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Italian version
 When
the Synod is approaching may be urgent, very useful, to arrange with
some relevant details concerning the theological and pastoral bases of
the new evangelization itself and what this event entails for women's
religious life. For this we put some questions to Sister Fernanda
Barbiero, smsd.
With degree in Literary - Free University '"Maria SS.ma Assunta" - and a
Doctorate in Dogmatic Theology - Pontifical Gregorian University - was
professor of Dogmatic Theology in various Pontifical Universities in
Rome, from 1996 to 2002 Dean of Pontificium Institutum "Regina
Mundi", "Coniunctum "at the Pontifical Gregorian University
(Rome). In Rome she collaborated with the Family Office of the Italian
Episcopal Conferenc; from 2002 to 2006 was Italy's western Superior
of Province (Tyrrhenian Province) based in Brescia. She is currently
General Councillor, responsible for Education, Professor of
Theology at the Pontifical Urban University; she serves on the Board
of Editors of the Journal USMI Consacrazione e Servizio, is
responsible for the issue of her Institute; also she has given numerous
conferences.
Sr. Fernanda,
after fundamental theological and pastoral clarifications, enlarges
horizons and proposes of "finding a Christian style of community for our
time", to "cultivate the desire to give witness to own faith," "to be
icons of faith’s humanity”, "and, finally, she calls "to take to heart
not just to save our individual communities, but to pursue what we have
believed."
The Theological-Pastoral platform of the New Evangelization
Let me begin by
saying that to awake the dimension of evangelization in the Church, at
this moment in its history, is grace: a grace to live and to be
cultivated in a wise vision of reality; in a new mode of action
appropriate to different cultural situation that is been created.
With the new
evangelization, the Church sets before us an extraordinary offering of
faith in a process of humanization to the treasury of wisdom of life
contained in the Gospel.
But even the New
Evangelization requires the Church to imagine a new form of her being
and her mission. Rethinking a new ministry aimed at less technical sense
of how we usually are thinking.
What is the
theological foundation, which springs the need for a New
Evangelization?
For the Church
to evangelize is necessary and irreplaceable dimension, expression
of her nature. The Church exists to proclaim always and everywhere the
Gospel of Jesus Christ: evangelization is the continuation of the work
desired by the Lord Jesus.
Now the New
Evangelization expresses this lead and this urgency in an environment in
which the Church is already established, evangelized and also
extensively structured.
This means
remembering that the Gospel is a right for all, and must be brought to
all. It is the responsibility of every believer, therefore, to seek new
ways to do this, new languages
to
make it understandable and relevant for today's man.
So the New
Evangelization will that if there are new preachers who have
learned how to be disciples, that is to stay in communion and intimacy
with Jesus, to live the passion of Christ for the salvation of man.
The New Evangelization helps to facilitate, to pave the way for
salvation reaching people. We find in Gregory Nazianzen the image of God
who created man asking him the Word. But man, being in dialogue,
because of temptation and sin of Adam, did not respond to this Word. He
mumbled others words, but did not respond to the Word that the Creator
addressed to him. It is necessary again to teach the man to respond to
the salvation’s call of the Creator, this is the foundation of the New
Evangelization. To evangelize is to help man to discover ever anew that
Christ is the answer to the Father. Salvation is then who, in the Son
and with the power of the Holy Spirit, can say: Abba, Father.
It is not an abstract thing because it is condensed in Christ and live
in the Church.
The New Evangelization has its
foundation exactly in serving the salvation, that is to operate
so that it can realize and reach the people of this present time. God
has called people to salvation, he prepared the salvation for them, he
has realized it in Christ. God awaits them in the Church. The New
Evangelization is the art of making sure that the meeting between the
Saviour and the person takes place. The Pope says pointing for the task
to the new Pontifical Council: this is "a mission to play at the
believers who have strayed from the faith or are indifferent."
"New Evangelization is rather the ability to remake the Christian fabric
of human society. But the condition is that you remake the Christian
fabric of the ecclesial communities that live in these countries and
these nations" (n. 34). Evidently the New Evangelization calls the
Church to confront with the phenomenon of detachment from the faith,
which is progressively manifested in societies and cultures that for
centuries seemed impregnated by the Gospel.
The pastoral foundations of the new evangelization
Because the
Christian faith requires a new evangelization, a new advertisement? What
has changed or is changing in the world? If you need a "new"
evangelization, the reason is that the Church is facing a man
culturally new, more sensitive to certain values, most refractory
to others and to the margins of others that are not negotiable for us.
These is to open spaces for dialogue with all those who do not cease to
wonder about God. It should not be ignored that the New Evangelization
is a spiritual and pastoral program designed not only for Europe
but throughout the world.
An
indispensable foundation for pastoral is the
care for people's faith.
The faith of the
Church needs to try and build a new balance of relations with
contemporary culture. There are aspects in dominant thought and behavior
that are a problem for the Christian and come to a crisis in his
relationship with the Church and faith. If you then add the scandals,
from pedophilia to the most recurrent of ecclesiastical finance that are
dragging the Church in terms of estimation and lower consensus, it is
clear that the disconnect between the Church and civil society is
becoming more apparent, on the political level too. It is not a purely
conjunctural phenomenon. It spreads the idea that Christianity is no
longer able to make a positive contribution to the development of
humanity. The situation is leading to a widespread sense of loss. We
must take note that the crisis in relations between the Church and
society has its focal point in the crisis of faith. This means that
there is an evangelization which does not help people to find the path
of life and happiness.
