Formation for Evangelisation/Mission

Fr. Vincenzo Brocanelli, ofm.

FORMATION FOR EVANGELISATION/MISSION

Introduction

a)Some general questions.

What kind of mission can we speak of today? Is there any sense in continuing to speak of an “ad gentes” mission in a “globalised” and multi-cultured world, when national and cultural frontiers are disappearing? What meaning can we give to the terms “mission” and “evangelisation”?

These are some recurring questions that already contain in themselves an indication of changes that have occurred or are coming about and of new ways of embarking on mission.

b) The terms.

Evangelisation (Gr. evaggelizo) means to proclaim the Good News, to make the first announcement in accordance with the command of Jesus to the Apostles (cf. Mk 16,15). In this sense “evangelisation” is synonymous with “mission”.

In institutional usage, “evangelisation” has assumed an ecclesiastical connotation, indicating a sending on the part of the institution: the missionary is the one “sent”. “Evangelisation”, meanwhile, has preserved a qualitative connotation, of content: mission is to evangelise with all available means (proclamation, sacraments, catechesis, social works, etc.).

c) The meaning and importance of “formation” for mission.

“The faith – the Pope wrote – is strengthened when it is given to others” (RM 2). Our life is made authentic when is becomes missionary. In reality, “the mission strengthens the consecrated life, gives it new enthusiasm and new motivation and elicits faithfulness” (VC 78).

Here lies the importance of good formation, initial and ongoing, for evangelisation. Mission “calls for strong personalities, inspired by saintly fervour. The new evangelisation demands that consecrated persons have a thorough awareness of the theological significance of the challenges of our time” (VC 81).

“In order to be an effective witness and proclaimer of the Word of God and to collaborate in the service of the Church and the building of the Kingdom, the Friar Minor needs to have his initial and ongoing Franciscan formation realised and completed by an adequate and solid preparation” (RFF 157).

Mission is the new challenge of the third millennium and the good preparation of tomorrow’s missionaries must be our first commitment.

I. CHANGES IN MISSION

1. The theological principle of the whole Church being missionary (AG 2; RM 31) causes some not to consider “ad gentes” missionary activity as being anything special or particular in respect to the other activities of the Church. The theological basis that makes the Church the inheritor and continuation of the mission of the Son, in accordance with the plans of the Father, is not under discussion here. The problem arises on the level of strategies: if the whole Church is on mission, what, then, is the specific role of the missionary institutes or individual missionaries sent “ad gentes”? Can the “missio ad gentes” be considered a particular vocation?

The responses, insufficient at times, to these questions weaken the specific identity of “missionaries”. The Council, affirming that the whole Church is missionary, has already said that, consequently, each particular church must be disposed to “send” and to “go”. The missionary vocation is, therefore, the command of the Church that “sends” some of its own members, it is a “ministerial” vocation for a particular service and the specifically missionary Institutes “remain necessary in order to give guarantees and continuity to missionary activity” (cf. AG 20, 27).

2. With regard to the “form” of evangelisation, the dimension of dialogue united to proclamation has been introduced. Dialogue, which is considered indispensable, “cannot simply replace proclamation, but remains oriented towards proclamation” (NMI 56).

But how can dialogue and listening on the one hand and the explicit proclamation of Christ “the truth” on the other be combined? If dialogue has a value in itself, what becomes of proclamation, of the traditional mission “ad gentes”? There really is a tension between the legitimate existence of inter-religious dialogue and the implications of a theology of mission.

3. Dialogue and respect for other religions presuppose the recognition of some positive elements of a salvific nature in them. It is true that God has put elements of salvation in all religions and also that all salvation comes about only in and through Christ.

But how can we harmoniously put together the salvation in other religions and the salvation in Christ? If the peoples of other religions already have salvation available to them, is it still worthwhile setting out to make them Christians? How do we think of religious pluralism in the plans of God?

The extreme responses of exclusive intransigence (the old understanding of “extra Ecclesiam nulla salus”) and of syncretic relativism (all religions are equal) are obviously inappropriate. The middle way, which considers each element of salvation that is scattered throughout the different religions as “included” in the one revelation and salvation of Christ, awaits deeper explanation. It is important to return to the mystery of the Incarnation. Despite the presence of “seeds of salvation” in all religions, the Son of God became man, he gave himself and was raised up for the salvation of all (cf. Phil 2, 6-11). So, it can be said that “the missionary vocation, in its fullest meaning, constitutes a commitment to continue in time and among all peoples the work of the incarnation and the redemption” (The Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, Circular Letter ‘In the study of renewal’, 17/05/1970, n. 7).

