EVANGELII GAUDIUM

06 CINCONIEGUE, Maryrose C.

07 DE LA ROSA, Jocella B.

08 DE LEON, Val Francis P.

EVANGELII GAUDIUM

• English Translation: The Joy of the Gospel

• 2013 apostolic exhortation by Pope Francis on "the church's primary mission of evangelization in the modern world“

• Described as a "remarkable and radical document, one that ranges widely and challenges complacency at every level”

• Ouches on many of the themes of Francis' papacy, including obligations Christians have to the poor, and the duty to establish and maintain just economic, political, and legal orders

POPE FRANCIS

• Jorge Mario Bergoglio

• Born on December 17, 1936

• Served as Pope of the Catholic Church since March 19, 2013 to present

• The first Jesuit pope

MAIN POINTS

• Calls for renewal and rethinking the way every person and every institution – from the Pope and the Roman Curia down to the parish and its parishioners – live their faith and focus their energies

• Recognizes the Church must be realistic about the challenges individuals and the world pose to belief today, but – as a Jesuit – he encourages an Ignatian reading of the situation, looking for the people, places and trends where God is present

• Sees the Christian life as being based on knowing and experiencing God’s love, mercy and salvation offered to all through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ

• The importance of homilies as the one opportunity each week most priests have to encourage Catholics to live the faith

• The heart of the Christian moral message is love for one another, which must motivate Christians to share the Gospel, help the poor and work for social justice

• Warns of “spiritual worldliness” which leads apparently good Catholics to be concerned almost exclusively with power or appearances or judging others rather than recognizing their own sin and reaching out to others with the same mercy God offers them

• Highlights Mary not only as a model of faith and fidelity, but as a strong woman and mother who shared many of the joys and sorrows facing people today and, therefore, understands the challenges they face

INTRODUCTION

• In the first chapters the Pope cites several Bible passages that show the relationship between the joy of receiving the Christian faith and the joy of missionary activity.

• Pope Francis then offers several themes for the exhortation of the reform of the Church in her missionary outreach:

= the temptations faced by pastoral workers

= the Church, understood as the entire People of God which evangelizes

= the homily and its preparation

= the inclusion of the poor in society

= peace and dialogue within society

= the spiritual motivations for mission.

CHAPTER I: THE CHURCH'S MISSIONARY

TRANSFORMATION

• Underlines the importance of the parish "because it possesses great flexibility", and asks oratories, ecclesiastical movements, prelatures, and other communities in the church, to join the activities of the local parish

• Shows the responsibility that bishops have for the missionary activities in their own diocese

• In this context, the Pope says he's ready to reform the Papacy and that he's "open to suggestions which can help make the exercise of my ministry more faithful to the meaning which Jesus Christ wished to give it“.

CHAPTER II: AMID THE CRISIS OF COMMUNAL

COMMITMENT

• Divided in two sections:

1. Some challenges of today’s world-- deals with economic matters, poverty, and modern culture-- also mentions the new religious movements and moral relativism

2. Temptations faced by pastoral workers-- describes two errors commonly faced by Christians:

a.) attraction of Gnosticism = a faith whose only interest is a certain experience or a set of ideas and bits of information

b.) self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism" = those who "feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past" with "a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism"

CHAPTER III: THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL

• Describes thoroughly the importance of the homily= should be brief and avoid taking on the semblance of a speech or a lecture

= be prepared with care (preparation for preaching is so important task that a prolonged time of study, prayer, reflection and pastoral creativity should be devoted to it)

• A preacher who fails to prepare his homily is not “spiritual”; he is dishonest and irresponsible.

CHAPTER IV: THE SOCIAL DIMENSION OF EVANGELIZATION

• Deals with: = care for the weakest persons ("the homeless, the addicted, refugees, indigenous peoples, the elderly who are increasingly isolated and abandoned, and many others")= long term politics, and social dialog: the dialog between faith and reason, ecumenical dialog, and inter-religious dialog

• paragraph 246: He teaches that Catholics have a lot to learn from non-Catholics, particularly from Anglicans and the Orthodox, and that it would be very good to make a compromise list of truths that everyone agrees upon, and use those doctrines to help evangelize Africa and Asia.

• paragraph 247: He affirms that "As Christians, we cannot consider Judaism as a foreign religion; nor do we include the Jews among those called to turn from idols and to serve the true God” (cf. 1 Thes 1:9)

• paragraph 254: He teaches that non-Christian rituals of any religion can have a divine origin, that they are "a communitarian experience of journeying towards God" and can be "channels which the Holy Spirit raises up in order to liberate non-Christians from atheistic immanentism"

CHAPTER V: SPIRIT-FILLED EVANGELIZERS

• Deals with the personal relationship with Christ and the imitation of the Virgin Mary as an icon of joy and missionary activity

• “She is the Mother of the Church which evangelizes, and without her we could never truly understand the spirit of the new evangelization.” (#284)

“I dream of a 'missionary option', that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation” (#27).

ARCHBISHOP RINO FISICHELLA

“If we were to sum up Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium in a few words, we could say that it is an Apostolic Exhortation written around the theme of Christian joy in order that the Church may rediscover the original source of evangelization in the contemporary world.

Pope Francis offers this document to the Church as a map and guide to her pastoral mission in the near future. It is an invitation to recover a prophetic and positive vision of reality without ignoring the current challenges.

Pope Francis instills courage and urges us to look ahead despite the present crisis, making the cross and the resurrection of Christ once again our “the victory banner”

FUNDAMENTAL PILLARS OF POPE’S VISION OF THE NEW EVANGELIZATION

1. The reform of the Church in a missionary key

2. The temptations of pastoral agents

3. The Church understood as the totality of the People of God which evangelizes

4. The homily and its preparation

5. The social inclusion of the poor

6. Peace and social dialogue

7. The spiritual motivations for the Church’s missionary action

CEMENT that binds these together is concentrated in the merciful love of God

SOME QUOTES FROM THE ENCYCLICAL

• “Sometimes we are tempted to find excuses and complain, acting as if we could only be happy if a thousand conditions were met. To some extent this is because our 'technological society has succeeded in multiplying occasions of pleasure, yet has found it very difficult to engender joy'” (#7)

• “God asks everything of us, yet at the same time he offers everything to us” (#12)

• “Evangelization consists mostly of patience and disregard for constraints of time” (#24)

• “Marriage now tends to be viewed as a form of mere emotional satisfaction that can be constructed in any way or modified at will” (#66)

• “Instead, we waste time talking about 'what needs to be done' – in Spanish we call this the sin of 'habriaqueísmo' – like spiritual masters and pastoral experts who give instructions from on high. We indulge in endless fantasies and we lose contact with the real lives and difficulties of our people” (#96)

• “Even if it is not always easy to approach young people, progress has been made in two areas: the awareness that the entire community is called to evangelize and educate the young, and the urgent need for the young to exercise greater leadership.” (106)

REFERENCES

• http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2013/11/26/evangelii-gaudium-a-summary-of-the-key-issues-raised-by-pope/

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelii_gaudium

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Francis

• http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html

• http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/pope-francis-new-document-evangelii-gaudium-9-things-to-know-and-share/#ixzz3TD2OfN8w