10. The Gospel offers us the chance to live

life on a higher plane, but with no less intensity:

“Life grows by being given away, and it weakens

in isolation and comfort. Indeed, those who

enjoy life most are those who leave security on

the shore and become excited by the mission

of communicating life to others”.4 When the

Church summons Christians to take up the task

of evangelization, she is simply pointing to the

source of authentic personal fulfilment. For

“here we discover a profound law of reality: that

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 means”.5 Consequently,

an evangelizer must never look like someone who

has just come back from a funeral! Let us recover

and deepen our enthusiasm, that “delightful

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 anxious,

but from ministers of the Gospel whose

lives glow with fervour, who have first received

the joy of Christ”.6