Evangelii nuntiandi is an apostolic exhortation issued on 8 December by Pope Paul VI on Overview · Pope: Francis · Hierarchy · History (Timeline); Theology · Liturgy · Sacraments · Mary. Background[show]. Jesus · Crucifixion. authoritative commentators have said: in Evangelii nuntiandi the Pope left, serenely but energetically, a sort of pastoral testament, a summary and synthesis of. A Summary on Evangelii Nuntiandi Pope Paul VI on December wrote to the Episcopate, Clergy and to all the faithful of the entire.
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Venerable brothers and dear summarh and daughters: There is no doubt that the effort to proclaim the Gospel to the people of today, who are buoyed up by hope but at the same time often oppressed by fear and distress, is a service rendered to the Christian community and also to the whole of humanity.
For this reason the duty of confirming the brethren – a duty which with the office of being the Successor of Peter[1] we have received from the Lord, and which is for us a “daily preoccupation,”[2] a program of life and action, and a fundamental commitment of our Pontificate – seems to us all the more noble and necessary when it is a matter of encouraging our brethren in their mission as evangelizers, in order that, in this time of uncertainty and confusion, they may accomplish this task with ever increasing love, zeal and joy.
This is precisely what we wish to do here, at the end of this Holy Year during which the Church, “striving to proclaim the Gospel to all people,”[3] has had the single aim of fulfilling her duty of being the messenger buntiandi the Good News of Jesus Christ – the Good News proclaimed through two fundamental commands: We wish to do so on this tenth anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council, the objectives of which are definitively summed up in this single one: We wish to do so one year after the Simmary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which as is well known, was devoted to evangelization; and we do so all the more willingly because it has been asked of us by the Synod Fathers themselves.
In fact, at the end of that memorable Assembly, the Fathers decided to remit to the Pastor of the summmary Church, with great trust and simplicity, the fruits of all their labors, stating that they awaited from him a fresh forward impulse, capable of creating within a Church still more firmly rooted in the undying power and strength of Pentecost a new period of evangelization. We have stressed the importance of this theme of evangelization on many occasions, well before the Synod took place.
On June 22,we said to the Sacred College of Cardinals: For it is only in the Christian message that modern man can find the answer to his questions and the energy for his commitment of human solidarity. This fidelity both to a message whose servants we are and to the people to whom we must transmit it living and intact is the central axis of evangelization.
A summary on evangelii nuntiandi
It poses three burning questions, which the Synod kept constantly in mind:. Basically, these inquiries make explicit the fundamental question that the Church is asking herself today and which may be expressed in the following terms: We can all see the urgency of giving a loyal, humble and courageous answer to this question, and of acting accordingly.
In our “anxiety for all the Churches,”[8] we would like to help our brethren and sons and daughters to reply to these inquiries. Our words come from the wealth of the Synod and are meant to be a meditation on evangelization.
May they succeed in inviting the whole People of God assembled in the Church to make the same meditation; and may they give a fresh impulse to everyone, especially those “who are assiduous in preaching and teaching,”[9] so that each one of them may follow “a straight course in summaary message of the truth,”[10] and may work as a preacher of the Gospel and acquit himself perfectly of his ministry. Such an exhortation seems to us to be of capital importance, for the presentation of the Gospel message is not an optional contribution for the Church.
It is the duty incumbent on her by the command of the Lord Jesus, so that people can believe and be saved. This message is indeed necessary. It cannot be replaced. It does not permit either eavngelii, syncretism or accommodation. It is a question of people’s salvation. It is the beauty of the Revelation that it represents. It brings with it a wisdom that is not of this world.
It is able to stir up by itself faith – faith that rests on the power of God. It merits having the apostle consecrate to it evangelii his time and all his energies, and to sacrifice for it, if necessary, his own life. The witness that the Lord gives of Himself and that Saint Luke gathered together in his Gospel – “I must proclaim the Good News of the kingdom of God”[12] – without doubt has enormous consequences, for it sums up the whole mission of Jesus: He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor.
