S ALESIAN CALENDAR

The Salesian calendar for August presents one of the most beautiful features of the Church: the missionaries

FRONT LINE EVANGELISATION

by Pascual Chávez Villanueva

The missionary dimension constitutes the essence of the Church, the reason for her existence: to proclaim to the world the gospel of Jesus. He is the proof and the guarantee that God has established an everlasting friendship with the human family and has made mankind his sons and daughters.

In so far as they are an expression of the human spirit all cultures and civilisations are good. Human beings of every time and place bear the mark of God, we are made in his image. But all human historical realities have their limitations; cultures and civilisations therefore need to be taken up, purified and raised to a new level by Jesus and by his Gospel. God became man, similar to us in everything but sin: he was born, he lived, he grew up, he suffered and finally died in a certain place, at a certain time, among a specific people. Incarnation also means inculturation: He chose a culture through which to manifest himself to the world. Culture means values, but it also implies limitation... to the extreme and extremely painful extent of death. Death and resurrection are the supreme expression of Jesus’ love, the proof that he truly was the Son of God, confirmation of what he had preached and proclaimed; but they are also the clear sign that every culture is called upon to overcome everything in it that leads to death or to sin.

CHRISTIANITY IS NOT...

Evangelisation as the vocation and the mission of the Church, and the missio ad gentes (the missionary mandate) as the concrete expression of that task, find their roots in the mandate of the Teacher from Galilee to the disciples who had followed him (cf.Mt.28,19; Mk. 16; Lk.24; Acts1,8). From this also flows the conviction and the necessity and the possibility that all cultures, without exception, have of opening themselves to the news of the Gospel. Indeed looking at the obscure teacher from Galilee one can deduce who God is, who man is, what life is and what death is. In the person of the son of Mary of Nazareth everything finds its true significance, and the meaning of life and of history is unravelled: where it comes from and where it is going.

Christianity, therefore, is not a philosophy, and, one could even say, it is not a religion, it is rather the historical manifestation of God and of his plan of salvation: God becomes man to lead human history towards the Kingdom, which means towards its fulness, towards the end for which the world and man have been created. Christianity is not a collection of norms to be practised or of rites to be celebrated, it is to recognise all that God has done through Jesus to “give meaning” to the history of mankind and of the world. Morality is living according to this revolution. Proclaiming this “good news” has been and will continue to be the mission of the Church. Christ is not one alternative among many. He himself said that he was the Way the Truth and the Life.

Today Christianity is spoken of as something already out of date or as the enemy of progress, of culture and even of man himself. Religious ignorance and certain recurring prejudices – given a new airing – can lead to this way of thinking. But it is just not true, nor has it ever been historically so. Christ did not come to condemn but to save. Everything that is good in human hearts and minds, in the rituals, in the customs of peoples not only is not lost with Christianity, but being purified, becomes a true path of salvation and therefore of happiness for human beings. The Gospel does not eliminate progress, nor civilisation nor culture; it shows them other values more profound and opens them to new and wider horizons. Christianity is not man’s enemy, just the reverse, it makes him more noble, making it possible for him to become in Christ a son of God, opening for him the doors to an eternal destiny of happiness with God/Creator/Father.

THE MISSIONARIES

And the Church – mother and teacher – through her missionaries, has brought to the ends of the earth as well as the strong light of the Gospel the strong light of progress, of knowledge, and an “effective” sym-pathy with those who suffer and are forgotten. Through her communities of apostles, missionaries and believers she has founded schools and universities, hospitals and health centres, centres for development, qualification and vocational training. For many centuries her institutions were the principal means, even at times the sole means for the spread of culture and human dignity among the most marginalised on the earth. Incredible was the work both at the cultural and at the economic/social level and even in the political arena of the first evangelisers of Europe (Saints Benedict, Boniface, Cyril and Methodius). Impressive the exploits of the Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans in newly discovered America. Saint Francis Xavier evangelised India, the East Indies, Japan; the Jesuit Matteo Ricci succeeded in entering China thanks to his knowledge of mathematics and astronomy; Monsignor Daniel Comboni and Cardinal Charles Lavigerie, founders and intrepid missionaries in Africa demostrated that the Gospel is synonymous with a commitment to the dignity of every human being.

Thousands of missionaries, men and women, religious and lay, continue today to proclaim the Good News of Christ, defending human rights and fighting every form of slavery and exploitation in most countries in the African continent, among the peoples of Asia and of Oceania. A people without God is a people without a future. A life without a transcendent dimension is a life without meaning. For this reason faced with a situation of secularism, materialism, violence and the loss of the values that our world is experiencing, John Paul II insistently called pastors to a New Evangelisation. Jesus Christ and his message must continue to be light, salt, leaven, yeast for a new humanity rooted in peace, in justice, in respect, in universal brotherhood.

To proclaim, to live and to bear witness to the Gospel continues to be the mission of the Church and the responsibility of every Christian. Jesus says to everyone: “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28,19). ▓