In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
Evangelization and the Mission of Church
As Catholics we might feel familiarised with the words evangelization and mission. We normally hear these words in a catechesis either by our parish priest in his homily or by a lay catechist in a lesson, or sometimes when there is an appeal for a second collection on Sundays to support the mission of the Church. However, we don’t often stop and pay close attention to these words and what they mean to us personally. Specially so because we might feel or see ourselves detached from such actions. In contrast, in other contexts of our lives, we focus our attention and intellect into trying to look for a meaningful answer to the ever present question: what is my mission? what is purpose or meaning of my life?
Does it sound familiar to you? I’m guessing it does because we are in a restlessness quest for meaning and fulfilment. As late Pope Benedict XVI pointed out “(…) Possessions, pleasure and power show themselves sooner or later to be incapable of fulfilling the deepest yearnings of the human heart. In building our lives we need solid foundations which will endure when human certainties fail. (…)” (Verbum Domini 10)
This personal quest is the individual starting point of a much larger one which moves us out of our own self to the other. It is, in simpler words, a quest to feel connected. The late Pope, Francis, tells us:
‘The Gospel offers us the chance to live life on a higher plane, but with no less intensity: Life grows by being given away, and it weakens in isolation and comfort. Indeed, those who enjoy life most are those who leave security on the shore and become excited by the mission of communicating life to others’.
When the Church summons Christians to take up the task of evangelization, she is simply pointing to the source of authentic personal fulfilment. For “here we discover a profound law of reality: that life is attained and matures in the measure that it is offered up in order to give life to others. This is certainly what mission means”. (Evangelii Gaudium 10)
The meaning that Jesus’s words in the Gospels have in my choices and life is directly related to my free personal response to Faith. Faith is a grace as much as a human act (CCC 153 ,154). Looking at it closer we understand Faith not as an empty word but rather as profound encounter between two selves, that of God and that of the man, entering in a relationship. “…Faith is man’s response to God, who reveals himself and gives himself to man, at the same time bringing man a superabundant light as he searches for the ultimate meaning of his life (…)” (CCC 26). In the words of Pope Benedict XVI “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”. (Deus Caritas Est 1)
This articles intent is to make us realise the deep interactions that exists between our own personal fulfilment in relation to how we might be living my faith and, more deeply, in relation to how our encounter with the Resurrected Christ makes us identify with the love of God and the Mission of the Church.
The joy of the Gospel and the call to Mission.
“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”
“Then Jesus approached them and said to them, ‘All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:18–20)
These words in Matthew’s gospel are so rich!. I would like to invite you to meditate upon them.
The evangelist starts by stating a fact “Jesus approached them”, here we understand it is God Who looks for us, come to our encounter and speaks to us. He reveals himself and His Divine nature. “Thanks solely to this encounter – or renewed encounter – with God’s love, which blossoms into an enriching friendship, we are liberated from our narrowness and self-absorption. We become fully human when we become more than human, when we let God bring us beyond ourselves in order to attain the fullest truth of our being. Here we find the source and inspiration of all our efforts at evangelization. For if we have received the love which restores meaning to our lives, how can we fail to share that love with others? (Evangelii Gaudium 8)
Who did Jesus’s approach? To His apostles, it would be the immediate standard response. Let’s stop and think, once more, as our personal answer to this simple question describes how I feel before Jesus’s presence in my life, in turn our answer helps us understand where we are in the path of our personal conversion and that of our personal journey of faith.
“In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Mt 28:19). All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients. The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization; indeed, anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love. Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus: we no longer say that we are “disciples” and “missionaries”, but rather that we are always “missionary disciples”. ( Evangelii Gaudium 120)
“Faith thus takes shape as an encounter with a person to whom we entrust our whole life. Christ Jesus remains present today in history, in his body which is the Church; for this reason, our act of faith is at once both personal and ecclesial.” (Verbum Domini 25).
What did Jesus say? Let’s notice the verbs go, make, baptize, teach, observe. “Evangelization is the task of the Church. The Church, as the agent of evangelization, is more than an organic and hierarchical institution; she is first and foremost a people advancing on its pilgrim way towards God. She is certainly a mystery rooted in the Trinity, yet she exists concretely in history as a people of pilgrims and evangelizers, transcending any institutional expression, however necessary”. (Evangelii Gaudium 111). “The Lord’s missionary mandate includes a call to growth in faith: “Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:20). Hence it is clear that that the first proclamation also calls for ongoing formation and maturation. Evangelization aims at a process of growth which entails taking seriously each person and God’s plan for his or her life. All of us need to grow in Christ. Evangelization should stimulate a desire for this growth, so that each of us can say wholeheartedly: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).” (Evangelii Gaudium160)
“Above all the Gospel must be proclaimed by witness. Take a Christian or a handful of Christians who, in the midst of their own community, show their capacity for understanding and acceptance, their sharing of life and destiny with other people, their solidarity with the efforts of all for whatever is noble and good. Let us suppose that, in addition, they radiate in an altogether simple and unaffected way their faith in values that go beyond current values, and their hope in something that is not seen and that one would not dare to imagine. Through this wordless witness these Christians stir up irresistible questions in the hearts of those who see how they live: Why are they like this? Why do they live in this way? What or who is it that inspires them? Why are they in our midst? Such a witness is already a silent proclamation of the Good News and a very powerful and effective one. Here we have an initial act of evangelization” ( Evangelii Nuntiandi 21)
What does this command entail? The words of Jesus in Matthew’s the Gospel are a direct invitation to have faith but also because of that same faith a sparkle appears , one that demands us to move outside of our own self and give others the joy that originates from the News of Salvation. “Those who have opened their hearts to God’s love, heard his voice and received his light, cannot keep this gift to themselves. Since faith is hearing and seeing, it is also handed on as word and light” (Lumen Fidei 37). “Faith transforms the whole person precisely to the extent that he or she becomes open to love. Through this blending of faith and love we come to see the kind of knowledge which faith entails, its power to convince and its ability to illumine our steps. Faith knows because it is tied to love, because love itself brings enlightenment. Faith’s understanding is born when we receive the immense love of God which transforms us inwardly and enables us to see reality with new eyes” (Lumen Fidei 26) “Precisely because it is linked to love (cf. Gal 5:6), the light of faith is concretely placed at the service of justice, law and peace. Faith is born of an encounter with God’s primordial love, wherein the meaning and goodness of our life become evident; our life is illumined to the extent that it enters into the space opened by that love, to the extent that it becomes, in other words, a path and praxis leading to the fullness of love. The light of faith is capable of enhancing the richness of human relations, their ability to endure, to be trustworthy, to enrich our life together. Faith does not draw us away from the world or prove irrelevant to the concrete concerns of the men and women of our time”(Lumen Fidei 51)
“The entire activity of the Church is an expression of a love that seeks the integral good of man: it seeks his evangelization through Word and Sacrament, an undertaking that is often heroic in the way it is acted out in history; and it seeks to promote man in the various arenas of life and human activity” (Deus Caritas Est 19) . It is under this light we are move by the words of St Paul “With such yearning love we chose to impart to you not only the gospel of God but our very selves, so dear had you become to us.” (1 Thess 2:8)
I have a mission it is the Mission of the Church!
Written by Alexandra De Carias