What makes people leave their comfort zones and set out in mission? Is it the spirit of adventure and the pleasure of traveling? In today’s world, one doesn’t need to become a missionary to travel and know the world. Then, why do people commit themselves to mission for life, especially in precarious and unstable areas, living out of love and putting others’ interests above their own? The answer is: because of a call – the call of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is mission’s driving force, as we see in the New Testament. Mary, after the Annunciation, is impelled to visit and help her relative Elizabeth. During the Easter apparitions, the Risen Jesus breathes His spirit upon His disciples and sends them out to proclaim the Good News. At the great event of Pentecost, the Spirit dispels the disciples’ paralyzing fears and makes them courageous witnesses of Jesus. No tribulation manages to stop them from announcing Jesus.
From Jerusalem, the Gospel reaches the ends of the earth. As the Book of the Acts of the Apostles shows, the Holy Spirit is the source and main agent of such a venture. It is He who guides the disciples in their endeavors, gives them courage, recalls and makes the Words of Jesus come alive, closes and opens doors for them, releases them from prison, precedes them, inspires and defends them in the midst of persecutions. The first Christian community is missionary. It exists for mission. Without mission, it would have become a sect or it would have disappeared.
The Spirit is also the “goal of evangelization: He alone stirs up the new creation, the new humanity of which evangelization is to be the result” (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 75). Evangelization aims at conferring such a wonderful gift that is the beginning of all God’s surprises. “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” asked St. Paul to some disciples in Ephesus (Acts 19: 2). Because nobody can follow Jesus and experience life to the full without the Spirit. The Spirit leads people to accept God’s mystery and to experience His sweetness. He enables individuals and cultures to open up to Jesus and His message and become a new humanity.
“There is no Church without Pentecost,” said Pope Benedict XVI at St. Peter’s Square on the Feast of Pentecost. Without the Spirit, he commented, the Church is “like a ship with sails but no wind.” Therefore, the Pontiff added, the Church needs the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a continuous cycle of “new pentecosts” – to infuse joy and enthusiasm in individuals, root them in love, vivify the communities and kindle in all the fire of mission. Only if empowered by the Spirit that the Church is able to continue Jesus’ saving work.
Mission is the hallmark of the Holy Spirit. And we should be constantly reminded that mission is also ad extra or ad gentes, that is beyond the boundaries of our nation, culture and people. Local communities tend to forget that concern as they concentrate on their pastoral needs.
The Second Vatican Council stated that “the pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature” (Ad Gentes, 2). Therefore, for her, mission is not an option. It is her vocation and duty. A community which doesn’t care for mission resembles more a spiritual club than a Church. Its members may even experience the Spirit’s manifold gifts, but still the community doesn’t fulfill its main purpose and raison d’être, that is mission.
