The Joy of the Gospel - Evangelii gaudium

 Evangelium Gaudium is a 2013 Apostolic Exhortation by Pope Francis on the Church's Mission of Evangelization in the modern world. We can get this right from the opening paragraph of the exhortation that clarifies what we are getting involved in once we become missionary protagonists. He goes on to state that the joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ, Joy is constantly born a new […] He wishes to encourage the Christian faithful to embark upon the latest chapter of evangelization marked by joy pointing out new paths for the church's journey in the years to come.

The Pope exhorts the people of God to implement a particular aspect of the Church’s life and teaching. It is not about teaching a new doctrine but suggesting how the Church's teaching and practices can be profitably applied today. This exhortation is geared more toward the pastoral praxis rather than the doctrinal or legal nature. The Christian joy is that the Church may discover the original source of evangelization in the contemporary world. Pope Francis offers this document to the Church as a road map and guide to her pastoral mission for the near future. It’s an invitation to recover a prophetic vision of reality without ignoring the current situation. The language and symbols Pope Francis' imaginative language is a lived experience that can be used, and expressed in homilies, sermons in our parishes by priests, retreat sessions, conferences and ongoing formation programs.

Chapter one of this document treats the Church and her missionary transformation call as a Mother with an open heart (nn.46-49). This means that a mother with an open heart can also be enclosed in a certain place, protected and cared for. The human body contains the heart that gives life to the body. As the heart pumps the blood in the body that gives life, so is it with the heart of a mother who becomes younger and younger in giving life to a new Church, and with her vivid presence that pumps a new life to her children.

Whenever we use the expression… Church as a mother with an open heart is a metaphoric expression that gives a sense of what the Church is. The Church is a mother; in this case a mother with an open heart, warmth, caring, loving, all qualities that our mothers have. This heart is very much open to the eventualities that may befall her whether bad or good. The Church has to be willing to embrace, search for her children and always with a big heart. The example of a prodigal son returning and has to feel part and parcel of the common home. A mother will always wait for her children to return home.

Pope Francis states that “The church should be a place of mercy and of hope in God, where everyone should feel received, loved forgiven and encouraged to live according to evangelical call, a place where the doors are opened for everyone to enter, but that means that others too ought to get out to continue with the evangelization to announce the good news received”…This is also emphasized by Cardinal Sepe, when he says ‘We don't need to have fear, as the Divine master taught, we ought to be a Church that is prophetic and missionary that is opening its sacristy door, walking together to other men of our time, participating, not a word, but a charity incarnated to the joy and to the pains of our people. The church does not run away from the world for fear, but that goes to the world carrying Christ, a unique saver, lest we fall into the heresy of fear that is a great danger today.

When a door is closed, it does no good to no one, except paralyzes, and separates. The Church is called upon to be a house. A mother is not someone out there but has a proper place, she can be found and also we can refer to her in case of need.

Today the Church is referred to as a house of bricks but assembly of people of God who form a spiritual house of the faithfuls who build up a sacred place of worship in the name of God, the first place of welcoming to new members who become Christians through baptism and other sacraments, a place to love, receive love and donate love. Pope Francis calls a house "a house is where the doors are opened to receive and hospitality exercised at its best attention to fraternity". If we have to find God in our lives we cannot confront the doors of the Church closed. The Holy Spirit should propel us to open these doors widely to create a place of encounter, a dialogue of love.

A Church is a place where everyone participates in his or her own capacity and talent. To close oneself into self is like closing the doors of the Church. We can’t claim to be unique. The church’s role is to make children, many children and if she doesn’t do so she will remain sterile or suffer the humiliation from the society that will call her a barren woman who is not fertile. In the Bible, women who confront this harsh reality of sterility: are Elizabeth, Zachariah, and Noemi but we see God doing great works in them. In this Church, we are protagonists of change, mothers and fathers living fully into the fertilization capacity of faith and spirituality, producing something new, a new creation.

This only comes when we ask the Holy Spirit to go out of ourselves to the other, to give ourselves into pastoral conversion and mission. Pope Francis picks the comparison with Pope Benedict XVI who stated that the church doesn’t grow for proselytisms, but grows through attraction, the maternal attraction by offering maternity, tenderness, and testimony that generates more sons and daughters. So we cannot call the Church a grandmother, but a woman who re-energizes her maternity, and youthfulness not by carrying herself the medical plastic surgery, that is not what it’s all about, but she becomes younger as she begets sons and daughters.

Pope during his pastoral work as bishop of Buenos Aires talking to priests and the people of God, stated that “he preferred a church that is wounded, dirty, because it’s out on the streets and out there working and evangelizing and saving souls than a church that is sick because it's closed in itself for its own security. The Pope says that it pains seeing the Church so much preoccupied for its own security sake, closed in itself for fear, this seems to be the preoccupation of many getting out of a Church that is more occupied with fear of making mistakes. This gives a bad and false impression of protection in the name of transformation.

Opening the doors according to Barreda is also opening the digital airwaves and connectivity, so that people may enter and find what they are looking for, whatever they see, is whatever they get (WYSWYG). Going out to the street is not a triumph march, it carries risks but better for a wounded Church than a Church that is closed up. “Those others who are outside, are they interested really? These are challenges of the new evangelization, the cascades into renewal of faith.

The Church should be able to warm hearts that lead the people to Jerusalem. The pope calls upon the bishops to do more, warming people's hearts in their profound pastoral duties. The hardest work is that of the parish priests every day listening to all sorts of problems of family, that of death. The pope reminds the pastors to walk before that sheep as they guide the community. This calls for real sensibility and dedication to start a journey that has to be pastoral and familiar.

This will rise in our communication the message and our prioritization of things as far as the hierarchy of truth is taught and lived. This is clearly stipulated in the document (UR n.11) which states that this should not be an obstacle to dialogue with the brethren but has to be presented in its entirety. This ought to be geared towards the love of truth, with clarity and with humility remembering that in Catholic doctrine there exists a "hierarchy" of truth that vary in understanding and clearer presentation of the unfathomable riches. As we put everything in perspective, this too will affect the delivery of the message.

Sometimes the message may be distorted or reduced to some secondary aspects, where the Church's moral issues are usually taken out of context and worse if the message preached, doesn't reach its audience. We need to be intelligent to know our audience well to engage it with a pedagogical approach to relate what we say to the very heart of the gospel which gives meaning, beauty, and attractiveness.

Once we build the Church on moral terms then we end up with a castle of lettere, this is a serious danger we can confront ourselves with. This is what we call the “perfume of the gospel.” Truth has to be understood when related to the harmonious totality of Christian message; all are truths that illuminate, one another if this invitation doesn’t radiate forcefully and attractively.

The edifice of the Church’s moral teaching risks becoming a house of cards, a great risk. The message that risks losing its freshness and will cease to have the fragrance of the Gospel. This is witnessed when priests can turn the confessional boxes into places of mercy of the lord which stimulates towards doing the best possible. It may be a small drop in the sea with human reality and limitations but more grateful to God, but an external sign of confronting a difficult within the mercy of God in human reality and experience. Jesus always wants us to appear as we are, in our very self. We come with our fragility and weakness; sometimes with fear. We ought to be fully human people who can recognize the faults and get back to the right road and binary of life.