Commence your prayers with the posture and mode that you find best. You can say a brief prayer: “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your children”, or any other that you find good. Try to place all your being in the presence of God.
Topic: the kerugma. What is it? What does it do?
1. What does the “Kerugma” do?
Things happen that change a person inside. A new horizon appears in their life; like a new way of breathing.
It has been described in various ways: The eyes are opened (Luke 24, 31). The heart was burning inside the chest (Luke 24, 32). They go running to tell it to the others (v. 33).
It is a message that cannot be contained and has to be communicated.They find the others gathered together and they tell them the Word (v.35).
It is an ANNOUNCEMENT that produces a change in a person: God has manifested himself and he uncovers our unlimited horizons. It is an interior transformation that fills us with joy. It isn’t a rare thing, it happens in Christian communities today, in parishes of Africa and Latin America. The important thing is that THEY LOVE. The Word of God, when it enters in us CHANGES US and allows us to see things, to see our horizon in a different way.
3. What, therefore, is the Kerugma?
You need to read, peacefully, chapters 2, 3, 10 and 13 of Acts. They are the missionary talks: the announcement of the Gospel of salvation.
You can see in Acts 2, 37-48 how a group changes when it has received the Good News.
Let us listen to Acts, 2, 14-36.
Starting from these ideas we are going to meditate on four elements:
1. The pronoun “THIS”, v.37
“This” that you see is what the Prophet said. “This” is the experience that they live. In chapter 3. “This lame person” cured means that God lives.
“This” is a reference to a situation lived in the present. The “kerugma” is part of an experience that man is living. Christ is risen from the dead, agreed, but what does that tell me? Just this: that there is good news for you: your life can be different. You can see your problems with new eyes. There is a way forward for you.
2. The presence of God in action.
God has your life in his hand, he has not abandoned you. God is aware of you. You are important for Him.
The God of our fathers, etc. is NEAR to me. Now. HERE. He is shown to me. It is a reencounter with trust in God.
3. God changes they way things seem: “He who was rejected, has been lifted up”.
God has changed about the way things seem to us.
He changed the discouragement, the defeat: “Blessed are the poor”. Values are turned upside=down. We have to start from the inside. A new hope for my existence: it is the very Person of Jesus.
4. Jesus, the person
That comes to meet you. That warms your heart. With his way of talking. With the way he draws near to you…
This presence of Jesus is a GIFT, the GIFT of the Spirit. The Spirit is the one that changes from the inside: With the remission of our sins, taking away obstacles, ties, weights.
It isn’t a problems of “words”, it is ACTIONS, and simple actions:
This is very important: from our weakness, from poverty. But it totally transforms a person. Also, the community, when we love each other with this Spirit.
Conclusion: Let us invoke again from the heart: “Come Holy Spirit”…. That fills our hearts with the Spirit of Jesus; the is the strength of our Communities, of our Church.