One of the most urgent tasks of the Church today and always is to ensure that faith reaches people as “good news.”
We often understand evangelization as an almost exclusively doctrinal task. Evangelizing would be bringing the doctrine of Jesus Christ to those who do not yet know it or know it insufficiently.
Then we are concerned about ensuring religious instruction and the spread of faith against other ideologies and currents of opinion. We seek well-formed men and women, who perfectly know the Christian message and transmit it correctly. We try to improve our techniques and pastoral organization.
Naturally, all of this is important, as evangelization implies announcing the message of Jesus Christ. But it is not the only thing, nor the most decisive. Evangelizing does not mean only verbally announcing a doctrine, but making present in the lives of people the humanizing, liberating, and saving force that is contained in the event and the person of Jesus Christ.
Understood in this way, evangelization is not about having powerful and effective means of religious propaganda, but knowing how to act with the liberating style of Jesus.
The decisive thing is not to have men and women well formed doctrinally, but to be able to count on living witnesses of the gospel. Believers in whose lives one can see the humanizing and saving force that is contained in the gospel when it is received with conviction and responsibly.
We Christians have often confused evangelization with the desire for our “Christianity” to be socially accepted. Jesus’ words calling us to be “salt of the earth” and “light of the world” oblige us to ask ourselves very serious questions.
Are we believers “good news” for anyone? What is lived in our Christian communities, what is observed among believers, is it “good news” for people today?
Do Christians put something into today’s society that adds flavor to life, something that purifies, heals, and liberates from spiritual decay and brutal, unsolidary selfishness? Do we live something that can illuminate people in these times of uncertainty, offering a new hope and horizon to those seeking salvation?
José Antonio Pagola
Published on www.gruposdejesus.com
English version translated with AI