Eternal newness

11. A renewal of preaching can offer believers,

as well as the lukewarm and the non-practising,

new joy in the faith and fruitfulness in the work

of evangelization. The heart of its message will

always be the same: the God who revealed his

immense love in the crucified and risen Christ.

God constantly renews his faithful ones, whatever

their age: “They shall mount up with wings

like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they

shall walk and not be faint” (Is 40:31). Christ is

the “eternal Gospel” (Rev 14:6); he “is the same

yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8), yet

his riches and beauty are inexhaustible. He is for

ever young and a constant source of newness.

The Church never fails to be amazed at “the

depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge

of God” (Rom 11:33). Saint John of the Cross

says that “the thicket of God’s wisdom and

knowledge is so deep and so broad that the soul,

however much it has come to know of it, can

always penetrate deeper within it”.7 Or as Saint

Irenaeus writes: “By his coming, Christ brought

with him all newness”.8 With this newness he

is always able to renew our lives and our communities,

and even if the Christian message has

known periods of darkness and ecclesial weakness,

it will never grow old. Jesus can also break

through the dull categories with which we would

enclose him and he constantly amazes us by his

divine creativity. Whenever we make the effort

to return to the source and to recover the original

freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new

paths of creativity open up, with different forms

of expression, more eloquent signs and words

with new meaning for today’s world. Every form

of authentic evangelization is always “new”.

(Evangelii Gaudium)