Joy of Evangelizing

The recent Apostolic Exhortation from Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, is inspired and inspiring, delightful and thrilling. It burns passionately with love for Christ, our Lord and Savior, and for the poor. It practically explodes with evangelical fervor. It is single-minded and resolutely focused on The Essential: love for our Lord, and love for the brother and sister. It is firmly, unambiguously in continuity with previous pontiffs: There are 217 footnotes, all from popes, the Second Vatican Council or classics like Augustine and Aquinas. Direct quotations from John Paul and Benedict may number close to 100. This is no maverick pope! Sections of it are worthy of spiritual reading and meditation; others are striking for their originality and provocativeness. For example, he notes that as we go forth to evangelize the poor, we are ourselves evangelized by their responsiveness, faith, patience and love. No ecclesiastical triumphalism here! Just the victory of the Cross! The section on homily preparation must be required reading for all priests. John Paul is quoted: "To be human is to be son of a culture and father of a culture." Now that is something to mull over. He is visceral in his disgust for the culture of affluence and consumerism, indifference to the poor and social inequality. But this is entirely in accord with previous papal statements, not to mention the rage of the prophets, Church fathers and Jesus himself. He identifies abortion as a moral abomination and matter-of-factly indicates that woman priests is not open to discussion and explains why in a succinct manner. It is appropriately labeled an "exhortation" and does not pretend to be a complete teaching. Like all things human, it is limited and finite; just as its author, our dear sweet Vicar of Christ, is himself limited and finite. This man is a lover, a zealot, a man on fire with the Holy Spirit. He does not have the depth, breath, sophistication, nuance and "catholicity" manifest in his two brilliant predecessors. In his admirable single-mindedness, he pays scant attention to dramatic, significant realities: the absolute need, of the poor especially, for a cult of sexual fidelity and chastity; the primacy of worship and liturgy, even over mission; ambiguous, not univocally evil, nature of global capitalism and the need for a complicated, nuanced, social ethic of subsidiarity as well as solidarity; the ominous alliance of the expansive state and an imperial ethos of sexual license; and our own emergent, promising friendship with evangelical and pentecostal streams of Christianity. We will want to become inflamed with his zeal, and complement that with the wisdom of his two predecessors.