LENT 2014 * Joy of the Gospel Series * two

CHAPTER FIVE

SPIRIT-FILLED EVANGELIZERS 

Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke 4:14-21

Pope Francis In His Own Words,
Joy of the Gospel:

262. Spirit-filled evangelizers are evangelizers who pray and work. Mystical notions without a solid social and missionary outreach are of no help to evangelization, nor are dissertations or social or pastoral practices which lack a Spirituality which can change hearts.  What is needed is the ability to cultivate an interior space which can give a Christian meaning to commitment and activity.

Without ---

• prolonged moments of adoration, 
• of prayerful encounter with the word, 
• of sincere conversation with the Lord, 

--- our work easily becomes meaningless; we lose energy as a result of weariness and difficulties, and our fervour dies out. The Church urgently needs the deep breath of prayer, .... even so, “we must reject the temptation to offer a privatized and individualistic Spirituality.

FOR REFLECTION

Do you have *a time* and *a place* and *a passage of scripture* and *a desire for His presence* picked out each day for prayer?

264. The primary reason for evangelizing is the love of Jesus which we have received, the experience of salvation which urges us to ever greater love of him. What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known? 

• If we do not feel an intense desire to share this love, we need to pray insistently that he will once more touch our hearts. 

• We need to implore his grace daily, asking him to open our cold hearts and shake up our lukewarm and superficial existence. 

• How much good it does us when he once more touches our lives and impels us to share his new life! What then happens is that “we speak of what we have seen and heard” (1 Jn 1:3). 

The best incentive for sharing the Gospel comes from 

• contemplating it with love, 
• lingering over its pages and 
• reading it with the heart. 

If we approach it in this way, its beauty will amaze and constantly excite us. But if this is to come about, we need to recover a contemplative Spirit which can help us to realize ever anew that we have been entrusted with a treasure which makes us more human and helps us to lead a new life. There is nothing more precious which we can give to others.

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS

For more information on praying with scripture go to pages: Praying On A Passage of Scripture.