"Jesus is speaking to each one of us, saying: 'It was wonderful to take part in World Youth Day, to live the faith together with young people from the four corners of the earth, but now you must go, now you must pass on this experience to others'," he said.

On the white sand of Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana beach, the Pope was celebrating the closing Mass for the 2013 WYD.

The first need for evangelization is to "go," Pope Francis told the assembled young people.

When faith stays "locked up" within a small Christian community, he said, it is "like withholding oxygen from a flame that was burning strongly".

"Faith is a flame that grows stronger the more it is shared and passed on, so that everyone may know, love and confess Jesus Christ."

The Pope said the command to evangelise is not optional. "Jesus did not say: 'if you would like to, if you have the time'."

"It is a command that is born not from a desire for domination or power but from the force of love, from the fact that Jesus first came into our midst and gave us, not a part of himself, but the whole of himself; he gave his life in order to save us and to show us the love and mercy of God."

The Church is meant to evangelise all persons, Pope Francis taught, saying there are "no borders, no limits" to where Christians are sent to evangelise.

"Do not be afraid to go and to bring Christ into every area of life, to the fringes of society, even to those who seem farthest away, most indifferent. The Lord seeks all, he wants everyone to feel the warmth of his mercy and his love."

The Pope said he knows how daunting it can be to take up the responsibility to share the Gospel, but "Jesus does not leave us alone; he never leaves you alone".

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

Catholic News Service

Image: Seattlepi.com

True evangelisers build bridges, to meet people wherever they are, rather than building walls to protect the Church, he said.

"A Christian must proclaim Jesus Christ in such a way that he is accepted," the Pope said.

Using the example of St Paul preaching to pagan Athenians at the Areopagus, he said: "St Paul was a real ‘pontifex' — a builder of bridges and not of walls."

He said Paul's attitude was: Build a bridge to their heart, in order then to take another step and announce Jesus Christ.

The Pope emphasised that evangelisation entails a willingness to listen to everyone, to become acquainted and establish relationships with everyone.

This was the way Jesus preached, he observed. Jesus "dined with Pharisees, with sinners, with publicans, with doctors of the law. Jesus heard everyone, and when he said a word of condemnation, it was at the end, when there was nothing else to do.

"Christians who are afraid to build bridges and prefer to build walls are Christians who are not sure of their faith, not sure of Jesus Christ," he said.

"When the Church loses this apostolic courage," the Pope continued, "it becomes a stalled Church, a tidy Church, nice, very nice, but without fertility, because it has lost the courage to go to the peripheries, where there are so many victims of idolatry, of worldliness, of weak thinking."

Pope Francis recalled that as a child, he sometimes heard Catholics say that they could not visit certain neighbours because they were not married in the Church, or were socialists or atheists.

That attitude, he said, "was a defence of the faith, but with walls". In contrast, he said, "The Lord built bridges".

Sources:

Catholic News Service

Vatican Radio

Image: Slate.com