In the “Council Notebooks” series curated by the Dicastery for Evangelization, created in preparation for the 2025 Jubilee, volumes 26 to 35 are dedicated to an in-depth study of the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, on the presence and action of the Church in the contemporary world.
Dialogue with the world
In particular, in the booklet entitled “The Church in the World Today,” Bishop Giovanni Cesare Pagazzi, secretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, offers his reflection inspired by the opening sections of Gaudium et Spes. This wonderful document understands evangelization as the constitutive activity of the Church itself, which comes into being to evangelize and to address all people. For this reason, the Church must address its message not only to its children and to those who invoke the name of Christ, but to everyone.
The people who believe in Jesus
Bishop Pagazzi explains that “the Church is the people who believe in Jesus, the Son of God, who became the brother and savior of every person. The Second Vatican Council, especially through Gaudium et Spes, teaches that it is not possible to love God without loving the world, this holy and dirty, magnificent and unjust, proud and desperate, wretched and miraculous world. It affirms that this is the human family to love, this is the world in which to glimpse the glory of God.”
Joy and hope
The name Gaudium et spes comes from the first words of the Latin text, meaning: joy and hope. In the context of the 2025 Jubilee, which Pope Francis wanted to dedicate to hope, these words take on even greater depth and occupy a central place. The conciliar document also speaks of “griefs and anxieties.”
The Church, therefore, does not see itself as outside the world, like a teacher spreading an indisputable truth, but considers itself part of the world, in solidarity with humanity, with which it enters into dialogue to understand the challenges facing reality and the contribution it can make to solving the problems they pose for people today. It is enough to recall the sentence with which the document begins: “The joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.”
Gaudium et Spes strongly affirms the possibility of receiving God in the human person… starting from the human person… because - as John Paul II wrote - “man is the way of the Church”.
Wherever there is a person, believer or not, there is the image of Christ in the world, there is a creature called to be a child of God.
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