The question is of great importance for formation to mission since, if complete salvation can be obtained from the one God in other religions, justification of the “ad gentes” mission would fail. It is necessary, therefore, to rethink and rediscover the scope and true legitimacy of the proclamation and annunciation to all peoples.

4. The present context also influences in no small way the “missionary spirit”. The known and discussed phenomenon of globalisation is bringing about, among other things, two important changes.

a) The frontiers of the Nation-States are losing their importance with communications being made worldwide and the important displacement and migration of different populations. The notion of territory is changing – laws are disappearing – since in any particular community there are already found different “cultures” and “religions”. And what becomes of the “ad gentes” mission, which was organised on cultural or ethnic areas, and even by territory?

b) Within this new multi-cultural and multi-religious world, the very geography of mission is forced to change. In every region of the world we find a local church with the need to carry out ordinary pastoral activity for the faithful, the “new evangelisation” of Christians “un-missioned” from their faith and to take up the first proclamation of the Gospel to non-believers and non-Christians. It is sought to redefine the term “ad gentes”: an “ad intra” ad gentes mission is spoken of (in the local community), or of an “ad altera” ad gentes mission (directed towards “others” that are not Christian, but within the local community) or even of an “ad extra” ad gentes mission (to those outside the local community).

Clearly the frontiers of “ad gentes” are changing and are moving from the territory towards the “other”, from places to people. And this brings with it not a few problems of understanding and of missionary activity (cf. RM 37 on the new frontiers of mission).

5. Another very important change has arisen on the level of forces or agents of mission. The rapid drop of vocations in general and of members in missionary Institutes in particular is reducing the availability of new missionaries to a minimum. The western Provinces of various Institutes already have grave difficulties in managing the local reality and young religious are more aware of the ever more numerous needs of their own people of origin. In the young churches, founded by the old missionaries, these are no more than small groups that no longer have the role of the previous evangelisation while new native forces are growing and taking up the different responsibilities of mission.

All these elements are changing the vision of mission and are provoking a fall in the missionary spirit and in interest in mission and represent a challenge to the entire Church and to the Franciscans in particular.

II. IDEAS FOR A NEW MISSIONARY “STRATEGY”

In order to form for the mission/evangelisation of today and tomorrow, it is important to know and see where the evolution we are living is leading us and to accept not only the challenges but also the new “strategies” that are opening up and imposing themselves through the mission.

Above all it is necessary to understand the convergence that exists between globalisation and the Christian mission, from which new forms of mission spring later.

A) During the colonial period the infrastructure (transport, protection, financial support) was provided and a model of organisation (military outlines and metaphors, such as “the conquest of souls for Christ”, “to snatch souls from the clutches of Satan”, “to extend the Kingdom of the Church”) given. The mission became a work of civilisation. In colonisation the mission found:

-a territory to be christianised (French, Belgian, English, German, Catholic or Protestant, missions);

-a model of civilisation, bringing the Gospel, education, schooling, medical care, which together formed the typical missionary village composed of the church, school and hospital, to the populations;

-a model of relationships between missionaries and the population that is expressed, for example, by the religious “conquest” of the leaders and gives metaphors that functioned as propaganda slogans.

B) Globalisation is like a new form of colonialism that is bringing – or imposing – new models and new “strategies” on the mission.

1. Mission-territory is being substituted by the intercultural and inter-religious mission-community where

• one thinks in terms of person rather than of place (the new missionary geography)
• all three dimensions of the ‘new-ordinary-ad gentes’ mission (global mission) are put into practice simultaneously.

1. The missionary commitment is made more mobile and of shorter duration since globalisation develops more frequent and rapid mobility. The era of the missionary that leaves for life is finished. Missionary volunteers that make themselves available for a few years are more easily accepted today: the stimuli can be more numerous and the communities of origin are not impoverished.
2. The mission should already utilise a transnational, global network of communication in order to neutralise the uniformity-making activity of globalisation that makes the people of the land homogenous and anonymous and to bring the people closer in the solidarity of the one human family and to sketch out a whole network of material and moral helps, oriented especially to emigrants and refugees that are dispersed everywhere.
3. Evangelisation is becoming a mission of reconciliation today. Faced by a globalisation that shatters and divides the world into so many fragments, the mission must, above all, heal shattered and wounded societies in order to restore human dignity, to seek out and speak once again of truth and justice, in view of a new order of peace.
4. The mission has new words-symbols, especially ‘dialogue’ and ‘reconciliation’. These keywords are partly offered by globalisation itself, but they especially characterise a new way of doing mission. Preaching is no longer carried out in a unilateral fashion, rather is annunciation made through dialogue. One does not work only for one’s own church, but builds ‘bridges’ that can connect different shores such as different ethnic groups and cultures and even different local churches. To the evangelising mission are added the dimensions of inter-religious dialogue in particular, the commitment to justice and inculturation.
5. Mission is understood as being of a reciprocal or circular nature. Mission is founded on “the exchange of gifts” between the different local churches (cf. LG 13). No distinction is made today between the church that sends and the church that receives. Collaboration, interchange, reciprocity between local churches is the real strength and wealth of mission. There is no longer a geographic centre from which the mission begins. The mission begins everywhere and goes everywhere!
6. Mission needs the collaboration of the laity. If everyone baptised is a person sent, then every lay person is a missionary. “Mission, which is carried out in a wide variety of ways, is the task of all the Christian faithful” (RM 71). Some churches were born thanks to the missionary commitment of the laity.
7. Evangelisation needs a new missionary spirituality. The new missionaries will no longer be “founders” of new churches; they must be, however, “witnesses” within the young churches of an unreserved and unlimited faith and love. The new missionary begins, therefore, by living his faith radically; “he goes on mission to discover God!” It is true that he goes to proclaim the Gospel, but God precedes him and he will not be able to say anything without first having listened to the Spirit and received into his heart the Word he proclaims.

