Keeping The Main Thing The Main Thing

by Joe Cady

There’s a word that’s often used today that, while actually an ancient term, has re-emerged as a central aspect of Christian ministry and evangelization. That word is kerygma. Kerygma is a Greek word meaning proclamation, and, from the early days of the Church, this proclamation was distinguished from catechesis, which means teaching or instruction. While formation in the truths of revelation and the teachings of the Church are important, an adequate instruction must always be founded on the initial proclamation of the Gospel. You see, everything we do and believe as Christians centers around the most basic truths of the Gospel.

What are these truths? Well, there are a number of different ways that these can be communicated. Vatican II summarized it this way: “that God is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to life eternal” (Dei Verbum, 4). Or, as Pope Francis puts it, that “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you” (Evangelii Gaudium, 164). At the heart of the Gospel is the good news that God’s mercy is present to us in Jesus Christ, and that through him we have access to the life and love for which we were created. Before anything else, this is the message of Christianity, that God has reconciled us to himself in Jesus Christ, that he has conquered sin and death and given us access to new life as beloved sons and daughters of God.

The challenge is that we sometimes forget the centrality of this message and instead make the core of Christianity something that in fact flows from the kerygma. When we do this, our message becomes imbalanced. While doctrine, and liturgy, and morality matter, they find their fullest meaning when placed within the fuller context of the Gospel message. As Archbishop Romero once said, “Christianity is not a collection of truths to be believed, of laws to be obeyed, of prohibitions… Christianity is a person, one who loved us so much, one who calls for our love.”

Keeping the kerygma at the center of Christian life and teaching has been a constant message of Pope Francis. In fact, I think that understanding this aspect of his ministry is key to understanding his papacy as a whole. Below you will find 4 quotations that capture beautifully the importance of the kerygma – of keeping the main thing the main thing. I encourage you to read, reflect upon, and pray through these words as you respond to the call to be missionary disciples in the world.

“If we attempt to put all things in a missionary key, this will also affect the way we communicate the message. In today’s world of instant communication and occasionally biased media coverage, the message we preach runs a greater risk of being distorted or reduced to some of its secondary aspects. In this way certain issues which are part of the Church’s moral teaching are taken out of the context which gives them their meaning. The biggest problem is when the message we preach then seems identified with those secondary aspects which, important as they are, do not in and of themselves convey the heart of Christ’s message. We need to be realistic and not assume that our audience understands the full background to what we are saying, or is capable of relating what we say to the very heart of the Gospel which gives it meaning, beauty and attractiveness.”

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 34

“Pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed. When we adopt a pastoral goal and a missionary style which would actually reach everyone without exception or exclusion, the message has to concentrate on the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at the same time most necessary. The message is simplified, while losing none of its depth and truth, and thus becomes all the more forceful and convincing.”

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 35

“Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.” Pope Francis, Interview in America Magazine, 9/30/13

“In catechesis too, we have rediscovered the fundamental role of the first announcement or kerygma, which needs to be the centre of all evangelizing activity and all efforts at Church renewal… On the lips of the catechist the first proclamation must ring out over and over: ‘Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.’ This first proclamation is called ‘first’ not because it exists at the beginning and can then be forgotten or replaced by other more important things. It is first in a qualitative sense because it is the principal proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another throughout the process of catechesis, at every level and moment.”

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 164