Pope Francis at General Audience: "The Spirit is the protagonist" of Evangelization

But it is only possible to “imitate his style” by eschewing personal preferences and listening to an authentic call from the Spirit, the pope reflected.

Pope Francis greets pilgrims at his general audience on Dec. 6, 2023, in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media

“Without the Holy Spirit, all zeal is vain and falsely apostolic: It would only be our own and would not bear fruit,” the pope observed. 

The pope noted that the Holy Spirit “always precedes the missionaries and makes the fruit grow.” Yet while it “comforts us a great deal” to recognize the Holy Spirit as a gift from God, the pope cautioned against the pitfall of falling into “indolence.” 

“Confidence does not justify disengagement. The vitality of the seed that grows by itself does not authorize farmers to neglect the field,” Francis reflected.

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Pope Francis shares a hug with a young pilgrim at his general audience on Dec. 6, 2023, in Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media

The pope warned against the temptation to cloister ourselves in “safety zones” that can take the form of “the habitual repetition of things one always does, or in the alluring calls of an intimist spirituality, or even in a misunderstood sense of the centrality of the liturgy.”

“They are temptations that disguise themselves as fidelity to tradition, but often, rather than responses to the Spirit, they are reactions to personal dissatisfactions,” he noted.

The pope went on to highlight that this tendency exists not only within the framework of the Church but also is a general challenge presented by a world characterized by rapid secularization and estrangement from God.

Pope Francis greets women religious at his general audience on Dec. 6, 2023, in Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media

“In this age of ours, which does not help us have a religious outlook on life, and in which the proclamation has become in various places more difficult, arduous, apparently fruitless, the temptation to desist from pastoral service may arise,” the Holy Father observed. 

To counteract the tendency of falling into closed communities and the danger of living a static faith, the process of listening to the spirit and authentically proclaiming the Gospel is underscored by both “creativity and simplicity,” the pope argued.

By doing so we “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,” the pope observed, quoting from his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.