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took place in the heart of the Samaritans, who said to the woman:
“It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have
heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the
world” (Jn 4:42). The Church, which draws her life from the perma-
nent and mysterious presence of her Risen Lord, has as the core of her
mission a duty “to lead all people to encounter Christ”
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“The purpose of this evangelization is to bring about faith and con-
version to Christ. Faith involves a profound change of mind and heart, a
change of life, a ‘
metanoia
.’”
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Evangelization does not seek to invite people
to experience only one moment of conversion but rather to experience
the gradual and lifelong process of conversion: to draw all people into a
deeper relationship with God, to participate in the sacramental life of the
Church, to develop a mature conscience, to sustain one’s faith through
ongoing catechesis, and to integrate one’s faith into all aspects of one’s life.
“Within the whole process of evangelization, the aim of catechesis is to be
the teaching and maturation stage, that is to say, the period in which the
Christian, having accepted by faith the person of Jesus Christ as the one
Lord and having given Him complete adherence by sincere conversion
of heart, endeavors to know better this Jesus to whom he has entrusted
himself: to know his ‘mystery,’ the kingdom of God proclaimed by Him,
the requirements and promises contained in His Gospel message, and the
paths that he has laid down for anyone who wishes to follow Him.”
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“The
process of conversion and evangelization that accomplishes the objectives
above must include the witness of the Church through her members in the
everyday living out of the Gospel.”
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Encounter Jesus Within the Family
The family is our first community and the most basic way God the Father
gathers us and forms us to act in the world. The early Church expressed
this truth by referring to the Christian family as the Church of the home.
The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church
similarly states that “the family is, so to speak, the domestic church.”
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It
is within the family that we first learn who God is and how to prayerfully
seek his will for us. As the first and most basic community to which we all
belong, “the story of family life is a story about love—shared, nurtured,
and sometimes rejected or lost. In every family God is revealed uniquely