Who will go to them to proclaim Christ?
Yesterday was the Holy Father's second day in Angola, the second phase of his first papal visit to Africa. In his homily at the Sao Paulo church he spoke openly about the need to evangelize and to bring Christ directly to people who are so starving for it, and how we must not allow ourselves to fall prey to the relativism of today that says, "Oh just let people have their truth, and we have ours." Here is what he said:
Today it is up to you, brothers and sisters, following in the footsteps of those heroic and holy heralds of God, to offer the Risen Christ to your fellow citizens. So many of them are living in fear of spirits, of malign and threatening powers. In their bewilderment they end up even condemning street children and the elderly as alleged sorcerers. Who can go to them to proclaim that Christ has triumphed over death and all those occult powers (cf. Ephesians 1:19-23; 6:10-12)? Someone may object: "Why not leave them in peace? They have their truth, and we have ours. Let us all try to live in peace, leaving everyone as they are, so they can best be themselves." But if we are convinced and have come to experience that without Christ life lacks something, that something real -- indeed, the most real thing of all -- is missing, we must also be convinced that we do no injustice to anyone if we present Christ to them and thus grant them the opportunity of finding their truest and most authentic selves, the joy of finding life. Indeed, we must do this. It is our duty to offer everyone this possibility of attaining eternal life.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us say to them, in the words of the Israelite people: "Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn, that he may heal us." Let us enable human poverty to encounter divine mercy. The Lord makes us his friends, he entrusts himself to us, he gives us his Body in the Eucharist, he entrusts his Church to us. And so we ought truly to be his friends, to be one in mind with him, to desire what he desires and to reject what he does not desire. Jesus himself said: "You are my friends if you do what I command you" (John 15:14). Let this, then, be our common commitment: together to do his holy will: "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation" (Mark 16:15). Let us embrace his will, like St. Paul: "Preaching the Gospel [...] is a necessity laid upon me; woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!" (1 Corinthians 9:16).
It is so powerful to see the great pastor of the Church speak so directly about the need to evangelize. We in the West it seems have long ago chosen comfort over persecution, and would prefer to silently worship God without extending ourselves lovingly to others by offering the truth for which all of humanity starves. In particular when we see such harmful superstitions - or worse, demonic influence - we must be bold and seek the grace and the courage to preach the liberation that only comes from Christ. The human heart is created with a deep desire for love, and the human soul is created with a deep desire for truth, and it is only in Christ that we see that truth and love are originally identical, and thus that only Christ satisfies these two most fundamental desires of our humanity. St. Paul tells us that, For freedom Christ set us free (Gal 5:1), and what is this freedom if not the freedom to know and to love God? A great blessing man could not conceive.
So let us be courageous, let us be bold - let us be willing to be uncomfortable! In a society that dogmatizes relativism and tells us that we must simply accept that everyone has their truth, let us remember that there is but one truth, and that is Christ, and that if we are to truly love our neighbor we must find ways to bring Christ to them. There are many different ways to share the Gospel, and each person has their own talents, and each person we encounter may respond differently to different ways, but we must always strive to find a way to connect with our sister or brother in the heart, and help them open up to the truth of God's love, the truth of Jesus Christ.