EVANGELII GAUDIUM - page 36

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“The deposit of the faith is one thing... the way it
is expressed is another”.45 There are times when
the faithful, in listening to completely orthodox
language, take away something alien to the au-
thentic Gospel of Jesus Christ, because that lan-
guage is alien to their own way of speaking to and
understanding one another. With the holy intent
of communicating the truth about God and hu-
manity, we sometimes give them a false god or a
human ideal which is not really Christian. In this
way, we hold fast to a formulation while failing to
convey its substance. This is the greatest danger.
Let us never forget that “the expression of truth
can take different forms. The renewal of these
forms of expression becomes necessary for the
sake of transmitting to the people of today the
Gospel message in its unchanging meaning”.46
42. All of this has great relevance for the preach-
ing of the Gospel, if we are really concerned to
make its beauty more clearly recognized and ac-
cepted by all. Of course, we will never be able
to make the Church’s teachings easily understood
or readily appreciated by everyone. Faith always
remains something of a cross; it retains a certain
obscurity which does not detract from the firm-
ness of its assent. Some things are understood
45 J ohn XXIII, Address for the Opening of the Second
Vatican Council (11 October 1962): AAS 54 (1962), 792: “Est
enim aliud ipsum depositum fidei, seu veritates, quae veneranda doctrina
nostra continentur, aliud modus, quo eaedem enuntiantur”.
46 J ohn Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint (25 May
1995), 19: AAS 87 (1995), 933.