Time To Begin Again

Globalization and the New Evangelization

Premise: Reopening ourselves to the joy of searching
and to faith as a search for joy

I think it is important to begin our reflection with an appropriate emotional tone, that is, with the right tone, which cannot be other than that of hope and joyous searching. In fact, in this tumultuous time, we want to reflect more deeply on our experience of faith simply because this experience fundamentally makes us happier. In other words, the spiritual experience is nothing other than the liberation and expansion in us of a Spirit who is a Spirit of joy, peace and the capacity to love (Ga. 5:22). Consequently, this experience offers us the most complete fulfillment of the human search for happiness. Only because of this does it draw and continue to draw and fascinate people.

Let us never forget this. Let us never bury this Spirit, this living Flame, under a heavy layer of ashes, that is to say, under abstract concepts that do little to rouse our enthusiasm. Let us not reduce the experience of faith to moralizing or, even worse, to social ethics, because in that way it will lose its fascination and ultimate meaning, as Benedict XVI continually reminds us: “In the decades that followed the Second Vatican Council, some have interpreted openness to the world not as a requirement of the missionary zeal of the heart of Christ, but rather as a passage to secularization, seeing in it several values of great Christian depth, such as equality, freedom and solidarity, and showing that they were ready to make concessions and to discover areas of cooperation. […] They were unconsciously caught up in the self-secularization of many ecclesial communities; these, hoping to please those who did not come, saw the members they already had leave, deprived and disappointed. When they meet us, our contemporaries want to see what they see nowhere else, that is, the joy and hope that come from being with the Risen Lord.”

Perhaps the crisis of faith that we are currently experiencing is precisely this: a sign of a lack of an authentic and pure spiritual life, and thus a lack of joy that is credibly lived and splendidly witnessed to; it is a sign of our heartrending need for a more direct experience of the divine.

Furthermore, we should remember that the joy of the Spirit often springs precisely from our understanding of reality, from our capacity to penetrate the mysteries of life and history with the powerful light of thoughts that are inspired and enlightened by the Word of God and that consequently enable us to see and understand. In fact, the human soul loves knowledge: it was created to know and therefore yearns for the light of true knowledge.

Thus we must also rediscover and transmit the cognitive power offered us by our faith in Christ so that our spiritual joy will be complete and we will be able to communicate it fully.

Thus, in an attempt to respond to the question as to how we can live and relaunch the Christian Faith in our times, we must first answer several preliminary questions. We must, in a certain sense, prepare a space suitable for reflection. We must create beforehand the conditions for adopting a serious cognitive attitude that will help us truly understand what we are talking about and thus rejoice in the light of a knowledge that satisfies us.

In fact, it seems that one of the prevailing characteristics of contemporary society is precisely mental confusion, a superficial attitude toward culture, what might even be called a renunciation of thinking and of questioning oneself, especially about important questions concerning the nature of human beings, our destiny here on earth, the things we hope for and can get to know, the specific features of the Christian Faith in relation to other religions, etc. It seems to me that the current dominance of nihilistic relativism coincides precisely with the pure and simple Babel of languages: a jumble of unfounded and contradictory opinions that clash with one another through mass communications carried out on what is by now the planetary level, with no longer any effort being made to clarify concepts or honestly search for more solidly-founded truths. Pope Benedict XVI sounds this alarm at almost every opportunity: “Pope Paul VI noted that ‘the world is in trouble because of the lack of thinking.’ He was making an observation, but also expressing a wish: a new trajectory of thinking is needed” (Caritas in Veritate, n. 53).

Because of this, today we are prompted more than ever to ask ourselves appropriate questions and to search for appropriate answers if we want to confront any problem whatsoever in a serious way, avoiding the temptation to reductionism and minimalism that reigns uncontested in the dominant culture.

In other words, we have an urgent need for new and broad horizons so as to emerge from the murky waters of our era: “We feel there is a need for a vision that allows us to look to tomorrow with the eyes of hope, without tears of desperation” (Lineamenta for the Synod on the New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Faith, p. 97).

 

Unilateral Interpretations of the Present Time

So let us ask ourselves right away: Well then, what stage of history have we reached? How can we interpret in a unitary and coherent way this complex, extreme and contradictory moment of history, utilizing interpretative keys that go beyond the superficial?

