By way of introduction

During an interview, Pope Francis speaks of the missionary Church and said: “Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives … let us strive to be a church that finds new roads, which is able to go out of herself and go to those who do not attend, who are gone or indifferent. … We must proclaim the Gospel on every road, preaching the good news of God’s Reign by caregiving, also by our preaching about all kinds of illnesses and injuries.” (Studies Review, October 2013)

And in his Apostolic Exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium,” (“The joy of the Gospel”) the Holy Father develops this idea. Towards the end he speaks of Mary as mother of evangelization and he tells us. “With the Holy Spirit, there is always Mary among the people. She was with the disciples in the invocation of the Spirit (Acts 1: 14) and thus made possible the missionary explosion springing from Pentecost. She is the Mother of the Church’s evangelizing and without her we cannot fully understand the spirit of the new evangelization.” Nr. 284).

In anticipation of the proclamation of the Gospel, the proclamation of Jesus Christ, we take a closer look the deep bond between the “Holy Spirit – Mary – the Church.”

The Spirit, Mary and the Church: this is the constellation under which we are invited to live the Gospel and to bring it to the world of our contemporaries. Evangelization, in fact, has nothing to do with an advertising campaign; it is not a matter of technique or strategy first. It is rather the long adventure of a birth, by which the human world receives God as Father and the Church as mother. It took the shadow of the Holy Spirit and the “yes” of Mary that the Son of God became man. It is this same double presence that is so essential for Christ’s bringing men and women to birth in their dignity as children of God.