Comment from Understand the Times:
In order to participate in the New Evangelization it will be necessary to believe that Jesus is a wafer and that he can be placed in a container. While Rome says this is pointing people to "Jesus," the biblical definition of this kind of belief is best described as idolatry.
October 31 - Vatican official explains keys to New Evangelization
Article: Roman Catholic Church And The Last Days
The secretary of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, Archbishop Octavio Ruiz Arenas recently outlined the important elements of the New Evangelization called for by Blessed John Paul II and now Benedict XVI.
The concept of the New Evangelization came out of the Third General Conference of the Latin American Bishops’ Council in Puebla, Mexico, the archbishop explained. The task of the Church, the council said, was to forge “an evangelization of the culture and a new quality of evangelization as well, which begins at the personal level, in the family and at the parish, in order to confront the widespread phenomenon of secularization.”
Archbishop Ruiz Arenas then listed a series of requirements for undertaking this task. The first, he said, is to “give primacy to grace,” as John Paul II taught. “We must be aware that it is the Holy Spirit that works in the Church. We must not fall into the temptation to think that it is our works or our plans that lead to results and to conversion,” he explained.
The second is “to live as an authentic missionary disciple. Discipleship is a reality that cannot be lived in an isolated, individual way, but rather it must be lived in community. The Lord went about choosing and calling his disciples. Today he calls each one of us as well and gives us a mission.The third requirement is to show great generosity, while the fourth is that the all the activity of the Church be an expression of love and service in search of the comprehensive well-being of the human person. This love and service speaks for itself and constitutes a form of evangelization. “By our words, our silence and our example, we make what we proclaim and celebrate believable,” the archbishop said.
The fifth requirement is that prayer be at the foundation of everything that we do. “We live in a world of continual agitation and movement, which translates into activism that runs of risk of ‘doing for the sake of doing,’” he continued.
The sixth requirement is the centrality of the Eucharist, “which contains in itself the very nucleus of the mystery of the Church and constitutes the source and summit of the entire Christian life. The mystery of the faith is celebrated in it with joy, as it makes present the central event of our salvation and brings about the work of our redemption, making the redeeming sacrifice of Christ ever present in our time,” the archbishop said.
The seventh requirement is continual reading of the Word of God. “We urgently need to trust in the Sacred Scriptures and be familiar with them, so that they will be the compass that guides our path,” he said, recommending the prayerful reading of the Bible through “lectio divina.”
He concluded by reminding young people of John Paul II’s call to “cast out into the deep” in order to be “evangelizers of others: of your families, your friends and companions and of all those whose faith is weak or who are afraid to commit to the Lord. Today, you are the Apostles of the New Evangelization.”
The Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization was created by Pope Benedict XVI in June of 2010 to foster a reawakening of the faith especially in Europe and the United States.
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