The periphery beckons

I borrow the notion of peripheries from the thought of Pope Francis. At a pre-conclave meeting, then Jorge Mario Bergoglio delivered a speech (the text should be read in full), that outlined the dominant contours of his thought. Speaking of the need for apostolic zeal within the Church, Cardinal Bergoglio declared: "The Church is called to come out from itself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographical, but also existential: those of the mystery of sin, of suffering, of injustice, those of ignorance and of the absence of faith, those of thought, those of every form of misery." So we begin to see that by periphery, Pope Francis means the periphery of this world. And he sees the mission of the Church, the goal of its apostolic zeal and evangelistic fervor, as being most properly directed toward these peripheries. The Church finds its center, its identity, its life--at the peripheries of the world. 

The periphery is within and around us all. It is different for each individual and yet the same. For we all live under the dominion of sin and suffering. And we all yearn for redemption--for an invasion of grace--that breaks into our world and transforms the periphery, a place of death, into the place of life.

Christ is that life. To evangelize is to give life and joy to others by giving them Christ. The aim of this blog is to contribute to the discovery of the peripheries within and around us--to explore them, to bring them to light, to recognize them. And then to evangelize in that darkness: to proclaim Christ.