Currently, two dominant interpretive keys–one secular and one religious–are circulating almost everywhere.

The secular key [for reading our times] underscores almost universally a great sense of loss: the optimistic views of modernity have fallen into oblivion; ideologies characteristic of the Enlight-enment and of Marxism have by now proven to be catastrophic failures, and even the liberation project known as “democracy” is in profound crisis, often reduced to formal, soulless procedures and to commercial technocracies, while all the progressive illusions of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, founded on scientific-technological development, are being redimensioned more and more every day. In short, what predominates is a growing suspicion about the two “pillars” of modern rational thought–politics and science. Consequently, a discouraging and dark nihilism is spreading, accompanied by tentative attempts to construct some kind of autonomous lay ethic. It seems like the secular world has almost unanimously and without any moral resistance submitted to the dictates of technology and the marketplace, to a desperate materialism that lacks even illusory hopes of a final and completely earthly liberation of the human being, who up until yesterday survived in the light of the faded, overcast and almost always bloody sun of “tomorrow”….

Similar negative outlooks prevail on the religious side–including among Christians and Catholics–even though they are interpreted and evaluated differently. In fact, almost all the world’s spiritual traditions denounce the materialistic, consumeristic, individualistic and desperate nihilism into which Western civilization is rapidly sliding in its planetary expansion. In every part of the world–Europe and Asia, the Americas and Africa alike–we are seeing a great deal of backwash and “religious” revolt against modernity: a phenomenon that has been termed fundamentalism. But even without adopting the regressive and at times violent characteristics of this movement, we Catholics too almost always speak about our time in negative terms, referring to it as a time of de-Christianization, of secularization, of a loss of a sense of faith, of sin, etc.: “We are in an era of profound secularization, which has lost the capacity to listen to and understand the Gospel message as a living and enlivening message” (Lineamenta, p. 29).

However, we want to make a more profound reading of our times than the above two, which are a little too unilateral, and thus we can ask ourselves: But why is all this happening? Why did the scientific and political project concerning modernity go into crisis since it bore and continues to bear within itself many incentives for growth? Why is it that historical Christianity found it so hard to speak convincingly of the Faith and its hopes and draw people to it that at this point a new evangelization is needed? And probing even deeper: Why do all the human institutions from marriage to nations, from Church to school, from political groups to the military, seem to be undergoing unprecedented transformations? What does this kind of universal “earthquake” signify? Only loss? Are we truly hurtling toward nothingness and chaos, or, through this extremely painful crisis, are we with great labor going through an extraordinary evolution–almost a new birth for humanity? Is it possible that for now we can hear only the voices of the dying in this crisis–that is, of Dying Humanity–while the voice of the humanity about to be born is still so weak it can barely be heard? Don’t Christians believe that they are the voice of the New Humanity that is taking shape? Don’t we believe that we ourselves are this Body, which has conquered all history and is rising anew from all the deaths and defeats and catastrophes it has experienced for millennia?

 

Globalization as an Anthropological Challenge

Let us with great caution to try to respond to these very complex questions, taking as our starting point the observation of a very evident phenomenon: the unification of the planet that is currently underway. Let us see if an examination of this phenomenon can offer us a more convincing key for interpreting the meaning of the critical stage of evolution in progress. This phenomenon of planetary unification is today called globalization, but we should remember that, looking back over the millennia of history, planetary unification seems to be the inevitable outcome of a process inscribed from the beginning in the human story. It is as if the entire earthly adventure of humanity were moving inevitably toward always greater aggregation and therefore potentially toward the establishment of a single, organized world community. It is enough to think that around 1000 B.C. there were about 500,000 human communities on earth, while by the 5^th century B.C., these had already been reduced to about 200,000 and today they number about 200. If we prolong this curve, it means that by 2300 A.D., there should be just one world community.

Today planetary unification is already an operative reality, at least on the levels of technological communication and economic/financial movements. Nevertheless, we find that we are living a situation that is clearly paradoxical with regard to its catastrophic consequences. By this, I mean that human beings are becoming more and more unified from a certain point of view, but up to now we are still being governed by States and financial organizations that are guided and inspired by outlooks that are far from global. A world that is moving toward unification should be governed by visions and projects inspired by a commitment to defend global interests–that is, the interests of everyone–and not by profoundly self-centered and special-interest mentalities that do not understand, and in fact contradict and wreak havoc against, the organic planetary interconnection that is emerging.