Going from town to town, preaching to the poorest – and frequently the most receptive – the joyful news of the fulfillment of the promises and of the Covenant offered by God is the mission for which Jesus declares that He is sent by the Father. And all the aspects of His mystery – the Incarnation itself, His miracles, His teaching, the gathering together of the disciples, the sending out of the Twelve, the cross and the resurrection, the permanence of His presence in the midst of His own – were components of His evangelizing activity.
During the Synod, the bishops very frequently referred to this truth: Jesus Himself, the Good News of God,[15] was the very first and the greatest evangelizer; He was so through and zummary It is certainly not easy to express in a complete synthesis the meaning, the evangelli and the modes of evangelization as Jesus conceived it and put it into practice.
In any case the attempt to make such a synthesis will never end. Let it suffice for us to recall a few essential aspects. As an evangelizer, Christ first of all proclaims a kingdom, the kingdom of God; and this is so important that, by comparison, everything else becomes “the rest,” which is “given in addition. The Lord will delight in describing in many ways the happiness of belonging to this kingdom a paradoxical happiness which is made up of things that the world rejects ,[17] the demands of the kingdom and its Magna Charta,[18] the heralds of the kingdom,[19] its mysteries,[20] its children,[21] the vigilance and fidelity demanded of whoever awaits its definitive coming.
As the kernel and center of His Good News, Christ proclaims salvation, this great gift of God which is liberation from everything that oppresses man but which is above all liberation from sin and the Evil One, in the joy of knowing God and being known by Him, nuntianvi seeing Him, and of being given over to Him.
A Summary on Evangelii Nuntiandi
All of this is begun during the life of Christ and definitively accomplished by His death and resurrection. But it must be patiently carried on during the course of history, in order to be realized fully on the day of the final coming of Christ, whose date is known to no one except the Father. This kingdom and this salvation, which are the key words sumkary Jesus Christ’s evangelization, are available to every human being as grace and mercy, and yet at the same time each individual must gain them by nuntaindi – they belong to the violent, says the Lord,[24] through toil and suffering, through a life lived sjmmary to the Gospel, through abnegation and the cross, through the spirit of the beatitudes.
But above all each individual gains them through a total interior renewal which the Gospel calls metanoia; it is a radical conversion, a profound change of mind and heart. Christ accomplished this proclamation of the kingdom of God through the untiring preaching of a word which, it will be said, has no equal elsewhere: But Christ also carries out this proclamation by innumerable signs, which amaze the crowds and at the same time draw them to Him in order to see Him, listen to Him and allow themselves to be transformed by Him: And among all these signs there is the one to which He attaches great evxngelii For this Jesus who declared, “I must preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God”[29] is the same Jesus of whom John the Evangelist said that He had come and was to die “to gather together in unity the scattered children of God.
Those who sincerely accept the Good News, through the power of this acceptance and of shared faith therefore gather together in Jesus’ name in order to seek together the kingdom, build it up and live it.
They make up a community which is in its turn evangelizing. The command to the Twelve to go out and proclaim the Good News is efangelii valid for all Christians, though in a different way.
It is precisely for this reason that Peter calls Christians “a people set apart to sing the praises of God,”[32] those marvelous things that each one was able to hear in his own language. Those who have received the Good News and who have been gathered by it into the community of salvation can and must communicate and spread it.
The Church knows this. She has a vivid awareness of the fact that the Savior’s words, “I must proclaim the Good News of the nuntizndi of God,”[34] apply in all truth to herself: She willingly adds with St. Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to nuntlandi sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ’s sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of His death and glorious resurrection.
Anyone who rereads in the New Testament the origins of the Church, follows her history step by step and watches her live and act, sees that she is linked to evangelization in her most intimate being:. She is the normal, desired, most immediate and most visible fruit of this activity: That very day about three thousand were added to their number Day by day the Lord added to their community those destined to be saved. The Church remains in the world when the Lord of glory returns to the Father.
She remains as a sign – simultaneously obscure and luminous – nujtiandi a new presence of Jesus, of His departure and of His permanent presence.
She prolongs and continues Him. And it is above all His mission and His condition of being an evangelizer that she is called upon to continue. The intimate life of this community – the life of listening to the Word and the apostles’ teaching, charity lived in a fraternal way, the sharing of bread[40] this intimate life only acquires its full meaning when it becomes a witness, when it evokes admiration and conversion, and when it summmary the preaching and proclamation of the Good News.
