26 April" "
“Let’s not change the Gospel: it’s already a text so powerful as to touch everyone’s heart. Let’s not filter it too much”. That’s the appeal made by Cardinal Godfried Danneels, archbishop of Brussels, in the report he presented on the “itineraries of formation” of the young in the Church to the 10th Symposium of European bishops, recently held in Rome. We must he said “tell the young the truth of the Gospel”. And in the debate that followed his report the need was expressed by various young participants in the symposium for the Gospel to be presented without too much mediation. Danneels said he fully agreed: “We must have the courage he replied to take the risk of letting the text of the Gospel speak for itself, naked and unvarnished, in a context of prayer and silence. Sometimes we have commented on the Gospel so much that we have ended up deforming it. We ought, on the contrary, to make an effort to ensure that the Gospel exerts an influence on the hearts of the young, because it is the Holy Spirit that speaks through it: all we do is make a little noise”. But we need to beware Danneels warned of trying to “adapt the language of the Bible too much to our daily language”. There was a period, recalled the archbishop of Brussels, in which attempts were made to translate the Bible using “the language spoken by the man on the street”. This, in his view, is mistaken because “to receive the message of the Gospel we need to be willing to accept its language which is also expressed in some key concepts such as Kingdom of God, salvation, mercy and so on. The young don’t have any difficulty in learning another language, so we must urge them to learn also the language of the Gospel”.
