Below is the text of Pope Francis’ weekly Wednesday audience, delivered on Jan. 11, 2023.
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Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!
Today we start a latest cycle of catechesis, dedicated to an urgent and decisive theme for Christian life: the fervour for evangelization, that’s, apostolic zeal. It is an important dimension for the Church: the community of Jesus’ disciples is in actual fact born apostolic, born missionary, not proselytizing. And from the beginning we’ve to differentiate: being missionary, being apostolic, evangelizing, shouldn’t be similar to proselytizing, they don’t have anything to do with each other. It concerns a significant dimension for the Church.
The community of the disciples of Jesus is born apostolic and missionary. The Holy Spirit molds it outwardly—the Church moves out, that goes out—in order that it shouldn’t be closed in on itself, but turned outward, a contagious witness of Jesus—the religion can be contagious—reaching out to radiate His light to the ends of the earth. It could actually occur, nevertheless, that the apostolic ardour, the need to achieve others with the excellent news of the Gospel, diminishes, becomes tepid. Sometimes it appears to be eclipsed; there are “closed-off” Christians, they don’t consider others. But when Christian life loses sight of the horizon of evangelization, horizon of proclamation, it grows sick: it closes in on itself, becomes self-referential, it becomes atrophied. Without apostolic zeal, faith withers. Mission, alternatively, is the oxygen of Christian life: it invigorates and purifies it.
How can we look upon others? How often can we see their faults and never their needs; how often can we label people in line with what they do or what they think!
Allow us to embark, then, on a technique of rediscovering the evangelizing passion, starting with the Scriptures and the Church’s teaching, to attract apostolic zeal from its sources. Then we’ll approach some living sources, some witnesses who’ve rekindled inside the Church the fervour for the Gospel, in order that they might help us to rekindle the fireplace that the Holy Spirit desires to keep burning inside us.
And today I would love to start with a somewhat emblematic Gospel episode; we [just] heard it, the decision of the Apostle Matthew. And he himself tells the story in his Gospel, which we’ve heard (cf. 9:9-13).
All of it begins with Jesus, who, the text says, “sees a person.” Few people saw Matthew as he was: they knew him because the one who was “sitting on the tax booth” (v. 9). He was, in actual fact, a tax collector: that’s, someone who collected taxes on behalf of the Roman empire that occupied Palestine. In other words, he was a collaborator, a traitor to the people. We will imagine the contempt the people felt for him: he was a “publican,” as they were called.
But within the eyes of Jesus, Matthew is a person, with each his miseries and his greatness. Concentrate on this: Jesus doesn’t stop on the adjective—Jesus at all times seeks out the noun. “This person is a sinner, he’s that type of person…” these are adjectives: Jesus goes to the person, to the center, “This can be a person, this can be a man, this can be a woman.” Jesus goes to the topic, the noun, never the adjective, He leaves aside the adjectives. And while there’s distance between Matthew and his people—because they see the adjective, “publican”—Jesus draws near to Him, because every man is loved by God. “Even this wretch?” Yes, even this wretch. Indeed, the Gospel says He got here for this very wretch: “I even have come for sinners, not for the righteous.” This gaze of Jesus is de facto beautiful. It sees the opposite, whoever he could also be, because the recipient of affection, is the start of the evangelizing passion. Every part starts from this gaze, which we learn from Jesus.
Pope Francis: We don’t have to attend until we’re perfect and have come a great distance following Jesus to bear witness to Him, no. Our proclamation begins today, there where we live.
We will ask ourselves: how can we look upon others? How often can we see their faults and never their needs; how often can we label people in line with what they do or what they think! Whilst Christians we are saying to ourselves: is he considered one of us or not? This shouldn’t be the gaze of Jesus: He at all times looks at everybody with mercy and indeed with predilection. And Christians are called to do as Christ did, looking like Him especially on the so-called “distant ones.” Indeed, Matthew’s account of the decision ends with Jesus saying, “I even have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (v. 13). And if any considered one of us considers themselves righteous, Jesus is distant. He draws near to our limitations, to our miseries, to heal them.