As Pope Benedict XVI writes in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate: “In this regard it is useful to remember that while globalization should certainly be understood as a socio-economic process, this is not its only dimension. Underneath the more visible process, humanity itself is becoming increasingly interconnected; it is made up of individuals and peoples to whom this process should offer benefits and development, as they assume their respective responsibilities, singly and collectively. […] The truth of globalization as a process and its fundamental ethical criterion are given by the unity of the human family and its development towards what is good” (n. 42).

Consequently, the economic and environmental problems, as well as those concerning justice and peace, that we are facing today are by now almost all global and therefore require a greater global awareness and a more incisive capacity to govern globally. As a result, we need a new way of thinking, a new anthropology of the human being as interconnected (and therefore global), as a being-in-relation-with-others–that is, one who attains fulfillment not by pitting him/herself against or separating him/herself from others, but by participating in the difficult transformation processes involved in every genuine relationship. This is why the Pope reaffirms that in this stage of the process of globalization and planetary integration what is needed is “a deeper critical evaluation of the category of relation” (Ibid., n. 53) “so as to promote a person-based and community-oriented cultural process of world-wide integration that is open to transcendence” (Ibid., n. 42).

In short, only a person who is more consciously relational, and therefore less self-centered and bellicose, can guide the evolution of the globalization process positively and thus avoid the catastrophic results that are currently emerging under the guidance of political-economic trends that are moving in a direction that puts at risk both the future of the human race and of the earth itself.

But it should also be kept in mind that what I am saying is something completely new because the history of our planet up to now has been guided predominantly by the bellicose (belligerant) figure of humanity. Only a few wise people and very rare saints have incarnated and witnessed to the truth and importance of the human being’s relational aspect, making it the foundation of their existence.

 

Purpose of the Egoistic-Bellicose Figure of Humanity

And so? At this point in our reflection, are we perhaps able to understand a little better what is happening at this crucial moment in the history of planet earth? I think the answer is yes and consequently I believe that we can hazard a new interpretation of history itself, which seems to be revealing to us that it is moving in a specific and compelling direction right now.

In fact, in the last decades we have seen all the principal cycles of the human story recorded in history books come to an end and converge on the same turning point: the totalitarian states and world wars of the 20^th century, the Industrial Revolution Era (1789-1989) and all the progressive ideologies it generated, the whole cycle of modernity and Greco-Christian-Western civilization itself as a whole. But what seems to be ending much more radically is a whole anthropological figure that we can define as egoistic-bellicose or anti-relational and thus anti-global and which in reality, as we already said, has dominated all of history as we know it.

We cannot stop here to describe this macro-historical phenomenon so those who are interested in a fuller treatment of the subject can consult the bibliography at the end of this paper.

What I want to emphasize now is that in these last decades we have been witnessing ever-more clearly and dramatically that all the cultural, social, political and economic forms, all the anthropological institutions in which we have organized our earthly existence, inasmuch as they are still based on the human person’s egoistic-bellicose (separationist-confrontationist) mode of being, are no longer able to foster the evolution of the human race. All these modes used to define the diverse human identities (masculine/feminine, Italian/European, right/left, aristocrat/peasant, Christian/Buddhist, urbanite/farmer, etc.) by contrast, separation or exclusion, have revealed themselves to be sterile and unsustainable and thus bearers of destruction and death.

Thus we find ourselves in a time in which human beings are developing self-awareness to an extraordinary degree–a time in which we are all urgently called to purify ourselves of the egoistic stances that still distort the ways in which we express our humanity, and adopt a more relational–that is, a more liberating and happier–way of doing this.

Basically, we are speaking about a personal and at the same time historico-cultural process of profound conversion through which every form of life, cohabitation and knowledge, every socio-political and even ecclesial institution, has to be sifted so as to be regenerated by purifying itself of its egoistic-bellicose elements and opening itself to relational modes that are more unifying and thus better able to build peace in the world.

