3563_Missionary Re-reading of the 27th General Chapter

By Mission Department

Almost a year after the 27th general Chapter the Missions Sector has published a material for reflection in communities and provinces. The brief but missiologically dense document entitled Missionary Re-reading of GC 27 is intended to foster the missionary reception and study of the GC27 in order to help the confreres live their Salesian consecrated life “permanently in a state of mission” (EG 25). This demands, states the document, overcoming our ‘self-referentiality’ and the lack of missionary boldness. This missionary spirit drives us from the tendency of self-preservation to pastoral conversion and live our faith and religious consecration with joy and authenticity.

It also encourages the rediscovery of the importance of the initial proclamation in all our pastoral activities as the key for a better enlightenment of the strategies to accompany young people in personally knowing and encountering Christ, in promoting our missionary presence in the digital world and among migrants and refugees, in rediscovering the Preventive System as a proposal of evangelisation, and in underlining the inseparable bond between education and evangelisation.

“The questions offered at the end of this booklet and many other questions that will certainly arise in the mind of confreres and communities” writes Fr. Guillermo Basañes at the introduction, “if taken seriously - cause a real revolution in our houses and works!”

“It is a very useful tool for focalizing the missionary content of the GC27 document” wrote Fr. Andrew Fung, Vice Provincial of CIN Province. Fr. Vaclav Klement, our regional Councilor, had presented it during the Provincials meeting in Hong Kong last March and they found the questions for reflections very helpful for the personalization of missionary dimention of GC 27. “This morning, in my meditation, I read with interest and joy the Missionary Re-reading of GC27” wrote Fr. Gildasio dos Santos, Provincial of Campo Grande, Brazil. “A brief, coherent, clear text, written with conviction and missionary zeal!”

The document has been sent to every Province last month and digital copies in pdf and e-pub are also available.