URGENCY AND NECESSITY OF MISSION AD GENTES IN THE
MODEL OF COMMUNIO AMONG CHURCHES

(Paper read at the Congress commemorating the 50 th Anniversary of Pope Pius XII’s Apostolic Encyclical
“Fidei Donum” at Fraterna Domus, Sacrofano, Roma, May 8-11, 2007)

Or

The Gift of Faith -- a Priest for every need of mission.

+Gaudencio B. Cardinal Rosales
Archbishop of Manila

The Trinity --- the Heart and Source of Mission.

The mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Father has its source from the eternal communion of the three persons of Father as Lover, the Son as the Beloved in the Spirit as Love sharing everything among them. All the forms of sharing begin here at the Triune God --- the font of goodness and love. It is no wonder then that mission flows from the love of God the Father (as the principle without principle as we are reminded by the Decree on the missionary activity of the Church, Ad Gentes, 2) and from which God freely creates and calls humans to share.

The mystery of mission is that through communion in love the sender is also somehow sent; the giver is also in a sense given; he who gives also receives in togetherness. In the Trinity, all three divine persons share in Love common between Lover and Beloved.

When the creation of human beings cane as the crowning instant of the rest of the materially created world the call to humans was clearly to become the “likeness of God” on earth and they were ultimately called to share in the glory of God (genesis 1:26-27). Creation is God Himself communing with humans. More fully was this fulfilled when the Son of God was sent as Jesus into the world as the true mediator between God and men, to make humans sharer of the divine nature, to serve and not to be served, to save humans, to assure people that God loves them and that He forgives them (John 3:16-17). In his incarnation Jesus showed the world how God loved us humans. That love of the Father was not only repeated among believers or among those within the Church. Love of God in Jesus and through Jesus was proclaimed and lived by the Church first through the apostles and later thru the priests. Whatever Jesus taught or fulfilled for the salvation of the people on earth would be proclaimed and spread to the ends of the earth”. (Ad Gentes, 2). Thus the Church itself is sent --- is missioned ---to repeat what the Lord has taught. And He told the disciples just before His ascension that they would be his witness not only in Jerusalem but to the rest of the world. (Acts 1:8).

The Church: Missionary by Nature.

The Church is missionary by its very nature (AG, 2); but also is “a sacrament of communion with God and of unity among all men for the benefit of the faithful of the whole world.” (LG,1). The mystery deepens because, bound as one and in communion with each other while able to share, still the Church is sent to reach out to many, letting the love has received in and through Jesus to flow out in order to influence and to change others. Communion is the profound relationship among the divine persons of the triune God. Bound eternally as one, through interaction and sharing of love, the Divinity through the divine persons reaches out to others.

The spirituality of communion gives the person the ability to think of unity in the Church; it implies the ability to see what is positive (and not always the negative) in others; with the spirituality of communion, the Church is inspired to “make room” for our brothers and sisters. (NMI, 23).

Communion and mission are the two treasured gifts that the Church is always ready to share with others. Nonetheless the Lord Jesus Christ can continue this mission of spreading the good news of the Father’s love only through the disciples. He reiterated. “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” (John 20:21). Clearly no one sets out his own "mission”. The priests and the missionaries can only evangelize in the name and in the person of Jesus. Thus, they must first be sent or missioned by and in the name of the Church that the Lord Jesus founded. But like also in the discipleship of the chosen ones of the Lord, the evangelizers themselves have to be prepared by a profound and intimate companionship with Jesus, the Christ.

The three Important moments in Christian Life.

Three important moments mark the appointment of the apostles as living the life Christ wants them to live. These three moments (like the colours of light in a prism) do not cut one off the other; they succeed and intertwine, combining to create new colours. In Christian life vocation fuses with mission just as discipleship many times is supplemented by mission. These three stages have already been indicated in the Marcan narration of the apostolic call in the life of the apostles and they underline the significant parts of the apostolic formation.

The first moment is when Jesus “summoned those he wanted”. (Mk. 3:13). This part corresponds to the priestly vocation. And evidently the call is a privileged one; it is a call based on preference. Every vocation is a call conditioned by love. The Lord calls only those that He wants. To the question where do you live, the Master responded, “Come and see”. And the first disciple stayed with him that day. (John 1:18-19). That call was not just an invitation to a friendship. It was a preference for an extraordinary companionship; it was a call to discipleship.

"They were to be his companions” (Mk. 3:14) was the second moment. Accompanying Jesus is the heart of discipleship where those who are called begin to listen, see and observe Jesus in his words, conduct and way of serving and attending to people. Here is where the apostle becomes the friend and brother of the Lord. Within the operation of the grace human friendship moves into intimacy and trust between the apostles and Master. In his heart the apostle is a teacher of people and a confidante of the Lord. Companionship is not only the core of the apostle’s Christian life; it is also the core of his spirituality.

The third moment is when the apostles were “to be sent out to proclaim the message”. (Mk 3:15). Sending people out to preach the good news is what is explicitly called mission. Apostles are here sent out to preach, to repeat the wisdom, the love and compassion of Jesus among the peoples and cultures they are sent to evangelize. Evangelization is the third moment in the life of the chosen disciple, and yet it brings with it both the privilege of the call and the fruitfulness of discipleship in the teaching of the kingdom that only the Lord can inaugurate.

Evangelization of the World: The People and Culture.  

Who are the audience and what is the content of evangelization to which the apostles are sent by the Lord? Jesus was unmistakably clear in his last instructions to his disciples. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:18-20). All people and all cultures are encompassed in the Lord’s mention of nations.

