48

Avec la sécularisation de la vie publique et ensuite de la vie privée, l’Europe occidentale, sortie de la période de la chrétienté, est entrée aujourd’hui dans une période nouvelle marquée par une remontée des sagesses venant se substituer à la foi. Cette situation inédite n’est pas à diaboliser ; elle demeure ouverte à une annonce renouvelée de l’Évangile. Mais ce contexte nouveau requiert de la communauté des chrétiens une spiritualité missionnaire rénovée, nourrie par l’Évangile et, à la fois, ajustée à notre temps. Voir Dieu en toutes choses, vivre la charité d’abord, annoncer l’Évangile par charité dans le prolongement de la diaconie et dans un style gracieux sont les traits majeurs de cette spiritualité missionnaire dont nous avons besoin aujourd’hui.

With the secularisation first of public life and then of private life, Western Europe, having left behind the age of Christendom, has now embarked on a new period marked by the rise of forms of wisdom that are substitutes for faith. This hitherto unparalleled situation should not be demonised – it remains open to a renewed proclamation of the Gospel. But this new context calls for Christian communities to adopt a renewed spirituality of mission, nourished by the Gospel and at the same time adapted to our time. Seeing God in all things, living the gospel of love first of all, proclaiming the Gospel through love as a gracious extension of diakonia are the main lines of the missionary spirituality we need today. This missionary spirit must be embodied in a pastoral practice that could be referred to as “engendering”. This pastoral attitude can be broken down into three fundamental orientations. First of all, it is a question of bringing to life fraternal communities that take responsibility for each other, in solidarity, in particular at the ministerial level. Such fraternal communities should be oriented first and foremost around diakonia, the free service of humanity, without proselytism or ecclesiocentrism. The proclamation of the Gospel will be grafted on to the practice of charity as its grace-filled extension, in order to reveal the mystery underlying it. Finally, such fraternal communities will offer to those touched by the Gospel a process of initiation that brings life experiences that lead them to think and open them up to a faith journey.