 

The Anthropological Crisis as Universal Judgment

This is why it seems like everything is in crisis. It is not the institution of matrimony or the Church in itself, not democracy or the world of science per se that are in crisis; what is in crisis are the egoistic-bellicose forms in which we have incarnated these expressions of our humanity down the ages up to the present day. For example, the project to found a democracy on a presumed human rationality that is closed in itself–and thus founded on a materialistic anthropological vision that is defective and ultimately bellicose–no longer has any creative power. Another example: a marriage that is not rooted in a profound and genuine relationship between the spouses, but instead presumes to find its solidity in the power of laws or socio-religious conventions, no longer has any life.

However, those who stop at the pars destruens of the process currently underway fall into a very dangerous absolute relativism that will finish by negating that anything in the past has value, while the pars destruens that radically criticizes the things in the past that do not effectively have any future is only instrumental to a more profound regeneration of what is human and to a trans-figuration of all the anthropological figures that have come down to us. This purification of egoistic-bellicose elements is bringing to light a new, happier and more liberating form of marriage, a new and more relation-oriented form of consecrated life, a new and more genuinely global form of democracy, etc., instead of the desert that the nihilistic culture is striving to spread in hearts and throughout the world.

Because of this, the relativism of the dominant culture, which leads straight as an arrow to a lack of meaning and from there to death, cannot be conquered by reaffirming or reinforcing the egoistic structures of the past (which should be allowed to die once and for all), but only by assuming the critical-purifying power of this relativism, that is, by making our own through careful discernment the just reasons it bears within itself, so as to foster the forms of human regeneration developing in the womb of history, thrusting everything toward a new birth.

However, everything is being sifted in these years and we find ourselves in the midst of what might truly be called a Universal Judgment in which our humanity, having grown in self-awareness, now stands among the accused, where it will be judged for the egoistic-bellicose forms it has manifested up to now.

This, then, is the profound and ultimate meaning of the anthropological turning point we have reached.

And it is in this pressing need for regeneration, urged on by terminal problems and the problem of survival, that the profoundly apocalyptic nature of our time is revealed.

The apocalyptcity of the present time consists in the fact that it is becoming clearer from year to year that the only concrete alternative we have is to convert our mind from its egoistic-bellicose tendency to one that is more relational, global and therefore ultimately more spiritual.

Thus the apocalyptic prophecy becomes a daily matter, urging us paradoxically toward renewal. As French anthropologist René Girard says: “The apocalypse does not announce the end of the world but inspires hope. Those who open their eyes to reality do not fall into desperation but rediscover a world in which things reacquire meaning. Hope is possible only for those who dare to contemplate the dangers of the moment.”

A Messianic Reading of the Current Pivotal Point in History

All this is clear enough, including to many lay people. In fact the situation has been analyzed and reflected upon from the sociological, ecological, psychological and political perspectives–a fact that reveals the need for a radical and epochal change of route. It is enough to think, for example, of the last works of American sociologist Jeremy Rifkin, who said: “I believe that our era is at a turning point in which the human being is assuming a new presence on our planet.”

However, as Christians we are called to offer this discussion the extraordinary input of our messianic reading of the current stage of history, that is, the consideration that this New Humanity, less bellicose and more relational, which is trying to emerge in us, does not come from nowhere but is instead the same figure of humanity that Christ Jesus incarnated, witnessed to and sowed in us two thousand years ago and that at this precise time is revealing itself to be the sole possibility of survival for the human race.

As a result, a time of dialogical proclamation or proclaimed dialogue is opening. Through this, we Christians can help our contemporaries–non-believers or those of other beliefs–remember and grasp the story of the concrete emergence of this new humanity on planet earth; the spiritual origins of this humanity from the fecund soil of Jewish-Christian Tradition, the secular stages of its ambiguous self-assertion up to the modern era, and the crucial present moment in which the Christian West is establishing a relationship with all the other spiritual traditions on earth, becoming more receptive to new modes of mutual influence and fecundation.

Thus, for us this stage of upheaval is a unique and unrepeatable opportunity to relaunch our proclamation and witness to the definitive end of the old figure of egoistic-bellicose humanity–marked by death and sin–which dies precisely so that the new humanity in Christ can be generated in us and save the earth.

It is a relaunching of the baptismal mystery and of the Gospel of the New Humanity, which requires a stage of new evangelization, taking as its starting point the conversion of Christians themselves and of the Church itself.

