Intervention of Father Master Bruno Cadore, OP at the Synod

The labor of evangelization finds its joy and strength in contemplation. This insight made by mendicant Orders brings to light three of the challenges that evangelization faces.

The challenge of knowledge; faced in dialogue with all seekers of truth, philosophers, scientists, researchers. Deploying the sciences and knowledge provides the opportunity to realize this “beautiful friendship between faith and the sciences” proclaimed by the Council. In faith one contemplates the mystery of the ongoing creation of God and his faithful call to the freedom and reason of man. In friendship we can, with men of science, discern the challenges in order to build together a world for man.

The challenge of freedom. In meeting with our contemporaries, believers and non-believers, it is necessary first of all to present the friendship of God with man, rather than formulating questions and answers that at times are not asked in the proper terms. Being led by God’s patience rather than relying on man, so that he learns to place his freedom at the height of his dignity and to contemplate the mercy of Christ, who precedes him, He who teaches his friends what he received from the Father.

The challenge of brotherhood. Religious communities desire to be places in which brotherhood constructed in diversity aspires to be transformed by the spirit of communion in “sacrament” of friendship of God with the world. And, because of this hope, they are challenged to broaden this hope of communion, tying their destination to the forgotten of the world, making of them the conviction of the Synod of 1971: “Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel”.