How to Talk About God

In his Address at last Wednesday's Audience (28 Nov.) His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI spoke on how to talk to others about God, how to evangelize others and introduce them to or bring them closer to Christ.  He made a couple of fundamental points.  To talk about God you must first talk to God and above all listen to God.  The most effective way to bring God to others and them to Him is to first be close to Him yourself and love and follow Him and that way you will have His joy and acquire His mind.  And for that it is also convenient to be part of His Church which speaks authentically in His name.  To speak about God you must also listen to the Church which He sends as our Teacher: Mater et Magistra.

Don't be afraid of the humility of small steps and trust in the leaven that penetrates the mass little by little and makes it grow.

Guided by the Holy Spirit it is necessary to return to the essence of the message: The Good News of a God who is real and concrete, a God who is interested in us, the God-Love who approaches us in Jesus Christ unto the cross, and who in the resurrection gives us hope and opens up for us a life with no end, eternal life, the true life.

You have to be willing to risk and even lose it all (like Saint Paul) to bring God to others and this selflessness makes the necessary room for God in you to hope in His work and His strength and His wisdom through you.

Use contemporary examples and means to communicate God to others.

Especially in the family, the first school for the communication of the faith to the new generations, you have a privileged place to talk about God.

Joy!  Paschal joy which is very aware of pain, suffering, fatigue, problems, misunderstanding and even death, offering criteria for the interpretation of everything from the perspective of Christian hope.  Make people understand that the faith is not a burden, but rather a font of profound joy, it is to see God's action, and recognize the presence of good, which is not noisy, but rather gives a valuable orientation to live well one's own existence.

Finally, "the ability to listen and dialogue": the family should be an environment in which you learn to be together, to reconcile conflicts in mutual dialogue, which consists in listening and speaking, understanding and loving one another, to be a sign for one another of the mercy of God.

To talk about God means to understand, with your words and with your life, that God is not a competitor for our existence but rather the true guarantee, the guarantee of the greatness of the human person.

Saint Francis Xavier, patron of the propagation of the faith, pray for us that God may sanctify others, many others, with His Word through our words.