 

The New Evangelization as a New “Time” in the Church

We Christians are the first recipients of this new evangelization: we are the first called to experience more radically and profoundly the trans-egoistic regeneration of our human identity so as to explain and witness to this miracle in a credible way to our contemporaries, who are unconsciously moving in the same direction.

This is why John Paul II felt the strong need to ask forgiveness for all the egoistic-bellicose behavior that has disfigured the face of the Church for centuries. He felt that the Church could not enter renewed into the Third Millennium, and therefore could not launch a genuine new evangelization, if it did not at the same time initiate a process of profound purification from the egoistic-bellicose forms in which Christians have often incarnated their Faith. The prophetic act of asking for pardon, which John Paul II performed on the First Sunday of Lent in 2000, should therefore be understood as the beginning of the history of a renewed Church. In fact, that gesture was a unique act in the 2000-year history of the Church precisely because it was an act of true and proper beginning again. The document, Memory and Reconciliation: the Church and the Faults of the Past, drawn up by the Vatican’s International Theological Commission, forcefully underscores that “in none of the Jubilees celebrated till now has there been an awareness in conscience of any faults in the Church’s past, nor of the need to ask God’s pardon for conduct in the recent or remote past. Indeed, in the entire history of the Church there are no precedents for requests for forgiveness by the Magisterium for past wrongs.”

This time of new evangelization is consequently a time of trans-egoistic purification for the Church–her attempt to begin again within the anthropological (and also trans-egoistic) transition imposed by globalization. And it is right that the Church be the first to convert herself more profoundly to the relational, global and spiritual figure of humanity that she proclaims and to which she witnesses here on earth.

As a result, we must not immediately project outside ourselves the urgent need for a historical renewal of the experience of faith: “The transmission of the faith is never an individual, isolated undertaking, but a communal, ecclesial event. It must not consider responses as a matter of researching an effective plan of communication and even less analytically concentrating on the hearers, for example, the young. Instead, these responses must be done as something which concerns the one called to perform this spiritual work. It must become what the Church is by her nature. In this way, the matter is placed in context and treated correctly and not extrinsically, namely, by placing at the center of discussion the entire Church in all she is and all she does. Perhaps in this way the problem of unfruitfulness in evangelization and catechesis today can be seen as an ecclesiological problem which concerns the Church’s capacity, more or less, of becoming a real community, a true fraternity and a living body, and not a mechanical thing or enterprise” (Lineamenta of the Synod on the New Evangelization, n. 2).

I think that this excerpt from the Lineamenta of the Synod on the New Evangelization is of fundamental importance inasmuch as it underscores that the new evangelization questions first of all the current overall historical configuration of the Church.

 

A Time of New Initiation to the Mystery of Christ

On the other hand, what is happening within historical Christianity, which is also caught up in the whirlwind generated by this time of upheaval?

We see almost everywhere that individuals and entire peoples are experiencing a powerful and progressive crisis concerning adherence to traditional forms of religion. This crisis is manifesting itself first of all as a “free fall” from frequenting the sacraments.

Alongside this phenomenon–and something which can be seen in every religious tradition on every continent–is a growing need for spirituality, integrity, health and a more direct and personal spiritual experience of God: a need to which it seems the Church can no longer adequately respond.

For example, here in Italy, it is interesting to note that only about 25-30% of the people attend Sunday Mass but 80% of them continue to call themselves Catholics. 40% of them say they pray every day and sometimes several times a day, while 30% say they pray several times a week. That is to say, more than 50% of the people in Italy call themselves Catholic but have almost no relationship with the Church community.

In short, there is a growing hunger for spirituality that cannot be adequately satisfied by liturgical rites or standard catechesis. We are passing with great difficulty from a preeminently representative religiosity to a more personally-realized spirituality and this transition inevitably throws into crisis the more extrinsic and less-intimately lived forms of religiosity.

Consequently, the Church must first of all renew all her initiation itineraries, from the catechesis of children up to the ongoing formation of adults, priests and religious, transforming them into places in which the Mysteries celebrated are able to fulfill the needs of individuals.

The new evangelization can never be grafted onto a serious process of regenerating the Faith if it does not coincide with a new initiation to the mysteries of salvation in Christ.

