We may now focus our attention on the newness of the ‘new evangelization’ which is indeed the core theme of the whole Apostolic Exhortation: Evangelii Gaudium.

Quoting Saint Irenaeus Pope Francis writes: “By his coming, Christ brought with Him all newness.” With this newness He is always able to renew our lives and our communities, and even if the Christian message has known periods of darkness and ecclesial weakness, it will never grow old. Jesus can also break through the dull categories with which we would enclose Him and He constantly amazes us by His divine creativity. Whenever we make the effort to 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. Every form of authentic evangelization is always “new” (# 11).

Again, Pope wants to emphasize that the newness must be totally dependent on the God-experience in the Church rather than our own conception: “The real newness is the newness which God Himself mysteriously brings about and inspires, provokes, guides and accompanies in a thousand ways. The life of the Church should always reveal clearly that God takes the initiative, that “He has loved us first” (1 Jn 4:19) and that He alone “gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:7) (#12).

Further, Pope Francis explicitly states that his exhortation is not meant to be a treatise, but that it is rather to show “practical implications for the Church’s mission today.” His expectation is that “we need to adopt in every activity which we undertake in the spirit of the biblical exhortation: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say: Rejoice” (Phil 4:4) (#18).

Just as Pope’s Evangelii Gaudium demands that we have to experience the newness of Christ’s incarnation and newness of avenues, newness of creativity in our everyday life with joy, Gandhi also told of the Christians of his times: “The history of India would have been written differently if the Christians had come to India to live their lives in our midst and permeate ours with their aroma, if there was any. There would then have been mutual goodwill and utter absence of suspicion. But say some of them: “If what you say had held good with Jesus, there would have been no Christians.” To answer this would land me in a controversy in which he had no desire to engage. But I may be permitted to say that Jesus preached not a new religion, but a new life. He called men to repentance” (The Message, 40, footnote).

No doubt, Pope Francis agrees that ‘the Christian message has known periods of darkness and ecclesial weakness.’ Even then he asserts that Christ constantly amazes us by His divine creativity, whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel.’ Almost the same thing Gandhi claims with reference to his own life: “…I must confess that when doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and when I see not one ray of light on the horizon, I turn to the Bhagavad Gita and find a verse to comfort me, and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. My life has been full of external tragedies and if they have not left any visible and indelible effect on me. I owe it to the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita” (The Teachings 35-36). It may be noted that the Gita for Gandhi was not simply a book. He gave the status of a ‘Mother’: “The Gita is the Universal Mother, She turns away nobody. Her door is wide open to anyone who knocks. A true votary of the Gita does not know what disappointment is. He ever dwells in perennial joy and peace that passeth understanding. But that peace and joy come not to the sceptic or to him who is proud of his intellect or learning. It is reserved only for the humble in spirit, who brings to her worship a fullness of faith and an undivided singleness of mind (The teachings 46).

In short, just as the core message of our faith is revealed in Jesus in whom Pope Francis is able to find ever renewing freshness, an ardent Hindu like Gandhi always found joy, enthusiasm in the Gita, his Mother, because the core message for him is revealed in it.