Who is Jesus?

He certainly is an encounter. An encounter that later became experience, the experience of understanding who He is. Of listening to His voice and understanding His message. A message that lives on after 2000 years thanks to a community of people that carries it out and keeps it alive. It is the understanding that history has been entirely changed by this person: since 2000 years we are calculating history from his birth, before and after Christ.

How can we explain Jesus to those who don’t believe?

I think that Jesus appears even to those who don’t believe as the fellow traveller who stops to talk to you…do you remember the image of the two disciples who walk towards Emmaus after Easter Morning? They didn’t believe that Jesus had resurrected and yet Jesus walks towards them, talks to them, interrogates them about their lives and they don’t recognize him! And yet, it is Jesus who is walking with them. I firmly believe that even today there are many people who are looking for the meaning of life and that they can – if they purify their glance – they can find Jesus’ presence while He walks with them.

Is Believing a gift or a choice?

It’s one thing and the other. Believing is a gift because it is the grace bestowed by God upon each man, woman and upon every person born in this world. It is a gift of God and it is a gift we call, using a technical term, “grace”. The presence of God in every one of us. Yet this gift needs to be awakened. Everyone has it within himself or herself, deep down inside, but most of the times they don’t notice. It needs to be awakened. It’s the same as for love: everyone is able to love, but if he or she is not loved it will be very hard for himself or herself to understand what true, deep love is.

What is new evangelization?

As it is written in the New Testament: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever”; this means that our communication is communicating the encounter with a person, Jesus, the Son of God, an encounter that is always the same and yet it has to change, because the life of men is changing too. This means we have to do everything we can – and this is what the new evangelization is about – to help the modern man to find a community of people who testify to the presence of Jesus: Jesus, who loves and is close to every one and who welcomes every one with his mercy and his love.