austraLasia #2264


Evangelizing Mission - One Salesian's precious gift to you

SHILLONG: 28th September 2008 - Enough has been written about Fr Joseph Puthenpurakal, Keralese Salesian missionary to North East India, Director of the Don Bosco Centre for Indigenous Cultures in Shillong, to fill a book - and now he has written one himself, but not about himself!  Fr Joseph has trotted off to Rome now for more than a decade, at the invitation of three separate Mission Councillors, to accompany the annual Missionary Expedition, not on a physical journey, but in their understanding of mission. Now he has collated and sifted and refined these experiences, along with his many years of personal experience of mission, into Evangelizing Mission, a work of several hundred pages, published just in these weeks, and appropriately, in time for the 139th Missionary Expedition hading over of mission crosses, today as it happens, in Turin.
    The really nice thing about this book, apart from its contents, is that Fr Joseph is offering it to readers of austraLasia, and indeed users of SDL, in its digital form to peruse and dip into.  It's enough to go to SDL to the English collection, choose 'authors' as your search tab, then the M-Z (which obviously includes P) alphabetical section, to scroll down to Joseph Puthenpurakal.  He describes it as a 'missionary manual', and it is just that.
    Perhaps the feature the strikes the reader most is the unique combination of experience, scholarship and simplicity. The work is erudite but not academic in any dry sense.  There are many kinds of awarenesses there: of the many forms of 'culturation' (en-, in-, ac-), of the Church's long history of mission and missions, and for that matter of the Congregation's too, of the rich documentation on mission in the Church's teaching.
    Fr Joseph is fond of the 'bon mot' and the book is full of them, sometimes as quotes to draw the reader's attention, at other times, just salted within the overall text.  'There are only two things you can do with the faith', he quotes at one stage: ' give it away or give it up'!  It is typical of the sense of urgency which he manages to give evangelization.  In fact, coming as it does just after GC26 (and very much aware, too of that General Chapter), that would be one excellent reason for dipping into Evangelization and Mission.
    There are odd errors - typos and orthography especially - here and there, but which of us is free of them?  From the point of view of digital publishing these days the book has a crowning virtue - it is highly structured and 'converts' with the greatest of ease.  One only needs to look at the raw conversion (the text icon rather than the Word icon) in SDL to see that the automatic conversion process worked like a charm, with only one or two strange characters failing in the process.
    This work will be of great value in our seminaries and formation centres around the region.  Fr Joseph's making it available on SDL is to get it known; in the end you would want to purchase your own copy and maybe the best way to do this is to contact him directly at jputhen@gmail.com .  We know that Indian publishers are able to produce high quality publications at prices somewhat below many places in the Western world, but this reviewer notes that Evangelizing Mission is set at €25.  The book is worth every cent of that, but in this reviewer's humble opinion, having himself published a book of the same size using Lulu.com, the cost could come down to around €15 including postage!  It bears thinking about, not only for publishing this work but others too.  The key to it, and Evangelizing Mission has already shown this capacity, is a well-structured text that converts digitally without problems.  All power to Joseph Puthenpurakal!
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 AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific.  It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome.  For queries please contact admin@bosconet.aust.com . Use Bosconet-wiki to be interactive. RSS feeds - just go to Bosconet, click on austraLasia 2008 in the sidebar. You will see the RSS orange icon in your browser address bar - add it from there.  Avail yourself of the Salesian Digital Library at at http://sdl.sdb.org

Title: australasia 2264
Subject and key words: S Asia ING Evangelizing Mission
Date (year): 2008
ID: 2000-2099|2264