Spiritualità missionaria

Mgr Marcello Palentini - May 2006

"We want to see Jesus" (John 12:21)

  1. Mandate of Jesus
  2. Documents of the Church: Vatican II and post-conciliar documents
  3. In search of a Missionary Spirituality: Spirituality and Mission
    • What is the spirit of the mission?
    • How could it be our missionary efforts?
  4. Spirituality for a New Evangelization
  5. Towards a Missionary Community
  6. Terms of missionary spirituality, quality of the missionary

1 - MANDATE OF JESUS

Jesus said: "I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities, which is why I was sent" (Lk 4:43).
The missionary zeal of Jesus in connection with the announcement and construction of the Kingdom, his burning desire to "bring fire on earth" so that everyone is plagued, prompts him to ask his disciples: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. Here I am with you always until the end of the world "(Mt 28,19-20).
This mandate caused causes, immediately after the Ascension of Jesus into heaven, proclaiming the Gospel to the whole world.
Paul feels in his heart as a permanent imperative: "Woe to me if I preach not the Gospel." (1 Cor 9.6).
And to his disciple Timothy, gives this advice:
"Preach the word, be urgent in season, and out of season, reprimand, encourage through all patience and doctrine." (2 Tim 4.2)

2 - COMMITMENT OF-DUTY WHOLE CHURCH

The Church was born from the pierced Heart of Jesus and loving and the evangelizing mission of the Twelve, from the beginning feels urgency to evangelize. And in this consists of the deepest identity: "The Church exists for evagelizzazione" (EN 14)
The Church, through a permanent dynamism begins to evangelize itself: "The Church is always in need of being evangelized, if she wants to maintain its freshness, its impulse and its power to proclaim the Gospel" (EN 15)
- The main goal of missionary activity is the glory of God, through the implementation of his plan of salvation for all mankind (AG 7)
- The mission of the Church is oriented to the construction of a humanity in communion, in fellowship and love.
The theme of missionary spirituality is slowly deepened especially after the Council. Especially the Apostolic Exhortation "Nuntiandi Gospels" (chapter 7) presents the spirituality of evangelization and of those who evangelizes:

  1. Loyalty to the Holy Spirit (EN 75)
  2. Authentic evangelical life, rich experience of God (EN 76)
  3. The service unit (EN 77)
  4. The service to the truth (EN 78)
  5. Apostolic zeal and pastoral charity lived in the joy of Easter (EN 79-80)

THE MISSIONARY SPIRITUALITY
Giving life with Him and like Him: "I came not to be served but to serve and give his life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28)

As the humidity and water are not seen in the grass, but keep it green and make it grow, so the missionary spirituality keeps alive (green) our missionary activities.
The Encyclical "Redemptoris Missio" talks about:
- A renewed missionary commitment, a new enthusiasm, new ideas (No.2)
- Of a renewal of faith of the Church
- Of a new evangelization (No.3)
- Of a new life (No. 7)
- On a new impulse of missionary (n.30)
- As new forms of missionary cooperation (92)
- As a new missionary advent, a new convergence of peoples to common values, the new springtime of the Gospel (No. 86)
- The dawn of a new missionary era (No. 92)
All this would be meaningless if there were new men in the novelty of the Holy Spirit, who throw themselves utopian across borders.

Thus the encyclical presents the dimensions of missionary spirituality:

  • Trinity: The mission of the Church flows from the source of God-Love.
  • pneumatological: live entirely docile to the Spirit, to be modeled by Him, to be more like Christ every day. The Spirit will grant us the gifts of fortitude and discernment, the essential features of missionary spirituality. (87)
  • Christology: The personal contact with Jesus that we emulate and follow. From there was born with the concept of mission and its availability for the same: the separation of things, people, culture, environment. For the fact of being "sent", the missionary has the experience comforter of Christ (no. 88 and also chapters 1 and 2).

We can summarize the requirements of a true missionary thus:
- Living with Christ calls us friends
- To live like Christ, to learn from him and take his lifestyle (humility, to serve God and to others) to be his witnesses.
- To be united in Christ: faith is lived out in communion and sharing of projects such as Church, "Father, may be one, because the world may believe ..." (Jn 17.21)
- Go with Christ, in His name, with his power: first, to commune with Jesus in his name to go to his brothers, he wants to do, to where he wants, realizing what he wants.
- Give your life to Him and like Him: "I came not to be served but to serve and give his life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28)
- Give your life for the Kingdom.

  • ecclesiological: love the Church as Christ loves, love for people, his Church and all peoples. As Paul teaches us: "anxiety for all the churches" (2 Cor 11:28).