1. FORMING FOR EVANGELISATION

1. Rediscovering the missionary vocation

Mission is an integral part of the Franciscan vocation right from the beginning: the followers of St. Francis were “called” in order “to be sent to the whole world” (LOrd 9). The Order of Friars Minor is, of itself, an “evangelising Fraternity sent into the whole world” (The Order and Evangelisation today, 2, General Chapter 1991). The call is one and is, right from the beginning, a missionary vocation. The mission is like the objective and the horizon of the vocation: “Those who have come into genuine contact with Christ cannot keep him for themselves, they must proclaim him” (NMI 40). Missionary activity, therefore, the going throughout the world is a question of living faith, is “an accurate indicator of our faith in Christ and his love for us” (RM 11). For Francis, evangelisation is the expression of the encounter with the Christ (1Cel 22). For him, vocation and mission coincide (LMj 4,2), whether in the first years, after the “contemplative” crisis or at the end of his life.

Besides, evangelisation responds to the logic of the Kingdom rather than to the needs of the beneficiaries or to any other need (cf. Mt 10,1-5, where call and mission coincide). The Kingdom cannot be classified or delimited according to those distant or close-by beneficiaries (it is not the unchristian situation that sends us on mission in the first place), or according to the times (first those close-by and then those far away), or according to places (first in the churches and then in homes or along the streets), or according to the needs of “our own” or of other peoples. The proclamation, the going forth, is a fundamental and permanent dimension of evangelisation, the logic of the Kingdom, the paradigm of every form of mission. The first proclamation, the second evangelisation and the ordinary pastoral activity (cf. Redemptoris Missio 33) correspond to the one sending and constitute the same mission. They are three ways or dimensions closely united in time and space just as the mission of Christ in the synagogues, the homes, along the streets, with the just and the sinners, was one. We are sent everywhere and at all times to proclaim, exhort, renew, consolidate the faith, make new disciples of the Gospel and to fortify the disciples who are already following Jesus.

2. Forming for mission in general

Keeping in mind the changes that have already taken place or are coming about in the vision and “strategy” of mission, here are some formative aspects that would be good to remember.

a) Forming a new consciousness and sensitivity for mission as an integral part of our Franciscan vocation, re-lighting the “apostolic fire” in the heart of the young, encouraging the aspirations and requests for mission. It would be necessary to make the interpolations of Jesus resound once again: “Why are you men from Galilee standing there looking into the sky?” (Acts 1,11); “Why are you standing here idle all day?” (Mt 20,6); “You go into the vineyard too” (Mt 20,7).

b) Transmitting the theological and contextual vision that the Church has of mission today, inserting some courses on mission during initial formation and organising sessions or meetings for ongoing formation.

c) Preparing the young to know the great changes in society and in finding suitable ways of evangelisation, e.g., in the face of globalisation, of inter-cultural reality, of other religions, etc., in view of a creative apostolate.

d) Educating the young for dialogue on the basis of a formative fraternity in the local church, in the Province and in the Order, with all men. Dialogue as a method and means, “based on hope and love”, considered as a pedagogy that “leads to inner purification and conversion” (RM 56).

e) Sending the young out to the new poor of today, encouraging “practical experiences that are prudently followed by the one responsible for formation, enabling candidates to test, in the context of the local culture, their skills for the apostolate, their ability to adapt and their spirit of initiative” (VC 67).

f) Instilling the internal qualities that are specifically useful for a good missionary:

fidelity to one’s vocation and mission, even when there is external opposition or solitude or apparent unfruitful pastoral work;

honesty in relationships and in carrying out work, even when the context leads to personal advantage;