It is not by chance that the Italian Episcopal Conference urges us in this direction in its pastoral directives for 2010-2020: “In this 10-year period, it would be well to discern, evaluate and promote a series of criteria that, as a result of current experimentation, have sketched out a renewal process with regard to catechesis, above all in the area of initiation to the Christian life. In addition, it is necessary to update our catechetical instruments, keeping in mind the altered cultural context and the new languages of communication” (Educare alla vita buona del Vangelo, (n. 54).

In the light of this, it seems to me that the two fundamental points on the working agenda of the new evangelization to be launched in this time of global challenges should be:

• first of all, to draw up a new and powerful messianic culture concerning the anthropological transformation currently underway;
• on the basis of these new perspectives, to renew the Church’s formation itineraries so as to help Catholics live this anthropological transition in the joy of the Emerging Christ. Because of this, we must be ready to embrace an important time of experimentation and discernment of initiation methods that integrate the important heritage of our Christian tradition with all the cultural, psychological and spiritual elements it has acquired from modernity and all the other fields of knowledge on earth.

 

It was precisely with the intention of corresponding to these needs that in 1999 we set up as an experiment “Spread Peace” groups, which meet in Rome but which by now can be followed online from every part of Italy and around the world.

In these groups, we attempt in a certain sense to form ourselves to a permanent trans-formation, integrating in a new and balanced way three levels of formation (cultural, psychological/existential and spiritual) that are often detached from one another. In fact, we need new and powerful keys for interpreting the present time, understood as a messianic time of the “Baptism of the World.” We need personal accompaniment so as to recognize and eradicate our specific defenses/fears/resistances (our sins) so as to adopt the open attitude required by the new, “relational self” that is emerging. And we also need spiritual practices–indeed a new focus on contemplation–which can help us foster on a daily basis peace, joy, the creative power of the Emerging Christ and his re-creating forgiveness.

The theoretical foundation of our work can be found in the “Crocevia” (Crossroads) series, which we initiated in collaboration with Pauline Editions in 2004 and which already contains 13 volumes.

To conclude our reflection in the same spirit with which we began it, we can say that the extreme and dangerous time in which we live calls us to an unprecedented spiritual renewal. It calls us to be ready to embrace with fresh enthusiasm, great humility and unbounded faith the regenerating power of the Spirit, who is making all things new here and now: “A new evangelization is synonymous with mission, requiring the capacity to set out anew, go beyond boundaries and broaden horizons. The new evangelization is the opposite of self-sufficiency, a withdrawal into oneself, a status quo mentality and an idea that pastoral programs are simply to proceed as they did in the past. Today, a ‘business as usual’ attitude can no longer be the case. Some local Churches, already engaged in renewal, reconfirm the fact that now is the time for the Church to call upon every Christian community to evaluate their pastoral practice on the basis of the missionary character of their programs and activities” (Lineamenta, op. cit., n. 10).

 

Basic Bibliography:

• Pope Benedict XVI, Encyclical Caritas in Veritate.
• Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World, Vatican Editions, 2010
• Italian Episcopal Conference, Pastoral Directives for 2010-2020: Educare all vita buona del Vangelo
• XIII Ordinary General Assembly of Bishops, Lineamenta of the New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith, Vatican Editions, 2011
• M. Guzzi, La nuova umanità – Un progetto politico e spirituale, Pauline Editions 2005
• M. Guzzi, Dalla fine all’inizio – Saggi apocalittici, Pauline Editions 2011
• M. Guzzi, Dodici parole per ricominciare – Saggi messianici, Ancora 2011
• M. Guzzi, Darsi pace – Un manuale di liberazione interiore, Pauline Editions 2004
• M. Guzzi, Per donarsi – Un manuale di guarigione profonda, Pauline Editions 2007
• M. Guzzi, Yoga e preghiera cristiana – Percorsi di liberazione, Pauline Editions 2009
• AA. (M. Rupnik, A. Cencini, L.Maggi, P. Ricca, C. Molari, A. Gentili, R. Mancini, M. Ceruti, etc.), Lo spartiacque – Ciò che muore e ciò che nasce ad Occidente, Pauline Editions 2007

www.marcoguzzi.it

www.darsipace.it