Pastorally would
be useful to foreground the attention to people, to reach in their
search for meaning and the care of proclaiming the Gospel. This is to
communicate a word that can lead man to the truth about himself and what
he lives.
I agree with what
in the Press said the Prior of Bose: The rapid
historical changes require a rethinking of the problem of truth ... In
the Christian faith we live in a minority situation in a context of
widespread indifference ... the non-eloquence of faith today necessary
wonders us: it will require a new synthesis that will make it speakable.
This is to accompany the transmission of the faith with an education to
life, relationships, affections, virtues. It's becoming human in the
image and likeness of Jesus, the revealer of the Father: the Christian
faith calls to this.
A second important point of pastoral care is the sense of
responsibility of the Church, from the heart of her mission:
"to tell the world the faith."
The start of a
relationship of dialogue with the contemporary world has a crucial role,
and must be done with respect and love to be extended also to
those who think or act differently from us. With much love and humanity
you get in the way of feeling, the more easily you can start a dialogue.
It is expected that the Church increases the courage and energy to
rediscover the joy of believing, helped to find the enthusiasm to
communicate the faith. This is not only to imagine something new or
unusual to launch initiatives to spread the Gospel, but to live the
faith in a dimension of God's proclamation.
It should be
treated the art of combining the proclamation of the kèrygma with
the demanding commitment of faith’s education and zeal in the
social field. For the ecclesial community it becomes essential to deal
with the diversity of situations and this should not be without careful
discernment. This will make us more humble, more open and more welcoming
and docile to the free work of the Spirit of the Risen, accompanying
those bearers of the Gospel and opens the hearts of those who listen.
What does this mean for the feminine religious life
Let us
evangelize; this is good for us religious, now more than ever, the
invitation of Paul VI to the Church: "Evangelizing, the Church begins
to evangelize herself. The Church has always need to be evangelized if
she wants to retain her freshness, her impulse and her strength to
proclaim the Gospel." Anyone who watches the views of us the
religious, no doubt that it is urgent an effort of “new” evangelization.
This feature is semantically understandable only in contrast to an
"old", passed evangelization, which replaces the "new". The religious
life, as the whole Church, first must evangelize herself and be
evangelized (cf Ad Gentes 5.11-12; EN 15). This presupposes the
fact to take very seriously the Gospel, much more serious than is usual.
That alone would be something really new in a continent weary of
appearance and demagoguery but "hungry for authenticity." This means
that if you announce Jesus Christ you must embody the modus
vivendi of Jesus Christ: that is to be permeated by Him. When this
occurs, the evangelization will be really "new."
Finding a Christian style of community for our time,
who knows how to overcome the fragmentation and join forces for a great
new missionary daring. New evangelization can not be an individual
desire, but awareness of the whole Church. In this perspective, the
whole community becomes an evangelizing. It's time to rid ourselves of a
certain individualism and begin to cultivate a spirit of cooperation,
communion that makes us feel responsible for each other. It is up to us
religious to be experts of communion, where men and women of ages,
cultures and sensitivities are integrated into the community, as the
first Christian community and, taking everything in common, are of one
heart and one soul. This new form of relationship produces the
creative minorities who embody a cultural alternative to the
dominant model. The ability to show the radicalism of the Gospel and
bear witness to the joy of her members, in the simplicity of life, in
the fraternity of her community and generous giving to others, you play
the entire religious life.
Cultivating the desire to give witness to own faith
for what it
requires, first, face profound experience of God. It is the first
contribution that we are called to offer to the world is just to give
God to it. Our first major mission was and must be to witness to God. It
is to combine the inseparable relationship in Christianism between the
"content" of faith and "how" to proceed and to lie in the existence.
Modern man is particularly sensitive to this hermeneutic relationship
between content and style. This fact has been stigmatized in a remark of
Paul VI: "Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to
teachers, or, if he listens to teachers, it is because they are
witnesses." It is the challenge for us today, to present
"Christianism as a way" and help the theology to become a "way of doing
serving this style".
Being human icons of the faith,
giving priority
to the transmission of faith through the mediation of real human
relationships, stable, that can convey values such
as loyalty, respect, ability to critique and autocriticism. The way
forward is one that fits where are poorer men and women, the
marginalized of any kind, or those deprived of their dignity and their
rights, so that, together, contribute to the growth of civilization
of love.
There is in place
(at least in Europe) any renewal of our Institutions through a complex
restructuring process of the works, redrawing attendance and
resettlement of communities. All this meant not as a matter of essential
administrative, but as a personal and pastoral conversion, convinced
that this is not survival but prophecy. We can ask ourselves what is
important to us. What choices and priorities asks us to this historic
moment. What conditions can be created for a fruitful and healthy way
for a new evangelization ... the speech becomes very broad and asks
deeps.
We must be concerned not so much
to save our individual communities, but to pursue what we have believed.
You need a
broad vision, an enlarged heart not to stop at your own small reality.
So, as women and religious of today, fully immersed in the current
culture, we can get companions in seeking the meaning and truth of
existence. We believe that our places of living is even marked by
weakness and fragility, if lived consciously and constructively, they
can become places of prophecy to give man a way out. In particular, we
must free ourselves from the illusions that lead us inevitably to judge
reality than to live it, trying to turn it more than to take it in its
ambivalence.
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