Usually something is said to be “spirited” if it has some interior impulse which encourages, motivates, nourishes and gives meaning to our individual and communal activity. From this one may be led to think that ‘spirited evangelization’ means carrying out a lot of tasks related to proclamation of the Gospel with great fervour and dutifulness, even foregoing personal interests and comforts. Pope Francis may not deny this common meaning of spirited-evangelization. But he goes a step further and gives a deeper meaning of being spirit-filled. In his Evangelii Gaudium he says: “Spirit-filled evangelization is not the same as a set of tasks dutifully carried out despite one’s own personal inclinations and wishes”. Rather it “is one guided by the Holy Spirit, for he is the soul of the Church called to proclaim the Gospel” (#261).

“Spirit-filled evangelizers” are therefore those evangelizers who are “fearlessly open to the working of the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost, the Spirit made the apostles go forth from themselves and turned them into heralds of God’s wondrous deeds, capable of speaking to each person in his or her own language… It is the Holy Spirit also grants the courage to proclaim the newness of the Gospel with boldness (parrhesía) in every time and place, even when it meets with opposition” (# 259).

The fearless proclamation was not a matter of the past. Today also we can get the outpouring of the same Spirit. But a couple of conditions are to be met. One, rootedness in prayer and the other is fruitfulness in the form of a transfigured life. To put them in the words of EG: “Let us call upon Him today, firmly rooted in prayer, for without prayer all our activity risks being fruitless and our message empty… Jesus wants evangelizers who proclaim the good news not only with words, but above all by a life transfigured by God’s presence”(#259).

It is very strange but true that Gandhi affirmed an unshakable faith in the Power which we may identify with Holy Spirit: “There is an indefinable mysterious Power that pervades everything. I feel it, though I do not see it. It is this unseen Power which makes itself felt and yet defies all proof because it is so unlike all that I perceive through my senses. It transcends the senses… I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and re-creates. That informing power or spirit is God. And since nothing else I see merely though the sense can or will persist, He alone is.”

So much for the existence of the ‘Spirit.’ Now, as regards the ‘Holy’ Spirit, Gandhi argues thus: “Is this power benevolent or malevolent? I see it is purely benevolent. For I can see that in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that God is Life, Truth, Light. He is Love. He is the Supreme Good (Truth 8).

Now as regards the first point mentioned above, Gandhi was emphatic upon fearlessness as an important outcome of the real faith in God, the Spirit. “He who seeks refuge in God ought to have a glimpse of the Atman, that transcends the body; and the moment one a glimpse of the Imperishable Atman (Holy Spirit) one sheds the love of the perishable body” (and all fears connected with it) (Bose 16).

With regard to the third point mentioned above, namely the transformation required of the evangelizer, Gandhi contends that “God is no God who merely satisfied the intellect, if he ever does. God to be God must rule the heart and transform it. He must express Himself in every smallest act of His votary. This can only be done though a definite realization more real than the five senses can ever produce however real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses it is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within” (Truth 9). Elsewhere he asserts: “You cannot realize the wider consciousness (Spirit) unless you subordinate completely reason and intellect, and the body too (Bose 7).

In sum, it is clear that what EG gives the three core points of spirited evangelizer, are for Gandhi the core features of a real believer. In other words, the evangelizers, in order to be spirited-evangelizes, need to be primarily real believers, rather than being merely proclaimers.