"In the Beginning Was the Word": Mercy as a "Reality Illuminated by Reason".

In his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii gaudium [EG], Pope Francis insists that we need to anchor our approach to the Church’s missionary task in the Incarnate Word as the principle of reality (“il criterio di realta”: 233). This principle can be a guide for “the development of life in society and the building of a people,” and its “application can be a genuine path to peace within each nation and in the entire world” (EG, 221). It is a path that involves in particular the inclusion of the poorest and weakest among us (inter alia: EG, 17). Citing John Paul II, Francis states that preaching