New mission frontiers

This week the Catholic Church around the world observes World Mission Sunday. It is a day when we are called to concentrate our prayers on the Church’s missionary efforts especially, and an opportunity for us to discern the priorities, objectives and means of our collective evangelising efforts.

At one time, when Europe was thoroughly evangelised, missionaries would leave the countries of their birth to help spread the Gospel to people who had not heard it, to give Christian witness in areas where this was needed, and to help build up the faith where the local Church could not do so on its own.

Catholic missionaries were almost exclusively drawn from the ranks of the consecrated life. This is no longer so.

The receding numbers of vocations in Europe and North America—traditionally the principal sources of missionaries—require that clergy and religious mostly stay put.

In the modern Church, the mandate to evangelise—the purpose of missionary work—no longer rests entirely with priests and religious alone. The evangelisation apostolate applies to every committed Catholic. Today, we are all missionaries.

Of course, few Catholics have the scope to dedicate their entire lives to traditional evangelising missions. To that end, the Church has been redefining the means of evangelisation, encompassing a vast range of possibilities by which we can spread the Good News.

Our front page report this week quotes the late Pope John Paul II as saying that “the time has come to commit all of the Church’s energies to a new evangelisation. No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all people.”

This can be done by explicitly teaching the Word of God, by engaging people with it, or by living out the Gospel as an inspirational example to others.

Next year’s Pastoral Forum, when bishops and laity will meet to identify the local Church’s evangelising priorities, will doubtlessly give Southern Africa’s Catholic a recharged missionary impulse.

The missionary needs today are vast. In the past, evangelisation was aimed at those who had not been exposed to the Gospel before. Today virtually everybody is conscious of religion—but not everybody has faith.

Many who were brought up in the Church are weak in their faith, or have lost it altogether. Our evangelising efforts must be firmly aimed at those people, as well as those who find no logic in religion. This is our new missionary frontier.

In this, our efforts must be applied to the youth in particular, with the proper allocation of resources and full application this entails.

Young Catholics need sound formation so that they may remain strong in their faith and withstand the cultural pressures of an increasingly secularised society.

Just as the traditional missionaries in their endeavours needed to learn the vernacular and culture of those they ministered to, so must those engaged in youth formation today know how to speak the youth’s language, how to adapt to their world, and how to identify what they want and need from religion.

It is a mistake to explain away the exodus of young Catholics from the Church by vague reference to “the mass media”. Many young people are not leaving Christianity, but a church that they feel no connection with.

It is a missionary imperative that this connection be established.