In Christ we discover the astounding news which we are to announce to the world. His Gospel points out to every man and woman the hope for thier journey into the future. Without a vision of the future there can be no hope, just as without hope there can be no future. A communication that does not transmit this vision lives on the sidelines of a history that each day renews itself and that asks for new incarnations of those who would share actively in its changes. A communication of hope is for this reason conditioned by the events and the different cultures that move along the road of history. It is also subject to the transformations that arise within the People of God who are on their pilgrim journey toward the Kingdom.
Carlo Molari wrote that humanity “is living through one of those crucial passages in its adventure on this earth, that together constitute the numerous epochal turning-points in its long history. It is a process of gestation to new ways of living together, and it provokes turbulence and conflicts, sufferings and misunderstandings.” This involves all of nature, human life and politics, the diverse cultures, the life of the Church itself with all those crises of life and of faith that often “can no longer stand up to the developments of scientific culture and need to be reformulated”.
Let us ask ourselves: How can our communication open up a passage to hope and make it shine to the world? How can we help the people of our time, who for a long time have lived as though their hope was eclipsed or submerged under bewilderment, fears and insecurity? How can we make hope come again to the fore as a necessity for building our future, and for discovering new horizons of fraternity and peace for the present life and the life to come?
The hope we want to communicate pehaps cannot be described only by words, even those clothed in beauty, light and color, by images and sounds offered in the modern instruments for communication. Because hope is in the “not yet”, it is the place where something positive blossoms that stops us in joy and wonder; it is something so great and splendid, but also extremely fragile, that needs to be cared for and cultivated. It is a relational and therefore a communicative reality, but also one of life, and shines forth even in the pain and anguish that accompany our days.
Hope guides us to look within ourselves to the causes of the events that are the signs of our times, so that we can look beyond, because hope is like the prophecy that carves itself onto history; it is the unstoppable desire to move forward, it is the exodus and the longing for meeting, the scaling of the walls and blockades, the ability to see new things, to go yonder where “justice and peace shall kiss”(Ps. 85:11). It is the shout that reaches between God and all people that, as Martin Buber says, “does not hover over creation, but embraces it”.
Each one of us can and must become hope for others; so we need to cultivate it in our hearts as a precious treasure and communicate it with renewed immagination, with courageous creativity, with the intelligence of one who knows that we must be equal to the new challenges that face us and never stop studying, seeking out with tenacity and patience the contents and the most effective ways to influence the building of a more human and fraternal life. We will then become seeds of life that God continues to scatter in the furrows of this our poor world, offering reasons for hope to those who seem to have none left, without tiring in announcing the Good News of Jesus, sure as we are that happiness for us all rests essentially in loving as he taught us to, in growing together as we share the gifts each of us bears, and all this with the strength that comes from Him who is the Light of Life and the gift of Peace.
Sr Agnes Quaglini , fsp
The communication of the Good News of God’s love for all people, as expressed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is what unifies and makes sense of all the other aspects of the life of the Church. This is particularly true of evangelization: communication is not simply one dimension of evangelization, without communication there can be no evangelization. Proposition 38 from the recent Synod on the Word of God echoes this insight: The mission to announce the Word of God is the responsibility of all the disciples of Jesus Christ by virtue of their baptism. The awareness must be deepened in every parish, and in every Catholic community and organization: they must find ways to bring the Word of God to all, especially to those who have been baptized but who have not been adequately evangelized. The Word of God became flesh so as to communicate himself to all men and women; a particularly privileged way of knowing this Word is therefore in encountering witnesses who make it present and alive. This proposition serves to remind us, also, that communication is not simply a verbal activity but that every aspect of the life of the church can be and ought to be communicative. 
Mr. John Boucher, Director of the Office of Evangelization and Parish Development for the Diocese of Trenton offfers this handout to reflect on how we can move from "Cowards to Proclaimers.