For the missionary, the fidelity to Christ can not be separated from fidelity to the Church (n. 89 P014).
The department pastoral or apostolic charity is inspired by the pastoral charity of Christ, the Good Shepherd who knows his sheep and gives his life for them. (Jn 10). Pastoral charity is made of kindness, attention, affection, availability, interest in people's problems.
II missionary is a man of charity.

  • anthropology: "Missionary activity has as its sole purpose is to serve man by revealing the love of God manifested in Jesus." (N.2). II missionary is the "universal brother" that goes beyond borders and divisions of race, culture, caste ideologies. Remains open new fields of evangelization (MCS, development, ecology, human rights, and especially "The Meaning of Life")

  • eschatological leading humanity and the universe to the final restoration.

This ecclesial dimension of the mission is accomplished through adequate pastoral care, including certain aspects, such as proximity, transcendence, experience, contemplation, prophecy, dialogue and inculturation.
"The Church's missionary spirituality is a way to holiness." The renewed impulse to the mission "ad gentes" demands holy missionaries.
Not enough to update pastoral techniques, (n.90). This requires:
- A constant spiritual renewal, doctrinal and apostolic
- Contemplation in Action (looking for answers in the light of the Word and prayer).
- The practice of the Beatitudes. The fruit of this self-giving in the spirit of the Beatitudes is the inner joy.

3 - IN SEARCH OF A MISSIONARY SPIRITUALITY

"The mission is the raison d'etre of the Church ... is the proper activity of the Christian identity" (EN). And 'an eminent way of following Jesus, that means working with him in the salvation of liberating the world, or the extension of the Kingdom.
Follow Jesus and mission go together: "He called the twelve ... followed him and announced the Kingdom of God" (Mk 1.16 ss)
Following Jesus missionary, sent by the Father, is to be missionaries like him, with his criteria, his choices, his attitudes, his spirituality.

What is the spirit of the mission?
The Church lives in a state of permanent mission, this means:

  • "Go beyond" to reach the distant, the abandoned, the least evangelized: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Mt 28:19)
  • Owning the dynamism of Exodus: Exit own world (culture, religion, comfort, etc.) to go to those who do not possess, which can not, who do not know ...
  • Living a mystical special: it is a dying little by themselves to give themselves totally to the cause of the Kingdom. It 'a project total life, where it should be! an identity between life and the message that proclaims itself (unlike other human activities or professional).
  • Working on new frontiers:
    • On the border of the poor:
      • To try to discover the new poor and new poor; the gulf between rich and poor, the oppression, marginalization, discrimination.
      • Working with an open mind to all, especially to different cultures and try to be sympathetic to the suffering members of the Body of Christ
      • To witness a prophetic Church, and entered the service, that explicitly manifests the nearness and the goodness of God, his love for the marginalized
      • Take place close to the excluded and the new poverty, there where the missionary lives and works.
      • Take a concrete commitment to solidarity which manifests itself in attitudes, projects and initiatives in order to promote the dignity of the human person and the transformation of society.
    • On the frontier of cultural and religious diversity:
      • Working with an open mind to all, especially to different cultures and try to inculturate
    • On the boundary of the laity and youth
      • Orient our evangelizing mission shared by a new style of relationships based on equality and rapprochement.
      • To promote the dignity of minorities
      • Evangelizing the "youth culture"
      • Accepting the challenge of youth and young people opt for them in every area
  • In preparing for the mission: to promote an integrated education and to help integrate the Gospel values ​​in our lives, we face more and more identified with the missionary charism of the Congregation and engaged with the story ...

How could it be our missionary efforts?
- Working together despite coming from different countries (pluralism)
- Witness the communion as a prophetic response
- Being that build community unity in diversity, a sign and witness of cultural exchange.
- Strengthen the sense of universality
- Advance the process of inculturation, lived as a process of incarnation.

4 - A SPIRITUALITY 'MISSION FOR A NEW EVANGELIZAZIONE

The Church is faced with new situations, which require new preachers.
Evangelization must begin a new enthusiasm, in his methods and his way of manifesting.
"The Church is called to send a soul to modern society, preaching with a completely new language, and to propose a creative synthesis between the Gospel and the Life."
The evangelists must be an expert in humanity and in-depth knowledge of the human heart today; part of his joys and hopes, and at the same time be contemplative of God, able to put the modern world in contact with the vital energies of the Gospel. "
Vatican II in the GS, 4 tells us that only through a great spiritual sensitivity you can read the signs of the times and interpret them in light of the Gospel, so that, in a manner appropriate to each generation, the Church can respond to the perennial questions humanity.

To start a new evangelization, the apostles of today must renew
- Their relationship with God (contemplation)
- Their relationships with siblings (communion),
- Their ability to get into the world (insert),
- Consistent with the Gospel (authenticity)
- And with a true sense of the transcendent (hope).
The missionary spirituality makes us live and learn, in the gift of the mission, priority, and the initiative of God
The authentic renewal of the Church, under the action of the Holy Spirit, is realized according to the paradigm of the Cenacle (Acts 1.14): meeting with Mary, to implore the Holy Spirit and gain the strength and enthusiasm to complete the missionary mandate.

