Evangelium Gaudium: Chapter IV

The Social Dimension of Evangelization

The first sentence of Chapter IV stresses Christ's call to the apostles to go forth and convert all nations. "To evangelize is to make the kingdom of God present in our world." What a mission - one that stretches from the first century to the twenty-first which, more than ever, remains in need of conversion!

When one thinks of all the places on earth where Christ is nearly invisible: Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic countries, nations where Christianity is persecuted, Communist countries with struggling underground Christian churches, there is much work to be done and workers needed for the harvest.  It is a work that continues to be an "absolute priority of 'going forth from ourselves towards our brothers and sisters.'” Evangelization, then, is not merely an option, but the vocation of charity for every Christian believer and "one of the two great commandments which ground every moral norm."

I have always loved the image of the two beams of the cross that illustrate the two great commandments.