Cardinal Tagle calls for a ‘pay it forward’ type charity

In visiting religious inspired by the service of St. Vincent de Paul, the cardinal says that love is the language humanity understands.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle is emphasizing the need for witnesses of charity, since love is “the language best understood by humanity.” He suggests that there are three tasks regarding charity that are urgent in our times: to inspire charity, to live a charity that leads to community, and to promote charity in the formation of priests.

The cardinal, who last year was appointed to lead the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples after eight years at the helm of the Archdiocese of Manila, was speaking about how to share the Gospel message in our day. He was offering his reflections to the leaders of the Vincentian spiritual family, as Fides reported.

The cardinal reflected on the idea of the “new evangelization,” a term coined by St. John Paul II. “The current challenge,” he said, “lies in discerning how we can present the Gospel, which is always the same, in a changing world.”

The cardinal considered with the Vincentians the danger of falling into an intellectualism, while failing to sufficiently emphasize the importance of discipleship.

Finally, Cardinal Tagle spoke about the Catholic understanding of ecology, noting that Pope Francis views his encyclical on the environment as fundamentally regarding the social doctrine of the Church.

There are similarities with ecology campaigns, but for Christians, care for the environment is about the “protection and safeguarding of Creation,” the work of God.