5 - TOWARDS A COMMUNITY OF 'MISSION

The main purpose of the pastoral mission is to get the whole ecclesial community and especially the local church, is converted into evangelizing communities.
You can not evangelize a community unless you make it from the beginning, head of the local and universal evangelization.
For this we need a permanent missionary animation. This requires the parish to put in a situation of permanent mission. This should leave no doubt by the knowledge that every community and every baptized person is, at the same time, it disciple and missionary.
Every person "is" a mission, his innermost being is marked and oriented toward a mission in the world.
There are three calls: to life, discipleship and mission, but a unique call from God who loves us and calls us to proclaim with our lives the mission he has entrusted to us "before the creation of the world by loving."
This belief means that everyone is "fervently Community", because it was created in the image of the Trinity and is called to full communion with the Triune God, living out here in full communion with the brethren.
In this way the pastoral agents are disciples in communion and community people as missionaries.
If we lock up a parish or diocese to preach to those who "already know and seek Jesus," we become "parish administrator" and cancel our missionary duty.
If we open hand toward those who do not know Jesus and to those who live their faith so weak, so we feel the missionary enthusiasm, and we will try by all means to get the message of Jesus to all, evangelizing all sectors.
different pastoral
We must try to train pastoral agents to a solid and deep spirituality, so that apostolic activity is not empty, superficial and rigid, but rather enthusiastic, courageous and effective.
The ministry is life and is deeply spiritual, so it is also a path to personal fulfillment that gives happiness.
The missionary mandate of Christ, is directed to all persons, living situations, institutions and community services.
Everyone participates in a different way, this missionary responsibility.
We must learn to "give from our poverty" (Puebla 368), conscious that "it is better to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35)

6 - CONDITIONS OF A MISSIONARY SPIRITUALITY (QUALITY OF MISSIONARY)

a) The missionary should be a contemplative able to convey not only ideas, but above all his personal experience of Jesus and the Kingdom values.
The missionary is "one who acts as seeing the Invisible." Only faith and contemplation put us in front of the invisible God.
The Missionary is one who gives you the full coming of a Kingdom beyond what he is or what he accomplishes. He lives with hope and serenity of one who has placed his trust in the will of God, working with the pace desired by God and not what he thinks or believes, otherwise runs the risk of discouragement and frustration.
The 'living example of the missionary are the prophets sent by God to bring people together around the one God and denouncing idolatry always new. They are sent to the desert, a place of solitude and poverty, where God purifies their hearts and revealed himself to them.
But above all the missionary takes on life as an example of the mode of action of Jesus, sent by the Father to proclaim the Good News to everyone, who loves all, is at the service of all, gives life to all, and calls all the fullness of lives.

b) The Missionary chooses poverty as a lifestyle and not just in the loss of means, but by her presence among the poor, his austere lifestyle, etc ...
Lives of the Exodus Church: ie, leaves his church community, their "way of being Church" to go to support another church sister or to plant the Church as a sign of the Kingdom where there is still no.
Exodus cultural lives: ie leave their culture and take on a different and give the contribution of a new interpretation of Christian values ​​already present in it and 'a leap of faith in the Church. The depletion of the missionary requires a lot of maturity to be able to overcome the fears and frustrations.

c) The Missionary must have confidence in the Spirit that animates the Church and in the efficacy of the means of their mission: "I chose you to go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide" (Jn 15.16 )
II know that missionary work in behalf of the whole Church.
The basis of his patience is Io spirit of the Beatitudes.
This led him to have respect for people, not to impose anything, rather to ensure that every person encounters on his way; will highlight the part of truth and goodness present in the other, into a permanent attitude of humility.

d) The missionary spirituality requires the spirit of the pilgrim and the "provisional".
The missionary is willing to "go further", which require it, without wanting to put down roots or make a career ... It feels internally free and willing to eradication (change) with serenity. "Here I am, Lord ... to do your will."

e) The missionary is conscious of the call to personal holiness and community and to be sent in the name of the Church, therefore he is concerned to build communion in diversity, living the same experience with his congregation and parish.

f) The missionary lives the joy of the gift of himself, knowing that "God loves those who give with a joyful heart."
As missionaries we feel happy with our vocation: "To be disciples and missionaries so that all peoples may have life in Christ, because" He is the way, the truth and the life. "
His life is our life, our mission is our mission.
P. Dehon says: "We must be like the fire to know the amazing love of the Heart of Jesus That our desire is to die in Mission, because that our sacrifice is complete and unreserved"