This quotation is very profound and significant. It challenges not only nations and political leaders, but every one of us.
The crucial necessity in “announc[ing] the joy of the Gospel” is our own ongoing experience of a life-changing encounter with Jesus. People will be drawn to Christ by our living in a new way. The grace of the Holy Spirit who has been given to us is also working mysteriously in the heart of every person we meet.
Everyone searches for “meaning.” The meaning, significance, and purpose that every human being seeks has become a man, Jesus Christ. We are best able to communicate this “good news”—this wondrous event of the Word coming to dwell with human beings and remaining with us—by asking God to empower us to live the Gospel in every encounter with the human person.
The Lord—Pope Francis reminds us—wants to make us sharers in His eternal life, which we already begin to live by grace here and now in the present age. We are being transformed in Christ even as we journey with Him on the roads of this world. Jesus calls us to bear witness to His Gospel by the way we live our lives, by the freedom and joy we find in doing His loving and merciful will; we must evangelize “through our lives transfigured by the presence of God.”
Here are some creative illuminations of the Pope’s words:
