Publications: New Evangelization Series
The New Evangelization Series consists of booklets focused on issues of evangelizing modern culture – a project begun by Pope Paul VI, who called for a “new period of evangelization” in his 1975 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelium Nuntiandi. The new series will draw primarily from the extensive discussion of the New Evangelization by Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II.
Booklet Synopses
| What is the New Evangelization We live in a world of inner sadness. People long to experience the joy of being definitively loved and definitively loving. Evangelization is the communication in words and in life, in prayer and in silence, in action and in suffering, of a love that both embraces man and infinitely surpasses him. It is the communication of joy. This joy is bigger than man because it comes from God. But precisely for that reason, it is the only joy that can satisfy the insatiable hunger of the human heart. |
“I Believe in You”: The Question of God in the Modern World We cannot quiet the question about God in our hearts. We cannot rid ourselves of an insatiable need to love and be loved. We cannot deny that there is something in us that wants us to be human in the most profound sense: to seek truth, to be free, to encounter the beautiful, to be true to our conscience, to love. As three young 20th-century converts help us to see, Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is the only adequate response to this most fundamental of human questions. In revealing to us the God who loves us “to the end,” Jesus reveals to us the full truth about man. |
The Mysteries of the Life of Jesus The life of Jesus Christ contains inexhaustible depths. It reveals the God who “so loved the world” (John 3:16) that he would bind himself to his creature forever. And because it shows us our destiny and our salvation, the life of the incarnate Son of God reveals the full truth about man. In the spirit of Mary, who pondered the events of her son’s life in her heart, this booklet seeks to help the reader enter ever more deeply into the “great mystery” of the incarnation. |
| A God Who Is Threefold Love The Christian belief that God is a Trinity is not a theory with which we try to explain God. It is the most living truth of the Christian faith, the foundation of everything else we believe and the reason behind everything else that exists. In Jesus Christ, who suffered, died and was raised, God showed himself to us as he really is: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a living dialogue of love. This booklet attempts to reflect on the basic Christian claim that “God is love” (1 John 4:8) – a “communion of eternal love” that invites us into itself, and that is the origin and destiny of every human life. |
We Have Come to Adore Him: An Introduction to Prayer at the School of Benedict XVI What is Christian life really about? God, who in himself is infinite love, life and light, wants to give us his life! He wants us to share in the riches of his own life, in the communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the foundational truth of Christianity. This is why the first paragraph of the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that in his Son Jesus, God the Father calls men and women “to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.” |
Called to Love: John Paul II’s Theology of Human Love This introduction to St. John Paul II’s catecheses on human love, or “theology of the body,” guides the reader through the Pope’s groundbreaking teaching on marriage, the family and sexuality in the context of the human person’s vocation to love. |
| In the Image of Love: Marriage, the Family and the New Evangelizations Through the sacrament of marriage, God’s love dwells in married love, healing it, transforming it and placing it at the center of the Church’s mission. |
Following Love Poor, Chaste and Obedient: The Consecrated Life St. Benedict, the 5th-century father of Western monasticism, once wrote, “nihil amori Christi praeponere”: “Don’t prefer anything to the love of Christ!” With these words, he effectively summed up the main point of the Gospel story about the rich man. Benedict was telling his monks: Christ is your Lord and God, and you should therefore love him “from your whole heart,” which also means “with your whole soul, and with your whole strength, and with your whole mind” (Luke 10:27). |
Light and Silence: A Eucharistic Diary To understand the Eucharist, one must understand silence: The silence of God the Creator, the silence of that moment when everything came forth from his hand, in which there was no voice except the roar of the waters and the storms, the planets, and the magma that crept slowly, forming as it went. And over everything, the silence of the Spirit of God the Creator. |
| The Beauty of Holiness: Sacred Art and the New Evangelization Masterpieces of sacred art reflect the new dimension of beauty that entered the world in Jesus Christ, the “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). As works of art lead us from seeing to contemplation to adoration, they allow us to encounter the divine beauty of Trinitarian love revealed in the human face of Christ. |
Technology and the New Evangelizations: Criteria for Discernment Today we often hear the question, “How can the Church use new technologies to further her mission?” Before we can answer, we must first engage in the process of listening, interpretation and judgment – of discernment – that underlies every proclamation of the Gospel. This booklet is meant to help the reader to engage in this work of discernment. It offers guidelines for critically thinking through the questions, “What aspects of the new communications media are compatible with the message of God’s love made flesh in Jesus Christ? What are not? How do we ensure that the means we use to proclaim the Gospel have as their origin, abiding orientation, and goal a concrete encounter with the Love that saves?” |
