Vigils Reading

THE DIVINE POWER OF THE MESSAGE

By St Pope Paul VI3

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For the Church, evangelizing means bringing the Good News into all the

strata of humanity, and through its influence transforming humanity from within

and making it new… But there is no new humanity if there are not first of all new

persons renewed by Baptism and by lives lived according to the Gospel. The

purpose of evangelization is therefore precisely this interior change, and if it had

to be expressed in one sentence the best way of stating it would be to say that the

Church evangelizes when she seeks to convert, solely through the divine power

of the Message she proclaims, both the personal and collective consciences of

people, the activities in which they engage, and the lives and concrete milieux

which are theirs.

With regard to the strata of humanity which are to be transformed: for the

Church it is a question not only of preaching the Gospel in ever wider geographic

areas or to ever greater numbers of people, but also of affecting and as it were

upsetting, through the power of the Gospel, the popular criteria of judgment,

determining values, points of interest, lines of thought, sources of inspiration and

models of life, which are in contrast with the Word of God and the plan of

salvation.

All this could be expressed in the following words: what matters is to

evangelize human culture and cultures (not in a purely decorative way as it were

by applying a thin veneer, but in a vital way, in depth and right to their very

roots… taking the person as one’s starting-point and always coming back to the

relationships of people among themselves and with God.

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 lived by people who are profoundly

linked to a culture, and the building up of the Kingdom cannot avoid borrowing

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.

3 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, nn 18-20.7