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Illustration: The Four Evangelists by Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678)
Pope FrancisCatechesis on Evangelization No 1
Paul VI Audience Hall – Wednesday, 11 January 2023
Catechesis. The passion for evangelization: the apostolic zeal of the believer.
The call to the apostolate (Mt 9:9-13)
“Jesus goes to the substance, to the noun, never to the adjective”
Gospel of Matthew (9:9-13)
As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. And as he sat at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.
Dear brothers and sisters,
Today we begin a new cycle of catecheses, dedicated to an urgent and decisive theme for Christian life: the passion for evangelization, that is, apostolic zeal.
This is a vital dimension for the Church: the community of Jesus’ disciples is born apostolic, born missionary, not proselytizing.
From the beginning we had to distinguish this: being missionary, being apostolic, evangelizing is not the same as proselytism, nothing to do one thing with another.
It is a vital dimension for the Church, the community of Jesus’ disciples is born apostolic and missionary.
The Holy Spirit molds its outgoing – the outgoing Church goes out – so that it is not folded in on itself, but outgoing, a contagious witness of Jesus faith is also infected – reaching out to radiate her light to the ends of the earth.
However, it can happen that the apostolic zeal, the desire to reach out to others with the good proclamation of the Gospel, diminishes and becomes lukewarm. Sometimes it seems to eclipse. They are closed Christians. They do not think of others.
But when Christian life loses sight of the horizon of evangelization, the horizon of proclamation, it becomes sick: it closes in on itself, becomes self-referential. It wastes away.
Without apostolic zeal, faith withers.
Mission is instead the oxygen of Christian life: it invigorates and purifies it.
Let us then embark on a journey to rediscover the evangelizing passion, beginning with the Scriptures and the teaching of the Church, to draw apostolic zeal from the sources.
Then we will approach some living springs, some witnesses who have rekindled in the Church the passion for the Gospel, so that they may help us to rekindle the fire that the Holy Spirit wants to burn always in us.
And today I would like to begin with a somewhat emblematic Gospel episode that we have heard: the call of the Apostle Matthew, and he himself recounts it in his Gospel, in the passage we have heard (Matthew 9:9-13 above).
It all begins with Jesus, who “sees”, the text says, “a man”. Few saw Matthew as he was: they knew him as the one who was “sitting at the tax office”.
He was indeed a tax collector: one, that is, who collected taxes on behalf of the Roman Empire that occupied Palestine.
In other words, he was a collaborator, a traitor to the people.
We can imagine the contempt that people felt for him: he was a “publican”, as he was called.
But, in the eyes of Jesus, Matthew is a man, with his miseries and his greatness.
Jesus goes to the substance, to the noun, never to the adjective
Be careful with this: Jesus does not stop at adjectives, Jesus always looks for the noun.
“This is a sinner, this is such a man for which…” they are adjectives.
Jesus goes to the person, to the heart, this is a person, this is a man, this is a woman,
Jesus goes to the substance, to the noun, never to the adjective, he lets go of adjectives.
And while there is distance between Matthew and his people – because they saw the adjective, “publican” – Jesus draws near to him, because every man is loved by God.
“This wretched too?” Yes, even this wretched man, indeed he came for this wretched man, the Gospel says: “I have come for sinners, not for the righteous”.
This gaze of Jesus, which is beautiful, which sees the other, whoever he/she is, as the recipient of love, is the beginning of the evangelizing passion.
Everything starts from this gaze, which we learn from Jesus.
We can ask ourselves: how is our gaze towards others?
How often do we see their faults and not their needs;
How often do we label people for what they do or what they think!
Even as Christians we say to ourselves: is he one of us or not one of us!
This is not the gaze of Jesus:
He always looks at each person with mercy, indeed with a favorable attitude of mind.
And Christians are called to do as Christ did, looking like him especially at the so-called “distant people”. In fact, the account of Matthew’s call ends with Jesus saying: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (v. 13). And if each of us feels righteous, Jesus is far away, He draws near to our limits and our miseries, to heal us.
So, it all begins with Jesus’ gaze “He saw a man,” Matthew.
This is followed by – second passage – a movement.
First the look, Jesus saw, then the second passage, the movement.
Matthew was sitting at the tax booth; Jesus said to him, “Follow me.”
And he “got up and followed him” (v. 9).
We note that the text emphasizes that “he got up.” Why is this detail so important?
Because in those days the one who was sitting had authority over others, who stood before him to listen to him or, as in that case, to pay tribute.
He who was sitting, in short, had power.
The first thing Jesus does is to detach Matthew from power: from sitting and receiving others sets him in motion toward others, not receiving, no: going to others; it makes him leave a position of supremacy to put him on an equal footing with his brothers and open to him the horizons of service.
This he does and this is fundamental for Christians: do we disciples of Jesus, we the Church, sit around waiting for people to come or do we know how to get up, set out with others, seek others?
It is a non-Christian position to say, “But let them come, I am here, let them come.”
No, you go and look for them, you take the first step.
A look – Jesus saw – a movement – rises – and third, a goal.
After getting up and following Jesus, where will Matthew go?
We might imagine that, having changed that man’s life, the Master leads him towards new encounters, new spiritual experiences.
No, or at least not right away.
First Jesus goes to his house; there Matthew prepares for him “a great banquet”, in which “a large crowd of publicans participates” (Lk 5:20), that is, people like him.
Matthew returns to his environment but he returns there changed and with Jesus.
His apostolic zeal does not begin in a new, pure place, an ideal, distant place, but there.
It begins where he lives, with the people he knows.
Here is the message for us: we must not wait to be perfect and to have made a long journey after Jesus to bear witness to him.
Our proclamation begins today, where we live.
And it does not begin by trying to convince others, convincing no:
but witnessing every day to the beauty of Love that has looked at us and raised us up.
It will be this beauty, communicating this beauty to convince people, not communicating us, but the Lord himself.
We are the ones who proclaim the Lord, we do not announce ourselves, nor do we announce a political party, an ideology, no: we announce Jesus.
We have to connect Jesus with people, without convincing them, but let the Lord convince. Indeed, as Pope Benedict taught us, “the Church does not proselytize. Rather, it develops by attraction” (Homily at the Inaugural Mass of the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, Aparecida, 13 May 2007).
Don’t forget this: when you see Christians proselytizing, making you a list of people to come… These are not Christians. They are pagans disguised as Christians but the heart is pagan.
The Church grows not by proselytism, it grows by attraction.
Once I remember that in the hospital in Buenos Aires the sisters who worked there left because they were few and could not carry on the hospital and a community of sisters from Korea came and they arrived, let’s think Monday for example, I do not remember the day. They took possession of the house of the sisters of the hospital and on Tuesday they went down to visit the sick in the hospital, but they did not speak a word of Spanish, only spoke Korean and the sick were happy, because they commented: “Brave these sisters, brave, brave” – But what did the sister say to you? “Nothing, but with her gaze she spoke to me. The sisters communicated Jesus“. Not communicating themselves, but with your gaze, with gestures, communicating Jesus. This is the attraction, the opposite of proselytism.
This attractive witness, this joyful witness is the goal to which Jesus leads us with his gaze of love and with the movement of going out that his Spirit stirs in our hearts.
And we can think about whether our gaze resembles that of Jesus to draw people closer to the Church. Let’s think this.
