10
life is attained and matures in the measure that it
is offered up in order to give life to others. This
is certainly what mission meansâ.
5
Consequently,
an evangelizer must never look like someone who
has just come back from a funeral! Let us recov-
er and deepen our enthusiasm, that âdelightful
and comforting joy of evangelizing, even when
it is in tears that we must sow⦠And may the
world of our time, which is searching, sometimes
with anguish, sometimes with hope, be enabled
to receive the good news not from evangelizers
who are dejected, discouraged, impatient or anx-
ious, but from ministers of the Gospel whose
lives glow with fervour, who have first received
the joy of Christâ.
6
Eternal newness
11.âA renewal of preaching can offer believers,
as well as the lukewarm and the non-practising,
new joy in the faith and fruitfulness in the work
of evangelization. The heart of its message will
always be the same: the God who revealed his
immense love in the crucified and risen Christ.
God constantly renews his faithful ones, what-
ever their age: âThey shall mount up with wings
like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they
shall walk and not be faintâ (
Is
40:31). Christ is
the âeternal Gospelâ (
Rev
14:6); he âis the same
5
âIbid.
6
âP
aul
VI, Apostolic Exhortation
Evangelii Nuntiandi
(8
December 1975), 80: AAS 68 (1976), 75.