All of it starts, then, with the gaze of Jesus. “He sees a person,” Matthew. That is followed—second step—by a movement. First the gaze: Jesus sees. Second, movement. Matthew was sitting on the tax office; Jesus said to him: “Follow me.” And “ he rose and followed Him” (v. 9). We note that the text emphasizes that “he rose.” Why is that this detail so essential? Because in those days he who was seated had authority over the others, who stood before him to hearken to him or, as in that case, to pay tribute. He who sat, briefly, had power. The very first thing Jesus does is to detach Matthew from power: from sitting to receive others, He sets him in motion towards others, not receiving, no: he goes out to others. He makes him leave a position of supremacy with the intention to put him on an equal footing together with his brothers and sisters and open to him the horizons of service.
That is what Christ does, and this is prime for Christians: can we disciples of Jesus, we Church, sit around waiting for people to return, or can we know the right way to rise up, to set out with others, to hunt others? Saying, “But allow them to come to me, I’m here, allow them to come,” is a non-Christian position. No, you go to hunt them out, you are taking step one.
Can we disciples of Jesus, we Church, sit around waiting for people to return, or can we know the right way to rise up, to set out with others, to hunt others?
A glance—Jesus sees; a movement—“he rose”; and third, a destination. After getting up and following Jesus, where will Matthew go? We may think that, having modified the person’s life, the Master would lead him to latest encounters, latest spiritual experiences. No, or at the very least not immediately. First, Jesus goes to his home; there Matthew prepares “an ideal feast” for Him, during which “a big crowd of tax collectors”—that’s, people like him—takes part (Lk 5:29). Matthew returns to his environment, but he returns there modified and with Jesus. His apostolic zeal doesn’t begin in a latest, pure, place, a super place, distant, but as a substitute he begins there where he lives, with the people he knows.
Here is the message for us: we don’t have to attend until we’re perfect and have come a great distance following Jesus to bear witness to Him, no. Our proclamation begins today, there where we live. And it doesn’t begin by attempting to persuade others, no, to not persuade: by bearing every single day to the great thing about the Love that has looked upon us and lifted us up. And it is that this beauty, communicating this beauty that can persuade people—not communicating ourselves however the Lord Himself. We’re those who proclaim the Lord, we don’t proclaim ourselves, we don’t proclaim a political party, an ideology. No: we proclaim Jesus. We’d like to place Jesus involved with the people, without convincing them but allowing the Lord do the convincing. For as Pope Benedict taught us, “The Church doesn’t engage in proselytism. As an alternative, she grows by ‘attraction’” (Homily on the Mass for the Inauguration of the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, Aparecida, 13 May 2007). Don’t forget this: while you see Christians proselytizing, making an inventory of individuals to return… these should not Christians, they’re pagans disguised as Christians, but the center is pagan. The Church grows not by proselytism, it grows by attraction.
I remember once, in a hospital in Buenos Aires, the ladies religious who worked there left because they were too few, they usually couldn’t run the hospital. And a community of sisters from Korea got here. And so they arrived, let’s say on a Monday for instance (I don’t remember the day). They took possession of the sisters’ house within the hospital and on Tuesday they got here all the way down to visit the sick within the hospital, but they didn’t speak a word of Spanish. They only spoke Korean and the patients were joyful, because they commented: “Well done! These nuns, bravo, bravo!” “But what did the sister say to you?” “Nothing, but along with her gaze she spoke to me, they communicated Jesus,” not themselves, with their gaze, with their gestures. To speak Jesus, not ourselves: That is attraction, the alternative of proselytism.
This attractive witness, this joyful witness is the goal to which Jesus leads us with His loving gaze and with the outgoing movement that His Spirit raises up in our hearts. And we are able to consider whether our gaze resembles that of Jesus, to draw the people, to bring them closer to the Church. Let’s take into consideration that.
