The Archbishop of Seville, Jose Angel Saiz Meneseshas chosen the passage of the Apocalypse ‘Look, I make all things new’to title the letter he wrote at the beginning of the liturgical year. The document is published after a year and a half of the episcopate of Saiz Meneses in Seville, and has indicated that it has been “an immersion as wide as intense that has allowed me to know many realities of diocesan life”.
The Sevillian archbishop trusts that at the end of this course it will be possible to reach a “normalization of practically all of our pastoral activity”, facing new challenges. He considers that he is not starting from scratch, and notes that he pastors a diocese “which has been on its way for many centuries and remains full of vitality”. This is how he expresses it in the introduction to a letter that consists of three parts in which he delves into today’s society, the announcement of the Word of God to the world and evangelization as an essential mission of the Church.
A society in constant change
The prelate starts from an analysis of “the reality that has to be evangelized”. To do this, it begins by realizing the changes at all levels that end up configuring a reality with its lights and shadows. He cites a series ofrapid and profound changes that affect the human being, torn between hope and vertigo in the face of so many novelties”.
The anthropological challenge, the need for evangelizers in the world of culture or an economy based on ethics and the common good, are some of the scenarios raised by the Archbishop of Seville in this analysis of reality. In this section, he also does not forget the management of new technologies – “the digital community is like a swarm full of isolated cells”, he emphasizes, citing Byung-Chul Han-, sustainability and care for the common home.
The Church also undergoes great transformations, “in the context of a dramatic drop in the birth rate”. But he points out that the difficulties that the Church has to face come from outside, “of environmental culture”, and from her own bosom, “of internal secularization, lack of communion or missionary audacity”. However, Saiz appreciates the growth in the number of lay people who actively participate in the mission of the Church. “His convinced and convincing testimony is a reason for hope“, Add.
“Go to the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to all creation”
“The Church has been sent to announce the Gospel to those who still do not know Jesus Christ, and also to those who have been baptized, but need a new evangelization”. With this statement begins the second part of the letter, which lists the various areas of action, and notes that this mission entails “the radical need for an integral conversion not only of people, but also of our institutions”. When the archbishop speaks of testimony, he is not referring only to that which is offered through words, “but also to that which is manifested with life.” The goal is for all areas of the archdiocese to become “spaces of healing reception and encounter with Christ, in the manner of Samaritan Churches”.
The Gospel we proclaim
The existence of the Church makes sense to the extent that “announces, preaches and teaches the Gospel”. This is the axis of the third part of the letter, in which Monsignor Saiz details some responses that the Church proposes for evangelization. Given the lack of meaning, liquidity and detachment, the archbishop proposes the testimony of Christian life. In addition, facing the relativism and subjectivism of the dominant society, he proposes “to make Jesus known”; in the face of poverty and the challenges posed by immigration, “witness the mercy of God”; Faced with the digital swarm to which he alluded at the beginning of the letter, he contributes “the friendship lived in the Christian community”; And as a response to the challenges posed by the future of the planet, the Archbishop of Seville postulates an ecological conversion that must start from dialogue and collaborative work.
At this point he lists a list of attitudes to undertake the evangelizing task, based on prayer and the primacy of grace as an essential theological principle. The evangelizer must live a strong and deep spirituality, with a life of intense prayer nourished by the Word of God and the sacraments. In addition, he must have a sense of Church. The archbishop stops here to explain that in the current situation we cannot live the faith and the apostolate individually.
Agents and spheres of evangelization
Finally, the letter points out which are the evangelizing agents: the bishop with his presbytery, the consecrated life and the laity. Three situations of evangelization are also detailed, beginning with ordinary pastoral action, followed by the “new evangelization” with the distant and concluding with the mission ad gentes. In this field, the prelate specifically mentions young people, situations of poverty, the “areopagus of culture” and the world of communication. “The missionary mandate remains valid in a world in which the influence of the media and social networks is increasingly decisive in the religious, psychological and moral development of people, in political and social systems, in the perception and transmission of values, in education”, he concludes.