Our mission today

by Editor · October 15, 2008

ON World Mission Sunday, this year on October 19, Catholics are asked to reflect on and pray for the Church�s evangelising missionary endeavours, as well as to contribute to it through the Pontifical Mission Society�s collection during Sunday Mass. These collections are being held throughout the world, and are intended to support those regions in the Church categorised as �missionary territory�, a classification which includes Southern Africa.

While material support is important, it is also necessary for the Church always to redefine its missionary apostolate and the methods and objectives of its evangelisation efforts. Crucially, since the Second Vatican Council, the Church has emphasised the vocation of lay Catholics in evangelisation to complement the missionary efforts of the globally declining numbers of priests and religious.

In his message for Mission Sunday this year, Pope Benedict restates that imperative, calling on all Catholics to be engaged in the Church�s evangelisation apostolate. The pope especially asks us to reflect on the Church�s missionary mandate from the perspective of the great poverty gap between rich and poor � a subject particularly pertinent in South Africa � and global injustice.

The pope sees a crisis which is threatening humanity and all of God�s creation: �What will become of humanity and creation? Is there hope for the future, or rather, is there a future for humanity? And what will this future be like?� he asks, rhetorically. �The answer to these questions comes to those of us who believe from the Gospel. Christ is our future, and as I wrote in the encyclical letter� , his Gospel is a �life-changing� communication that gives hope, throws open the dark door of time and illuminates the future of humanity and the university.� It is therefore the duty of every Catholic �to proclaim Christ and his saving message�, the pope writes.

Pope Benedict is effectively asking the faithful to become agents of a social revolution by conversion. But while it is desirable that people should gain salvation through the mediation of the Catholic Church, that conversion need not be reflected just in Church statistics. The missionary work the pope is referring to is not exclusively a campaign to sign up people as Catholics (or persuade inactive Catholics to return), but a conversion of the collective mind.

It is a conversion aimed at a world where the needs of the poor precede capitalist avarice, where no human life is regarded as expendable, where God�s creation enjoys protection from corporate greed and the fleeting comforts of a consumerist society, where human rights are more than lip-service, where true justice is supreme, where God is not increasingly marginalised in the development of social, economic, political and personal ethics.

Cynics will doubtless scoff at the implicit idealism of that mission. What is important, however, is not the scale of accomplishment in this social conversion, but the dissemination of a social alternative to an increasingly godless world. This must begin with the individual who embraces Christ�s message. By preaching Christ�s love � and this requires not only oratory or prose, but also action and example � we evangelise. Out of faith, out of love, out of hope.

Pope Benedict sums up our mandate succinctly when he says that �missionary activity is a response to the love with which God loves us. His love redeems us and prods us to the missio ad gentes. It is the spiritual energy that can make the harmony, justice and communion grow among persons, races and peoples to which everyone aspires.