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Showing posts with label Evangelii Gaudiu Chapter five. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Evangelii Gaudiu Chapter five. Show all posts

Monday, June 23, 2014

Evangelii Gaudium: Chapter V

I'm finally on the home stretch of the pope's encyclical on evangelization and I love the title of Chapter V: Spirit-Filled Evangelizers! They are the ones "fearlessly open to the working of the Holy Spirit." Does that describe you? Does zeal for God's house consume you? The pope exhorts us to this zeal imitating the christian saints of every age who risked all to proclaim the Lord of Life! How can we have this spirit? --through a personal encounter with Christ:
The primary reason for evangelizing is the love of Jesus which we have received, the experience of salvation which urges us to ever greater love of him. What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known? If we do not feel an intense desire to share this love, we need to pray insistently that he will once more touch our hearts. We need to implore his grace daily, asking him to open our cold hearts and shake up our lukewarm and superficial existence.
And how do we "shake up" our lives and become zealous for the Lord?