During the Christmas season - which includes the feasts of the Holy Family, the Mother of God and the Epiphany - we celebrate the "good news" (Gospel) of God's coming to earth.

God is born, laughs and cries, eats and sleeps, lives in a family, works and rests on earth, makes our desires and concerns his own. He who is of the same nature as the Father, also wanted to become consubstantial with us.

In this way, it teaches us Christians to make our own "the joys and hopes, the sorrows and anxieties of the people of our time, especially the poor and those who suffer" (Second Vatican Council, GS, 1).

Pope Francis said of Jesus: "He came into our history, he shared our journey. He came to free us from darkness and give us light. In him appeared the grace, the mercy, the tenderness of the Father: Jesus is Love made flesh. He is not only a teacher of wisdom, nor an ideal to which we tend and from which we know he is far away, but he is the meaning of life and of history who pitched his tent among us" (Christmas Eve Mass, December 24, 2013). And with this he renewed his invitation to share with others "the joy of the Gospel". Joy because God loves us so much that he has given us his Son as our brother, and light for our darkness; because he has told us, and the Pope repeats it to us now, "do not be afraid".

A week earlier, the Pope observed that God wanted to share history, to make history with us. He even took our surnames. He is the "God of Abraham," of Isaac and Jacob, of Peter and John, of Mary... and there we can also put our name, the name of each one of us. And so, Pope Francis proposes: "If he let us write his story, let us at least let him write our story. Because that is what holiness is: to let the Lord write our story. And this is my Christmas wish for everyone. May the Lord write your story and may you let Him write it for you" (Homily at Santa Marta, December 17, 2013).

In a world and in an environment not always prone to joy, Pope Francis has proposed, from the very first words of his Exhortation Evangeliigaudium, that we Christians should be characterized by joy. And may that joy lead us precisely to spread the Gospel (the good news) of Jesus Christ.

1- Christian joy takes us out of ourselves.. The meeting with Christ fills the heart and life, and is manifested in the joy with which this good news (the Gospel) is renewed and communicated to others. This is opposed to the "individualistic sadness" typical of today's culture, which encloses the heart in itself and in its own interests. Then "there is no longer room for others, the poor no longer enter, the voice of God is no longer heard, the sweet joy of his love is no longer enjoyed, the enthusiasm for doing good no longer palpitates" (n. 2). And this can also affect believers, turning them into "resentful, complaining, lifeless beings" (Ibid.).

To avoid this, we must begin by meeting Christ personally, because he does not disappoint and God never tires of forgiving. The Sacred Scripture continually invites us to joy, especially the Gospel, where Christ manifests his desire to make us sharers in his profound joy: "I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full" (Jn 15:11).

Certainly, Pope Bergoglio explains, Christian joy is lived in very different ways according to the circumstances of life. But in any case - he returns to the contrast with individualism - thanks to meeting or reencounter with God "we are rescued from our isolated conscience and self-referentiality. We become fully human when we are more than human, when we allow God to take us beyond ourselves to reach our truest self" (n. 8). There, he points out, is the wellspring of evangelization and of its joy, because he who has attained the meaning of life cannot fail to communicate it to others, especially if he sees that they are in need of it.

2- Evangelization is to communicate the joy that comes from meeting with Christ. Consequently, the joy of evangelizing implies concern for the needs of others. The Second Vatican Council affirms that the person is fulfilled only in the gift of self to others (cf. GS 24). The Aparecida Document places this personalizing impulse, uniting it with the desire to communicate fullness of life, at the heart of evangelization: "Life is increased by giving and weakened in isolation and comfort. In fact, those who enjoy life most are those who leave the security of the shore and become passionate in the mission statement of communicating life to others. (...) Life is attained and matures as it is given to submission to give life to others. This is final the mission statement" (n. 360).

In the same vein, Pope Francis takes up words from the Evangeliinuntiandi to insist that the evangelizing submission manifests this joy of having encountered Christ: "May today's world-which is searching at times with anguish, at times with hope-may it thus receive the Good News, not through sad and discouraged, impatient or anxious evangelizers," but through those-he is referring to ministers of the Gospel, but this can certainly be extended to all Christians-whose lives radiate the fervor of having received the joy of Christ (cf. n. 80).

To this extent, the joy of faith is renewing and fruitful. The Word of God, the Bible affirms, makes all things new. Christ is, therefore, the everlasting Gospel (Rev 14:6), the ever-new good news. And for this reason, we read in Evangeliigaudium, a Christian proposal that never grows old: "Jesus Christ can also break the boring schemes in which we try to enclose him and surprise us with his constant divine creativity. Every time we try to return to source and recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new ways, creative methods, other forms of expression, more eloquent signs, words charged with renewed meaning for today's world spring up. In fact, every authentic evangelizing action is always 'new'" (n. 11).

3- In short, evangelization calls for a generous and joyful submission . But, the Pope observes, this does not mean that it calls for superhuman efforts, according to a voluntarist or Pelagian interpretation (for it is God who "does" evangelization, we are mere collaborators). Nor does it ask us to forget our history; on the contrary, because mission statement lives from the "report" of God's gifts, especially in the Eucharist (cf. nn. 12-13).

Christian joy is, at final, a "missionary joy" (n. 21) that excludes no one. Moreover, it desires to go out continually to the meeting of others (cf. Mk 1:38), as at Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:6); because "this joy is a sign that the Gospel has been proclaimed and is bearing fruit" (cf. nn. 21-23).

This is one of the first points of all Education in the faith, a point that challenges above all the educator. The Christian educator is a witness of his or her own meeting with Christ, meeting from which the joy that must characterize the whole educational task must flow. In itself, this task, which takes many forms, is already evangelization.

Evangelization should be not only the framework but also one of the main purposes of the Education in faith, which should be Education to evangelize. Well, all this needs, lives, of the joy of Christ, transmits it, spreads it, puts it in the heart and in the life of others so that they can bring it to others.

article published in Religion Confidential