THE first Christian communities were concerned about clearly differentiating John\u2019s baptism that immersed people in the Jordan River from Jesus\u2019 baptism that communicated his Spirit in order to cleanse, renew and transform the heart of his followers. Without that Spirit of Jesus, the church closes up shop and dies.<\/p>\n
Only the Spirit of Jesus can put more truth into today\u2019s Christianity. Only this Spirit can lead us to recover our true identity, letting go of paths that lead us further and further from the Gospel. Only that Spirit can give us light and energy to fire up the renewal that the church needs today.<\/p>\n
Pope Francis knows very well that the greatest obstacle to putting in effect a new process of evangelisation is spiritual mediocrity. He says so left and right. He wants to spark with all his power a process that is \u201cmore burning, joyful, generous, bold, full of love to the end and full of contagious life\u201d. But all that will be insufficient \u201cif the fire of the Spirit doesn\u2019t burn in their hearts\u201d.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why he is looking to give today\u2019s Church \u201cevangelisers with Spirit\u201d who open themselves without fear to the Spirit\u2019s action and who find in that Holy Spirit of Jesus \u201cthe power to announce the truth of the Gospel with audacity, at the top of their voices and in every time and place, even when it is against the current\u201d.<\/p>\n
The renovation that the Pope wants to push in today\u2019s Christianity isn\u2019t possible \u201cwhen the lack of a deep spirituality translates into pessimism, fatalism and mistrust\u201d, or when it leads us to think that \u201cnothing can change\u201d and in the end result, it\u2019s useless to even try or when we finally give up, \u201cdominated by chronic discontent or boredom that withers our soul\u201d<\/p>\n
Pope Francis warns us that \u201csometime we loose our enthusiasm when we forget that the Gospel responds to the deepest needs of each person\u201d However, that\u2019s not they way things should be. The Pope forcefully expresses his conviction: \u201cit\u2019s not the same to have known Jesus as to not have known him, it\u2019s not the same to walk alongside him as to walk tentatively, it\u2019s not the same to be able to listen to him as to ignore his Word, it\u2019s not the same to try to build the world on his Gospel as to try to do it only based on our own ideas\u201d.<\/p>\n
We need to discover all this is based\u00a0 on our own personal experience in Jesus. On the contrary, for the one who doesn\u2019t discover it \u201cthat one will quickly loose energy and passion; and a person who isn\u2019t convinced, enthusiastic sure, in love, won\u2019t convince anyone\u201d.<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t it right here that we\u2019ll find one of the main obstacles to pushing forward the renewal that Pope Francis wants?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE first Christian communities were concerned about clearly differentiating John\u2019s baptism that immersed people in the Jordan River from Jesus\u2019 baptism that communicated his Spirit in order to cleanse, renew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notices"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2524"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2528,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2524\/revisions\/2528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kmgit.com\/testbuzz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}