In the month of October, the Church focuses on mission – especially mission beyond the borders of one’s people and culture, called in Latin, Ad Gentes. The missionary impulse is a sign of the Church’s vitality. The Church exists as a result of God’s mission and for mission. The Church learns and grows in mission, reaching out to others. A community closed to the perspective of mission is closed to God, to life and to the future.
What is the purpose of mission? Simply put, it is to make Jesus present – everywhere, among all peoples and cultures of the world. In his message for World Mission Sunday to be celebrated on the penultimate Sunday of the month, Pope Benedict XVI wrote that what people ask believers is “not only to ‘speak’ of Jesus, but to ‘make Jesus seen,’ to make the face of the Redeemer shine out in every corner of the earth before the generations of the new millennium…”
The Gospel of Jesus we were entrusted with is Good News. The world needs it and expects it from us. People have the right to listen to it and to see it incarnated in our lives – in the love we live and irradiate. Our mission, like the mission of Jesus, is to do good and to liberate those afflicted by evil (cf. Acts 10:38). The Gospel is a leaven of freedom and progress. Hence, mission cannot but be a force of personal, social and cultural transformation for a better world – of peace and communion, solidarity and justice.
The whole Church is the protagonist of mission. But not all the members of a community are called to leave their places and be sent wherever they are needed. Missionaries – priests, religious or lay people – are the ones the community sends out to “the ends of the world.” Fulfilling their vocation, they become bridges between Churches and peoples, religious traditions and cultural views. In their diversity, they are gifts to the communities and peoples they serve. They, themselves, as well as their peoples and communities of origin, are enriched in the encounter.
Their presence is a sign of the Church’s concern and communion, of its unity and diversity. Theirs is not a personal enterprise because they do not come on personal behalf. They shouldn’t feel like strangers, even though, sometimes, they perceive that the local Churches would feel more comfortable without their presence challenging them to a further commitment to the proclamation of Jesus Christ.
The missionaries’ presence is a reminder that we must acknowledge and go beyond our prejudices, fears and indifference, care for the world and become universal people. Pope Benedict XVI says it acutely in his message: “In a multiethnic society that is experiencing increasingly disturbing forms of loneliness and indifference, Christians must learn to offer signs of hope and to become universal brethren, cultivating the great ideals that transform history and, without false illusions or useless fears, must strive to make the planet a home for all peoples.”
During this month, we are invited to pray for the Church’s universal mission and to support it with our resources. Even the poor are called to share. Because we do not appreciate what doesn’t cost us anything. In Africa, where I worked for years, World Mission Sunday’s collection was “sacred” – as a sign of commitment to mission. I cannot, therefore, hide my surprise to see that, in many parishes here, it is done only as a second collection! To me, that doesn’t help to create a true missionary spirit because the message conveyed is that the parish and its needs – not the universal Church – come first always. We all need to be more missionary-minded.
