SOME drastic updating of our
understanding of what a
missionary is, is now in order. We should not get stuck with the
common, textbook idea that a missionary is usually a priest or nun who
goes to a far-away place, and literally starts a settlement there.
While this concept of a missionary is still valid—it will
always be—it now cries to be expanded to reflect its true character,
especially given today’s dynamic and more complicated world.
We have to understand that everyone, by virtue of his
sheer humanity and much more, his Christianity, is called to be a
missionary, and that he does not need to go to distant lands because
his immediate environment already needs a more effective,
down-to-earth evangelization.
Yes, even the ordinary guy in an office, the farmer, the
businessman, the politician, the entertainers, artists and athletes,
are called to be missionaries. That’s simply because as persons with a
prominently social dimension in our life, we have to be responsible
for one another.
And the biggest responsibility we can have for the others
would be their moral and spiritual welfare, much more than just their
economic or social wellbeing. It is this responsibility that we have
to learn how to be more serious about and more competent in
fulfilling. This is the current situation and challenge to all of us.
And so we have to reconcile ourselves with the reality
that we actually have to be missionaries right where we are. In fact,
I would say that to go to the deserts of Africa or the forests and
rivers of Brazil could be far easier to do, since in these places we
only have to contend more with physical and material difficulties.
The people in these isolated areas may exhibit primitive
violent attitudes, but their minds and hearts can easily be converted
by simple and elemental gestures of goodness. This has always been the
experience of missionaries who went to these places.
It’s rather in the paved jungles of the big cities
inhabited by very sophisticated people immersed in very worldly things
where the more demanding kind of missionary work is needed.
In these places, the people tend to be so confined to
their own world, already made beautiful and comfortable by the new
technologies, such that any talk about spiritual and supernatural
realities, especially about prayer, sacrifice and the need for the
sacraments, could easily fall on deaf ears.
These urban dwellers may not openly profess atheism or
agnosticism. They can even show many acts of piety, and can even show
off some good work. And this is the more difficult part, precisely
because with that condition they can think they are already ok insofar
as religion is concerned.
But it is quite clear that their minds and hearts are not
with God, nor with the others. When scrutinized, their behavior can
indicate clear traces of pragmatism motivated not so much by love for
God or for others as by self-love.
Thus, they find it hard to resist temptations and can
easily fall into sin, though most of the time the sins are internal
and hidden. But precisely that hidden condition can lend itself to
more complications, developed in a gradual and steady way, since the
need for correction would hardly be felt.
This can lead to a slow and imperceptible desensitizing of
consciences. The signs of complacency, lukewarmness and mediocrity
readily appear. The taste for prayer and sacrifice starts to
disappear. And worse stages can come later, as in total loss of faith
and open opposition to God.
We have to be wary of the gathering forces of earthly
things, as typified by the accelerating inflow of new technologies,
that can harden people’s vulnerabilities, and lead them to find
rationalizations for this predicament.
As today’s missionaries, we have to do battle in this kind
of arena. In the words of Pope Paul VI, we have to “reach and as it
were overturn with the force of the Gospel the standards of judgments,
the interests, the thought-patterns, the sources of inspiration and
lifestyles in contrast with the word of God and his plan for
salvation.”
As today’s missionaries, we cannot remain with a shallow
and partial understanding of our faith. Much less can we be left with
an anemic spiritual life. We need to be vibrant and strong,
knowledgeable not only with the faith, but with the practical ways of
the men and the world today.
As so many saints have testified, as today’s missionaries,
we cannot be any other than another Christ, if not Christ himself!
missionary is, is now in order. We should not get stuck with the
common, textbook idea that a missionary is usually a priest or nun who
goes to a far-away place, and literally starts a settlement there.
While this concept of a missionary is still valid—it will
always be—it now cries to be expanded to reflect its true character,
especially given today’s dynamic and more complicated world.
We have to understand that everyone, by virtue of his
sheer humanity and much more, his Christianity, is called to be a
missionary, and that he does not need to go to distant lands because
his immediate environment already needs a more effective,
down-to-earth evangelization.
Yes, even the ordinary guy in an office, the farmer, the
businessman, the politician, the entertainers, artists and athletes,
are called to be missionaries. That’s simply because as persons with a
prominently social dimension in our life, we have to be responsible
for one another.
And the biggest responsibility we can have for the others
would be their moral and spiritual welfare, much more than just their
economic or social wellbeing. It is this responsibility that we have
to learn how to be more serious about and more competent in
fulfilling. This is the current situation and challenge to all of us.
And so we have to reconcile ourselves with the reality
that we actually have to be missionaries right where we are. In fact,
I would say that to go to the deserts of Africa or the forests and
rivers of Brazil could be far easier to do, since in these places we
only have to contend more with physical and material difficulties.
The people in these isolated areas may exhibit primitive
violent attitudes, but their minds and hearts can easily be converted
by simple and elemental gestures of goodness. This has always been the
experience of missionaries who went to these places.
It’s rather in the paved jungles of the big cities
inhabited by very sophisticated people immersed in very worldly things
where the more demanding kind of missionary work is needed.
In these places, the people tend to be so confined to
their own world, already made beautiful and comfortable by the new
technologies, such that any talk about spiritual and supernatural
realities, especially about prayer, sacrifice and the need for the
sacraments, could easily fall on deaf ears.
These urban dwellers may not openly profess atheism or
agnosticism. They can even show many acts of piety, and can even show
off some good work. And this is the more difficult part, precisely
because with that condition they can think they are already ok insofar
as religion is concerned.
But it is quite clear that their minds and hearts are not
with God, nor with the others. When scrutinized, their behavior can
indicate clear traces of pragmatism motivated not so much by love for
God or for others as by self-love.
Thus, they find it hard to resist temptations and can
easily fall into sin, though most of the time the sins are internal
and hidden. But precisely that hidden condition can lend itself to
more complications, developed in a gradual and steady way, since the
need for correction would hardly be felt.
This can lead to a slow and imperceptible desensitizing of
consciences. The signs of complacency, lukewarmness and mediocrity
readily appear. The taste for prayer and sacrifice starts to
disappear. And worse stages can come later, as in total loss of faith
and open opposition to God.
We have to be wary of the gathering forces of earthly
things, as typified by the accelerating inflow of new technologies,
that can harden people’s vulnerabilities, and lead them to find
rationalizations for this predicament.
As today’s missionaries, we have to do battle in this kind
of arena. In the words of Pope Paul VI, we have to “reach and as it
were overturn with the force of the Gospel the standards of judgments,
the interests, the thought-patterns, the sources of inspiration and
lifestyles in contrast with the word of God and his plan for
salvation.”
As today’s missionaries, we cannot remain with a shallow
and partial understanding of our faith. Much less can we be left with
an anemic spiritual life. We need to be vibrant and strong,
knowledgeable not only with the faith, but with the practical ways of
the men and the world today.
As so many saints have testified, as today’s missionaries,
we cannot be any other than another Christ, if not Christ himself!
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