eyes to see where God acts beyond all Church circuits. The theme of the Synod ("new evangelization for the transmission of the faith") was rightly considered inadequate by some Synod Fathers. We do not send the faith, they said. Only the Lord Jesus communicates and His Spirit is the only  competent evangelizer. We have available a process that does not belong to us, on which we have no control.

The biblical icon of Philip and the eunuch, evoked in the Synod, it is most instructive. When Philip gets on the bandwagon turns out that he has already been preceded by the same Spirit who sent him, and that he, Philip, meets in the restlessness of the man and the text of Scripture from which the eunuch was attracted. The Spirit has a stride (step) ahead of the Church, such as the Acts of the Apostles unequivocally documented. It is always more in there. It's nice to be interpreted, then evangelization as an action of recognition, detection and unveiling.

The evangelizer "recognizes" God already present. The recipient of the announcement it turns inhabited and guarded by a Presence ("disclosure"), through the witness of the evangelizer and the gift of the Scriptures ("revelation"). In this game of recognition-revelation-disclosure is the miracle of a mutual evangelization. Basically it is to discover that the gift of God is already at the heart of these people, so that they can, like Jacob, wake up from sleep and say, "The Lord was here and I didn’t know it not" (Gen 28 16).

Only love is enough

The decisive word of the Gospel, the most convincing of these is love. It is also the ultimate goal of the Church: fitting into the current of God's love for humanity. The land of love is the last word of the Gospel. It is worth recall un text of Mother Teresa of Calcutta: "Our aim is to bring Jesus and His love to the poorest of the poor, irrespective of their moral background or faith they profess. Our meter to help them is not their faith, but their need. We do not ever try to convert to Christianity whom we help, but in our work we bear witness to the presence of God's love, and for that matter, Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become better men - simply better - we are satisfied. Growing in love they will be closer to God and will find Him in his goodness ... Some call Him Ishwar, some call Him Allah, some simply God, but we must all realize that He is who has made us for greater things: to love and to be loved. What matters is love."

Here we are in the field of prophecy. We are a step ahead of the task of evangelization, or rather, we are in the final outcome of evangelization. We are already prophetically into the future of God, where all religions ahuold have completed their task and with them also the Church. In fact, faith passes, and even hope. Only charity remains. In general we think that charity is the preliminary step to pave the announcement, is a kind of pre-evangelization. Charity is also and above all, the ultimate goal of evangelization, its final outcome. Charity enough, because charity is God.

The greatest act of love

So why preach the Gospel? Just because it is the greatest act of love we can do. It is well-know the statement of Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi, referred to by the Instrumentum Laboris: "It would be useful if every Christian and every evangelizer were to pray about the following thought: men can gain salvation also in other ways, through the mercy of God, although we do not preach the Gospel; but we can we gain salvation if through negligence or fear or shame - what St. Paul called "blushing for the Gospel" - or as a result of false ideas we fail to preach it?" (n. 80 ).

A good interpretation of this text is as follows: God can save and saves beyond our announcement, but if we do not proclaim, that we can be saved? Not in the sense that we are failing a duty, without evangelizing, but in the sense that ours not evangelizing shows that for us the Lord Jesus is not the most valuable asset. And then it is legitimate to question about our salvation. Love is giving others the most precious thing. It is another perspective of evangelization, really new; neither by necessity (God is generous, knows how to save all), or out of duty, but an excess of joy and gratitude for what we have become by grace. What motivates evangelization and makes it new, after all, is its not arise from the need to save, nor from the duty to do so, but from an inherent "need": the joy of giving what is most precious.

The religious life has always been placed on this ridge, the implied, unequivocal announcement of love that is self-sufficient; of  the explicit anuncement as maximum act of charity, such as sharing what is most precious, that our joy is full (1 Jn 1:1-4). Charity as a Word understood by all: the Word as utmost charity. He remembered the NMI: "The charity of works ensures an unmistakable efficacy to the charity of words" (n. 50).

In the Synod have been heard often two words: humility and charity. Some bishops, especially those of an Oriental area or who are to lead the Churches in strong minority, they invited us to be a more humble Church. Humility has two faces: that of the awareness of its limitations, one that stems from the belief that we are not owners of the Gospel, but only servants, and that the only one who opens hearts is the Holy Spirit. Charity is the love for humanity, passion and compassion for all people. Humility and charity seem to me just the two coordinates of the new evangelization.

brother Enzo Biemmi fsf
Teologo
Via Fontana di sopra, 3
37129 Verona

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