Forming the New Evangelist – Ardor from Beauty, Method in Goodness, Sanctity as Truthful Expression

Abstract

John Paul II has put the newness of evangelization into proportion with qualities of ardor, method, and expression. Evangelization as a witness of encountering the risen Lord requires growth in quality and removal of obstacles for the encounter of Christ, the prime-evangelist, with every human person, resulting in the transformation of humanity within, into a new being. This love of Christ encounters man through its own transcendental properties by overriding man’s inattentiveness, ignorance, and adversity, with all gentleness and respect, within an interpersonal »I -Thou« dialogue. The methodological order by which Hans Urs von Balthasar realigns the transcendentals of Being as Love – beauty, goodness, truth – offers a promising frame and substance for the interpretation of the qualities of New evangelization and those who aspire to practice it. In the encounter with the beauty of the Lord (his Glory) the human person becomes enraptured by it, resulting in religious conversion (demonstratio religiosa). Such a person has her ardor ignited, with an ever stronger desire of responding to the call to »come and see« and »come and follow«. Hence commences the central phase, the drama of imitating Christ; by meeting the one that is Good, the ardent evangelist finds and exhibits a method: existing by playing a supporting role to Christ’s kenotic love on the stage of the world, thus going through the process of moral conversion (demonstration Christiana) and becoming ever better himself. The final phase of obedience and self-emptying (in continuity with the rapture and the drama), inseparable from a life of prayer, consists in reflecting and expressing the truth lived in a saintly existence, the unique personal form of a true lover of Wisdom, for whom »to die is to gain«. In such a manner, the world which seeks witnesses more than teachers is offered abundant reason to enter an existential encounter with Being as Love in the process of intellectual conversion (demonstration Catholica) towards Christ as universal concretum.