Below is the text of Pope Francis’ weekly Wednesday audience, delivered on November 29, 2023.
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Dear brothers and sisters,
We have seen in recent times that the Christian proclamation is a joy and that it is for everyone; today we will see a third aspect: it is for today.
Today, we almost always hear bad things. Certainly, with wars, climate change, global injustice and crises of migration, family and hope, there is no shortage of reasons to worry. In general, today it seems to be inhabited by a culture that places the individual above all and technology at the center of everything, with its ability to solve many problems and its gigantic advances in many areas.
But at the same time, this culture of technical-individual progress leads to the affirmation of a freedom which does not want to set limits and is indifferent to those who are behind. Thus, it entrusts great human aspirations to the often voracious logic of economics, with a vision of life that excludes those who do not produce and that struggles to look beyond the immanent. We could even say that we find ourselves in the first civilization in history which globally seeks to organize a human society without the presence of God, concentrated in immense cities which remain horizontal despite their dizzying skyscrapers.
The story of the city of Babel and its tower comes to mind (cf. Gen 11:1-9). It tells of a social project which involves sacrificing all individuality for the efficiency of the collective. Humanity speaks only one language – one could say that it has a “single way of thinking” – as if enveloped in a sort of general spell which absorbs the singularity of each person into a bubble of uniformity. So God confuses languages, that is to say, he reestablishes differences, recreates the conditions for uniqueness to develop, revives the multiple where ideology would like to impose the unique. The Lord also diverts humanity from its delirium of omnipotence: “Let us make a name for ourselves,” say the exalted inhabitants of Babel (v. 4), who want to reach heaven, to put themselves in God’s place.
But these are dangerous, alienating, and destructive ambitions, and the Lord, by thwarting these expectations, protects humanity, thereby preventing imminent disaster. This story seems really relevant today: even today, cohesion, instead of brotherhood and peace, often relies on ambition, nationalism, homologation and techno-economic structures that instill the persuasion that God is insignificant and useless: not so much because we seek more knowledge, but above all for more power. It is a temptation that permeates the great challenges of today’s culture.
Apostolic zeal is never a simple repetition of an acquired style, but the testimony that the Gospel is alive for us today. Aware of this, let us look at our time and our culture as a gift.
In “Evangelii Gaudium», I tried to describe others (cf. nos. 52-75), but above all I called for “an evangelization capable of highlighting these new ways of relating to God, others and the world around us, and of inspiring essential values. It must reach the places where new stories and paradigms are formed, carrying the word of Jesus deep into the soul of our cities” (No. 74). In other words, Jesus can only be announced by inhabiting the culture of his time; and always taking to heart the words of the Apostle Paul concerning the present: “Behold, now is the pleasant time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2).
It is therefore not necessary to oppose alternative visions of the past today. Nor is it enough to simply reiterate acquired religious beliefs which, however true they may be, become abstract over time. A truth does not become more credible because we raise our voice when saying it, but because we bear witness to it with our lives.
Apostolic zeal is never a simple repetition of an acquired style, but the testimony that the Gospel is alive for us today. Aware of this, let us look at our time and our culture as a gift. They are ours, and evangelizing them does not mean judging them from afar, nor does it mean standing on a balcony and shouting the name of Jesus, but rather taking to the streets, going to where we live, frequent the spaces where we live. suffers, works, studies and reflects, inhabiting the crossroads where human beings share what is meaningful for their lives. This means being, as a Church, a leaven of “dialogue, encounter, unity”. After all, our own formulations of faith are the fruit of dialogue and encounter between cultures, communities and diverse situations. We must not fear dialogue: on the contrary, it is precisely confrontation and criticism that help us preserve theology from transformation into ideology” (Speech at the Fifth National Congress of the Italian ChurchFlorence, November 10, 2015).
It is necessary to stand at today’s crossroads. Abandoning them would impoverish the Gospel and reduce the Church to a sect. Attending them, on the other hand, helps us Christians to understand in a renewed way the reasons for our hope, to extract and share from the treasure of faith “what is new and what is old” (Mt 13:52). .
In short, more than wanting to convert today’s world, we must convert pastoral care so that it better embodies today’s Gospel (cf. Evangelii gaudium, 25). Let us make Jesus’ desire our own: to help other travelers not to lose their desire for God, to open their hearts to Him and to find the One who, today and always, gives peace and joy to humanity.
