Apr 27 Mon
What are the priorities in the apostolate of the Church?
In a recent letter, Pope Leo XIV conveyed Easter greetings to the College of Cardinals, with a little bit of business included, together with the prayerful well-wishing and gratitude for their work.
It is, in a certain sense, a program to be followed in relation to the consistory convened for June 2026. In the letter, the Pope acknowledges the importance of centering Christian life on the fundamental tenets of the Faith and promoting a pastoral and missionary conversion to give a new impulse to the evangelization.
First, he calls for a renewal of faith at the personal level, based on prayer and coherence of life. This perspective challenges the Church at every level.
On the personal level, Leo says, every baptized person must be aware that they are called to renew their encounter with Christ, moving from a faith merely received to a faith truly lived and experienced. This journey affects the very quality of spiritual life, expressed in the primacy of prayer, in the witness and action that precedes words, and in the coherence between one’s faith and life.
On the community level, he wrote, Now, I wish to focus in particular on what emerged from the groups regarding Evangelii Gaudium, concerning mission and the transmission of the faith.
Communities are to shift from a pastoral approach of maintenance to an attitude of mission. This requires communities to be living agents of the proclamation of the Gospel.
Leo even gets into specifics on the point: Noting the need to foster “welcoming communities that use accessible language, attentive to the quality of relationships, and are capable of offering places for listening, accompaniment, and healing.”
Thirdly, at the diocesan level, the Pope pointed out, the responsibility of Pastors to resolutely support missionary boldness emerges clearly, ensuring that such boldness is not weighed down or stifled by organizational excesses, but is guided by a discernment that helps us to recognize what is essential.”
“From all this flows a profoundly unified understanding of mission, which is Christ-centered and kerygmatic [based on the fundamental dogmas of the Faith]. A mission that is born of an encounter with Christ that is capable of transforming lives and spreading through attraction rather than conquest.”
At this diocesan level, there must be, Leo wrote, “an integral mission, holding in balance explicit proclamation, witness, commitment and dialogue, and yielding neither to the temptation of proselytism nor to a merely institutional mentality of preservation or expansion."
“Even when the Church finds herself in a minority,” Leo wrote, “she is called to live with confident courage, as a small flock bringing hope to all, mindful that the aim of mission is not its own survival, but the communication of the love with which God loves the world.”
In sum, there must be,
- On the personal level, mature faith, prayer, and coherence of life
- On the community level, parishes are to be living agents of the proclamation of the Gospel.
- At the diocesan level, missionary boldness and discernment to recognize what is essential.