Kerygma
To gain an understanding of the meaning of Kerygma we would do well to start with Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (2013), heralded across the world of Christendom as a landmark address providing an exciting message for its followers. This message is based on how to live in a world of increasing secularity while heeding the call of St Pope John Paul II for engagement in a new evangelisation.
Evangelii Gaudium (EG) provides the church with creative alternative strategies of evangelisation. Rather than a new gospel, this document reinforces the importance of Kerygma; the proclamation of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and an encounter with Christ relevant to a contemporary mind. The Kerygmatic approach emphasizing this basic proclamation was evident in the early Church as the Apostles were inclined to preach the basics, and then to draw those who were moved to surrender and follow by this encounter into the deeper mysteries. Today we propose this approach as ‘evangelisation before catechesis’. Pope Francis calls us to be fluent in the basic understanding of the Gospel message, through the Kerygma. The Kerygma “needs to be the centre of all evangelising activity and all efforts at Church renewal” (EG 164).
Pope Francis tells us that he never tires of quoting Pope Benedict XVI, “ Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (EG7). What then can we do in our schools to foster this encounter in our students and colleagues? The Kerygma is the answer to this question. “It is the principal proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another throughout the process of catechesis, at every level and moment” (EG164).
Further reading on the Kerygma can be found in these useful documents: