Chapter Five: Spirit-Filled Evangelisers
Sr Catherine Jones smsm
In the final chapter of Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis paints us a picture of the ‘Spirit-filled evangeliser’. Reading through this chapter and reflecting on my own experience of being touched by Spirit-filled evangelisers, three people came to mind and I enjoyed their companionship once again.
Marie-Francoise Perroton (1796‒1873) – inspired by the first Marist missionaries in the Pacific – set out to join them as the first lay-woman missionary in 1845.
In the midst of the people of Wallis and Futuna she was one of those evangelisers ‘who pray and work’ (EG262). From ‘the deep breath of prayer’ she was able to give herself to the missionary tasks of visiting, teaching, and forming others to join her in this service.
Overcoming difficulties of language, culture and personal preferences, she grew close to people in their daily lives and discovered there a source of joy. ‘Mission is at once a passion for Jesus and a passion for his people’ (EG268).
Sister Ann Manganaro (1946‒1993) was a doctor who worked in very poor areas of the United States and of El Salvador during its 12–year civil war. One night she attended the birth of a very premature baby and held the child in the palm of her hand until it died a few hours later. Faced with such a loss, someone asked her, ‘What did that child ever have?’ Sister Ann answered, ‘That child had the capacity to draw forth love from me’. Even a little child can be a Spirit-filled evangeliser, with the capacity to draw forth love.
Pope Francis notes ‘sometimes we are tempted … to keep the Lord’s wounds at arm’s length … looking for those places which shelter us from the maelstrom of human misfortune’ (EG270). Sister Ann knew how to bring ‘the power of tenderness’ to these people and places.
Mary the mother of Jesus, is the Spirit-filled evangeliser. Filled with the Holy Spirit, the power of the Most High, she set out into the hill country to her cousin Elizabeth. ‘She is the friend ever concerned that wine not be lacking in our lives. She is the woman whose heart was pieced by a sword and who understands all our pain … she is a sign of hope for all peoples suffering the birth pangs of justice … she walks by our side, shares our struggles and surrounds us with God’s love’ (EG286).
Evangelii Gaudium is perhaps th
e first Church document to address Mary as ‘Mother of the living gospel’. In her, we see the interplay of ‘justice and tenderness, of contemplation and concern for others’ – the heart of the gospel – and ‘we come to believe once again in the revolutionary nature of love and tenderness’ (EG288).
Sr Catherine Jones smsm is a Missionary Sister of the Society of Mary and is Chair of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Committee for Interfaith Relations.