All of this indicates that if Christianity is to recover its persuasive force in the midst of the present crisis for mankind, it must present itself once again as the religion of truth and the religion of love.

Christian faith, not the watered-down version of the relativists or of those who reduce it to a question of feeling or personal opinion divorced from truth, but the “full and joyful faith of the New Testament, of the Church down the ages” continues to have a chance in the contemporary world.13 It does so because it corresponds to the nature of man, who has an unquenchable thirst for the infinite, for truth and for love.

Evangelisation, then, is a matter of spreading the liberating truth and love that everyone needs.14 Truth is a gift for everyone and alienates no one. In Christ, the essential gift of truth is offered to everyone and it is our vocation, as priests or laypeople, to share this gift freely with others. 13 Cf. Joseph Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), p. 137. 14 Cf. ibid., pp. 56; 73; idem, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), p. 215.