EVANGELII GAUDIUM - page 140

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that “he thereby confers upon them an infinite
dignity”.141 To believe that the Son of God as-
sumed our human flesh means that each human
person has been taken up into the very heart
of God. To believe that Jesus shed his blood
for us removes any doubt about the boundless
love which ennobles each human being. Our re-
demption has a social dimension because “God,
in Christ, redeems not only the individual per-
son, but also the social relations existing between
men”.142 To believe that the Holy Spirit is at work
in everyone means realizing that he seeks to pen-
etrate every human situation and all social bonds:
“The Holy Spirit can be said to possess an in-
finite creativity, proper to the divine mind, which
knows how to loosen the knots of human af-
fairs, even the most complex and inscrutable”.143
Evangelization is meant to cooperate with this
liberating work of the Spirit. The very mystery
of the Trinity reminds us that we have been cre-
ated in the image of that divine communion,
and so we cannot achieve fulfilment or salvation
purely by our own efforts. From the heart of the
Gospel we see the profound connection between
evangelization and human advancement, which
must necessarily find expression and develop in
every work of evangelization. Accepting the first
141 John Paul II, Message to the Handicapped, Angelus
(16 November 1980): Insegnamenti, 3/2 (1980), 1232.
142 Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendi-
um of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 52.
143 John Paul , Catechesis (24 April 1991): Insegnamenti,
14/1 (1991), 853.