EVANGELII GAUDIUM - page 198

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offers us: friendship with Jesus and love of our
brothers and sisters. If we succeed in expressing
adequately and with beauty the essential content
of the Gospel, surely this message will speak to
the deepest yearnings of people’s hearts: “The
missionary is convinced that, through the work-
ing of the Spirit, there already exists in individ-
uals and peoples an expectation, even if an un-
conscious one, of knowing the truth about God,
about man, and about how we are to be set free
from sin and death. The missionary’s enthusiasm
in proclaiming Christ comes from the convic-
tion that he is responding to that expectation”.
208
Enthusiasm for evangelization is based on this
conviction. We have a treasure of life and love
which cannot deceive, and a message which can-
not mislead or disappoint. It penetrates to the
depths of our hearts, sustaining and ennobling
us. It is a truth which is never out of date be-
cause it reaches that part of us which nothing
else can reach. Our infinite sadness can only be
cured by an infinite love.
266. But this conviction has to be sustained by
our own constantly renewed experience of sa-
vouring Christ’s friendship and his message. It
is impossible to persevere in a fervent evange-
lization unless we are convinced from personal
experience that it is not the same thing to have
known Jesus as not to have known him, not the
208
 J
ohn
P
aul
II, Encyclical Letter
Redemptoris Missio
(7
December 1990), 45: AAS 83 (1991), 292.
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