It is important to note that the kingdom of God as a reduction of the love of God in Jesus is meant to be lived by humans in a profound and radical way affecting a change both in personal and culture of peoples. (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 20). Cultures change through the years lasting unto epochal transitions. All cultures are dynamically seeking modification and revision in people’s behaviour to become better and discontentedly to have more. More often than not cultures change for the better; but there are also occasions when the changing delicacy of manners perverts and corrupts people.

People react to many of the world’s changes as subjects struggling to free themselves from countless reversals in a tyrannizing economy, polity, mores and even a terrorizing brutality within society and their culture. There appears to be no safe haven for a peaceful and health-seeking community of people of whatever belief and culture in the planet today. From the fifth to the first worlds, there is anxiety and fear that anyone can be the next victim of a senseless, frightening mad killer, terrorists or s/he could be a victim of conscienceless global or local traders. We say less of ignorance, poverty and sickness which have been universalized long ago. In this manner the people are seen as needing the assurance of the good news of the kingdom of goodness and love as they struggle through imperialism, neo-colonization and neo conquest, political and economic rivalries, including today’s phenomenon of globalization. Still in whatsoever system they are in, the people will need the presence, and in some areas the reintroduction of the Father’s kingdom. Thus there is the wisdom of the Lord advocating to all the preaching of the Kingdom of the Father. To someone who wanted to follow him, Jesus said…” your duty is to go and spread the news of the Kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:59-60).

As missioned to preach the good news Jesus proclaimed first and foremost the Kingdom of God. For him the Kingdom of the Father’s love was of utmost importance; Kingdom of Heaven for the Lord is an absolute, making the other topics “the rest”. (EN, 8).

Mission to Evangelize: as the nature of the Church.

In this manner mission ad extra is not merely a matter if urgency or pressing need in account of ignorance, poverty and suffering that is worldwide today. Proclaiming the good news of God’s love or the evangelization of peoples constitutes the essential mission of the Church; it is the grace, the vocation, the proper identity of the Church. The Church exist in order evangelize, to teach and to be channel of the gift of grace. (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 14; Ad Gentes 2). Hence the church would not be fully church if it fails to reach out to others (or to be missioned out to others).

Simply put the mission to evangelize is not a matter of urgency or extreme need. The hunger for and the need to hear and accept the good news from God --- in Jesus the Christ about His love as framed in the Kingdom --- has always been there in the world of whatever culture or civilization, even though expressed in different tones and manner through the millennia. The need to hear the good news has always been there. There was not a time in the world where the good news was not wanted or unexpected. The hunger for food, for love and for news about it, has always been kept safely in human hearts. For the Church the mission to evangelize is not a matter of need or pressing time; for the Church the mission to evangelize is part of its nature and identity. (AG, 2). To belong to the Church of Jesus Christ is to reach out somehow and somewhere to others, by or through others or some group who are sent out to sow the good news of God’s love. Mission is the vocation of the Christian; it is the nature and calling of the Catholic Church after the manner and mission of Jesus.

The Phenomenon of People’s Rapid and Distant Mobility: A New Challenge to Mission

The fast and distant mobility of people, so peculiar to the present world culture, presents a challenge to the Church and mission. The phenomenon called migration, permanent or temporary, challenges both the meaning and extent of mission. Migration for economic, social or even cultural reasons begs for a better or perhaps a more generous understanding of the extent of mission on the part of the Church-out-of-which or the Church-into-which the emigrants presently reside.

While in the past missionaries were sent to both distant lands and to cultures far different from theirs, today, however, mission lands are only hours away from anyone’s motherland and cultures may now be readily shared. Modern day travel has already shortened the missionaries’ journey to a few hours, while saying goodbye to missionaries’ today means they will be welcomed back for home visits in six or so number of years. Being sent to missions now can mean the missionary may have to learn a new language or he may be speaking of the kingdom of God to a people who already speak his own tongue.

Not surprisingly there are countries a good ten (10) percent of whose population are now residing and working as emigrants in another country. Are the migrants themselves the missionaries? What of the priests sent to care for their compatriots while working or living outside the confines of their country? What do we say of priests who are transported to shepherd a long established church from whose people came the first missionaries who Christianized them in their countries centuries back? Are they also people in mission?

Christians in their own Diapsoras today have suddenly opened newer and wider vistas that challenge our understanding of mission. The Church must today be extra generous in accepting the meaning of missionary needs in today’s world, because the need of one church is indeed the need of the whole church. Gone are the distinctions between an established church and the new church, between the sending and receiving church, because the mission to evangelize as the identity and nature of the church moves within either direction (of giving and receiving, sending and accepting) at the same time, if we have to be the church that the Lord Jesus Christ founded.

Communion as sharing to care for the Church.

But the Church has long been ready for these mission challenges and needs. The Decree of the missionary activity if the church says this very distinctly. “All bishops, as members of the body of bishops which succeeds the college of the apostles, are consecrated not for one diocese alone, but for the salvation of the whole world. The command of Christ to preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15) applies primarily and immediately to them --- with Peter, and subject to Peter. From this arises that communion and cooperation of the churches which is so necessary today for the work of evangelization. Because of this communion, each church cares for all the others, they make known their needs to each other, they share their possessions, because the spread of the Body of Christ is the responsibility of the whole college of bishops.” (Ad Gentes, 38).

In fine, and after this reflection on mission and communion as the two great gifts in the church, we say that to belong to the church means to care not only for the church but also for everyone in the church. It is not a question of urgency or necessity. To lose that care for the mission to evangelize and to stop the sharing of one’s resource with the needs of the people of God is to cease being the Church of Jesus Christ.