A message of liberation

103. The Good News of the Kingdom of God, which proclaims salvation, includes a "message of liberation". (³⁴¹) In preaching this Kingdom, Jesus addressed the poor in a very special way: "Blessed are you poor, yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh" (Lk 6,20-21) The Beatitudes of Jesus, addressed to those who suffer, are an eschatological proclamation of the salvation which the Kingdom brings. They note that painful experience to which the Gospel is so particularly sensitive: poverty, hunger and the suffering of humanity. The community of the disciples of Jesus, the Church, shares today the same sensitivity as the Master himself showed them. With great sorrow she turns her attention to those "peoples who, as we all know, are striving with all their power and energy to overcome all those circumstances which compel them to live on the border line of existence: hunger, chronic epidemics, illiteracy, poverty, injustice between nations... economic and cultural neo-colonialism". (³⁴²) All forms of poverty, "not only economic but also cultural and religious" (³⁴³) are a source of concern for the Church.

As an important dimension of her mission, "the Church is duty bound—as her bishops have insisted—to proclaim the liberation of these hundreds of millions of people, since very many of them are her children. She has the duty of helping this liberation, of bearing witness on its behalf and of assuring its full development". (³⁴⁴)

104. To prepare Christians for this task, catechesis is attentive, amongst other things, to the following aspects:

– it shall situate the message of liberation in the prospective of the "specifically religious objective of evangelization", (³⁴⁵) since it would lose its raison d'être "if it were divorced from the religious basis by which it is sustained which is the kingdom of God in its full theological sense; (³⁴⁶) thus, the message of liberation "cannot be confined to any restricted sphere whether it be economic, political, social or doctrinal. It must embrace the whole man in all his aspects and components, extending to his relation to the absolute, even to the Absolute which is God"; (³⁴⁷)

– catechesis, in the ambit of moral education, shall present Christian social morality as a demand and consequence of the "radical liberation worked by Christ"; (³⁴⁸) in effect, the Good News which Christians profess with hearts full of hope is: Christ has liberated the world and continues to liberate it; this is the source of Christian praxis, which is the fulfilment of the great commandment of love;

– at the same time, in the task of initiating mission, catechesis shall arouse in catechumens and those receiving catechesis "a preferential option for the poor", (³⁴⁹) which "far from being a sign of individualism or sectarianism, makes manifest the universality of the Church's nature and mission. This option is not exclusive" (³⁵⁰) but implies "a commitment to justice, according to each individual's role, vocation and circumstances". (³⁵¹)