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To evangelize we must first be evangelized, because true insertion occurs when we carry out a true evangelizing action with our life in all the places in which we are. We are there to be not just one more person, but to prolong the Incarnation in that place where we are.
We must face evangelization without diluting faith to the “rational,” without turning the sacred into the profane, without falling into insubstantial spiritualities that make us feel good but do not transform us from within. We must transmit the truth of God and not that of the world or our own truth. We must transmit the holiness of God, accepting the fact that we will be signs of contradiction. We must transmit the will of God and not do our own will.
We must let the Gospel transform our lives, let the Gospel renew our lives, because, as our Directory of Spirituality says, “True inculturation is from within: it consists, ultimately, in a renewal of life under the influence of grace” (51). We will never be able to make the Gospel inform the culture if the Gospel does not inform us first.
For the Gospel to be truly inserted into our lives and, thus, for our insertion in the world to be an effective insertion that transforms it, it is necessary that we put into practice the following:
No work of evangelization can be carried out if one is not united to God, if one is not a true instrument of God, if one is not another incarnation. Union with God is realized principally through the meticulous fulfillment of his Will in each and every aspect of our lives. We cannot live unconcerned about God’s Will or only worried about his Will in the things that are obligatory or sinful: to fulfill the commandments. We must constantly ask ourselves about his Will in order to fulfill it and learn to discern it so that the devil does not deceive us. Just because an idea that comes to my mind is good does not mean that it is God’s Will.
From living in dependence on the Will of God arises another indispensable element so that our lives may really evangelize, and that is “testimony of life.” We must evangelize by our example. “In this apostolic work where ‘we are missionaries above all because of what we are … even before we become missionaries in word or deed,’ (RMs, 23) our testimony of life—the ‘first and irreplaceable form of mission’ (RMs, 42)—occupies the first place so that the charity of Christ may shine among the faithful” (Constitutions, 166).
It is the love of our neighbor that must move us to want to bring them to that beautiful renewal that we first experience in our lives and which we desire others to experience as well, because love tends to give or share. The more intense the love is, the more it seeks to give itself to others. Hence, to transform others should be the overwhelming yearning that anyone who has been truly transformed by the Gospel must feel.
In short, we must bring the Gospel to all men following the “style of the Incarnation,” meaning penetrating and transforming the human culture from the inside, since what matters is to evangelize man’s culture and cultures not in a purely decorative way, as it were, by applying a thin veneer, but in a vital way, in depth, and right to their very roots. Therefore, every effort must be made to ensure a full evangelization of culture.
Institute of the Incarnate Word. © 2022 All rights reserved. | The Institute of the Incarnate Word, Inc. We are a non-profit 501(c)3 religious organization.
