Evangelii gaudium1

1. The Joy of the Gospel: A joy ever new,

a joy which is shared

The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives

of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept
his offer of salvation are set free from sin,
sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With
Christ joy is constantly born anew.

The great danger in todays world, pervaded as

it is by consumerism, is the desolation and
anguish born of a complacent yet covetous
heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures,
and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior
life becomes caught up in its own interests and
concerns, there is no longer room for others, no
place for the poor. Gods voice is no longer
heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt,
and the desire to do good fades. This is a very

http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/docum
ents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-
gaudium.html
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real danger for believers too. Many fall prey to
it, and end up resentful, angry and listless. That
is no way to live a dignified and fulfilled life; it
is not Gods will for us, nor is it the life in the
Spirit which has its source in the heart of the
risen Christ.

Pope Francis invites all Christians, everywhere,

at this very moment, to a renewed personal
encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an
openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all
of you to do this unfailingly each day

This is the joy which we experience daily, amid

the little things of life, as a response to the
loving invitation of God our Father: My child,
treat yourself well, according to your means
Do not deprive yourself of the days enjoyment
(Sir 14:11, 14). What tender paternal love
echoes in these words!

The Gospel, radiant with the glory of Christs

cross, constantly invites us to rejoiceThere
are Christians whose lives seem like Lent
without Easter. I realize of course that joy is not
expressed the same way at all times in life,
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especially at moments of great difficulty. Joy
adapts and changes, but it always endures, even
as a flicker of light born of our personal
certainty that, when everything is said and done,
we are infinitely loved.

2. Joyful in the Cross. Joyful in

humiliation. We need to constantly
grow in humility.

Since the fall, we are all proud men. We

want to dominate; we want to command; we
want to be appreciated; we want to be
applauded. Contempt and indifference leave
a profound sadness, a painful bitterness in
our souls.
It will help you and me more than anything
else when we are forsaken, wrongly judged,
calumniated, or rejected to think of our
Lords humiliations. When you are suffering
under the blow of a humiliation, think of
those He endured. He was not obliged to
suffer them, but He knew how hard it would
be for us to be humiliated, so He Himself
willed to be the first to show us the way, in
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 order to be able to say to us, Where I have
passed, you can pass too. This is all the
more true because we do not walk in His
footsteps, but are carried by Him.
Our Lord was infinite innocence and purity.
We are all guilty. Whatever the injustice
which falls on us, we can always tell
ourselves that we have merited it, if not at
the present time, at least by our past faults.
To practice this is a difficult thing: not to
protest, not to take offense, not to complain.
Under the pretext of dignity, of justice, what
hindrances we place in the way of humility!
The majority of hurts, offended feelings,
grudges, and bitterness in life with others
come from this obsession with our rights,
this need for esteem, so strongly woven into
our self. He or she who honestly puts
herself in the last place is not astonished
when others put her there, too.
We must be humble in accepting our lack of
success. The intoxication of praise, of
adulation, turns a persons head, sometimes
to the point of dizziness. When everything is
successful, when a person receives nothing

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 but applause, how could he or she not believe
herself to be something or someone
important? That is the danger of prominent
positions. Therefore let us you and I bless the
humiliation which disillusions and which
saves.
We must strive to be humble in accepting our
mistakes, to know how to say, I was
wrong. It is not easy; it costs something.
To know how to hold ourselves in contempt,
to seek advice or counsel, and, at the same
time, not to be preoccupied with the opinion
of creatures, with what people will say.
When we decide on some action, nine times
out of ten, we keep asking ourselves, What
are people going to think? What will so-and-
so think if I do that? and not, What will our
Lord think?
We may have seen souls paralyzed by a
small humiliation. This person cannot bear
the slightest pinprick, while that one cannot
stand a contradiction, and chasms are thus
created between people. Each one shuts
herself up in her revolt, and bitterness
spreads in her heart.

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 Another consequence of offended self-love is
getting all upset. After a fall and seeing
ourselves on the ground, rather than simply
recognizing our own weakness and
impotence, and remaining in peace, you and I
can conclude, I shall never succeed. I give
up. It is useless. That is really rebellious
discouragement. The one who is truly
childlike is not surprised if she stumbles. She
falls and picks herself up again without
wearying, each time more determined to
attain her goal.
It is our Lord who will give you and me this
humility and submission in the measure that
you and I desire them and ask for them, with
confidence, in our prayers.

3. We must be sowers of peace and joy.

What will crown this humility, this

confidence, this abandonment to Divine
Providence? The peace which our Lord came
to bring upon the earth.
This peace comes through fidelity to grace,
fidelity to confidence. It gives sweetness to
our intimacy with our Lord. To lose
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 confidence is to draw back from His arms,
and at the same time it is to lose peace.
Pope Francis in Evangelii gaudium
forewarns us that sometimes we are tempted
to find excuses and complain, acting as if we
could only be happy if a thousand conditions
were met. To some extent this is because our
technological society has succeeded in
multiplying occasions of pleasure, yet has
found it very difficult to engender joy. I can
say that the most beautiful and natural
expressions of joy which I have seen in my
life were in poor people who had little to
hold on toI never tire of repeating those
words of Benedict XVI which take us to the
very heart of the Gospel: Being a Christian
is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty
idea, but the encounter with an event, a
person, which gives life a new horizon and a
decisive direction
Thanks solely to this encounter or renewed
encounter with Gods love, which
blossoms into an enriching friendship, we are
liberated from our narrowness and self-
absorption. We become fully human when

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 we become more than human, when we let
God bring us beyond ourselves in order to
attain the fullest truth of our being. Here we
find the source and inspiration of all our
efforts at evangelization. For if we have
received the love which restores meaning to
our lives, how can we fail to share that love
with others?
It is a duty for you and I to spread this sweet
and joyful peace around us, but, as St.
Therese of Lisieux so knowingly remarked,
not like judges of peace, but like angels of
peace.
The first way to work for peace in the world
is to let our Lord establish it in our souls.

Reference:

Rev. Jean C. J. d'Elbe. "Great Desires,

Humility, and Peace." chapter 5 from I Believe
in Love: Personal Retreat Based on the
Teaching of St. St. Thrse of Lisieux
(Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2001):
115-140.