Thus it is the whole Church that receives the mission to evangelize, and the work of each individual member is important for the whole. She is the community of believers, the community of hope lived and communicated, the community of brotherly love, and she needs to listen unceasingly to what she must believe, to her reasons for hoping, to the new commandment of love.
She is the People of God immersed in the world, and evangeelii tempted by idols, and she always needs to hear the proclamation of the “mighty works of God”[41] which converted her to the Lord; she always needs to be called together afresh by Him and reunited. In brief, this means that she has a constant need of being evangelized, if she wishes to retain freshness, vigor and strength in order to proclaim the Gospel.
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The Second Vatican Council recalled[42] and the Synod vigorously took up again this theme of the Church which is evangelized by constant conversion and renewal, in order to evangelize the world with credibility. The promises of the New Alliance in Jesus Christ, the teaching of the Lord and the apostles, the Word of life, the sources of grace and of God’s loving kindness, the path of salvation – all these things have been entrusted to her. It is the content of the Gospel, and therefore of evangelization, that she preserves as a precious living heritage, not in order to keep it hidden but to communicate muntiandi.
She puts sumamry their lips the saving Word, she explains to them the message of which she herself evngelii the depositary, she gives them the mandate which she herself has received and she sends them out to preach. To preach not their own selves or their personal ideas,[43] but a Gospel of which neither she nor they are the absolute masters and owners, to dispose of it as they wish, but a Gospel of which they are the ministers, in order to pass it on with complete fidelity.
There is thus a profound link between Christ, the Church and evangelization. During the period of the Church that we are living in, it is she who has the task of evangelizing. This mandate is not accomplished without her, and still less against her.
It is certainly fitting to recall this fact at a moment like the present one when it happens that not without sorrow we can hear people – whom we wish to believe are well-intentioned but who are certainly misguided in their attitude – continually claiming to love Christ but without the Church, to listen to Christ but not the Church, to belong to Christ but outside the Church.
The absurdity of this dichotomy is clearly evident in this phrase nuntiando the Gospel: In the Church’s evangelizing activity summqry are of course dvangelii elements and aspects to be evxngelii insisted on. Nuntandi of them are so important that there will be a tendency simply to identify them with evangelization. Thus it has been possible to define evangelization in terms of proclaiming Christ to those who do not know Him, of preaching, summagy catechesis, of conferring Baptism and the other sacraments.
Buntiandi partial and fragmentary definition which attempts to render the reality of evangelization in all its richness, complexity and dynamism does so only at the risk of impoverishing it and even of distorting it. It is impossible to grasp the concept of evangelization unless one tries to keep in view all its essential elements.
These elements were strongly emphasized at the last Synod, and are still the subject of frequent study, as a result of the Synod’s work. We rejoice in the fact that these elements basically follow the lines of those transmitted to us by the Second Vatican Council, especially in ” Lumen gentium, ” ” Gaudium et spes ” and ” Ad gentes.
For the Church, evangelizing means bringing the Good News into nuntiwndi the strata of humanity, and through its influence transforming humanity from within and making it new: Strata of humanity which are transformed: All this could he expressed in the following words: The Gospel, and therefore evangelization, are certainly not identical with culture, and they are independent in regard to all cultures.
Nevertheless, the kingdom which the Gospel proclaims is evangepii by men who are profoundly linked to a evangelil, and the building up of the kingdom cannot avoid evnagelii the elements of human culture or cultures.
Though independent of cultures, the Gospel and evangelization are not necessarily incompatible with them; rather they are capable of permeating them all without becoming subject to any one of them. The split between the Gospel and culture is without a doubt the drama of our time, just as it was of other times.
Therefore every effort must be made to ensure a full evangelization of culture, or more correctly of cultures. They have to be regenerated by an encounter with the Gospel. But this encounter will not take place if the Gospel is not proclaimed. Above all the Gospel must be proclaimed by witness. Take a Christian or a handful of Christians who, in the midst of their own community, show their capacity for understanding and acceptance, their sharing of life and destiny with other people, their solidarity with the evagelii of all for whatever is noble and good.