"A Christian world and a world yet to be evangelised. That situation no longer exists. The people who have not yet heard the gospel no longer live in non-western countries. They are everywhere especially in huge urban areas. In large cities new paradigms are needed. We are not in Christian times." Pope Francis
In his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Nuntiandi Pope Paul VI speaks specifically of the evangelising mission of migrants. Take a Christian or a handful of Christians who, in the midst of their community, show their capacity for understanding and acceptance, their sharing of life and destiny with other people, and 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 irresistible questions in the hearts of those who see how they live: Why are they like this? Why do they live this way? Why or whom 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 evangelisation.
The era of triumphalism for empire and church is in history. Church and Empire were fellow travellers. This cozy relationship ended with the emergence of newly independent nation states the response of the Second Vatican Council, and its implications for the local church.
The era of European colonial expansion ended with the emergence of the local church and its mission responsibility. The Second Vatican Council marked a new era for the Church and its mission. The mission could no longer associate itself with European colonialism.
Pope Paul VI, with the research available, introduced a new era of mission linked to the energy of the time, urbanisation, and local and international migration. As in the past, mission went with human movement. Pope Paul recognised the emergence of a new human energy: migration.
Migrants became the new agents of mission. They, in the past and now, are the ones crossing boundaries as missionary institutes have been running out of energy. His successor, Pope John Paul, during his tenure highlighted urbanization, migration and areas of Asia as opportunities for evangelisation. Why? People leave home not because they want to but because they have to for a better life. In similar situations throughout history such people display an energy founded on the energy of hope for a better life. In the past did people leave Europe, home, to make perilous journeys across oceans just for adventure? No, they left home in the hope of a better life. Hope then, as now, was the energising force.
It is the same today. Coming from today's undeveloped, incoherent world and seeing skylines of the rich world, they are saying what immigrants said to themselves in the past: if I can make it here, I can make it anywhere.
Immigrants are the energy band in today’s world. They energise economies at home with their remittances and away with their energy and ingenuity. Their arrival energises local Christian communities, mosques and temples. However, they are framed by modern authoritarians as disease-carrying vermin of the earth to be feared and excluded. Yet, they are the new force of evangelisation, the new messengers to the new ad gentes (Europe/West). Secularism is obviously not offering a deep life meaning as people are flocking to collective events such as mega evangelical churches, mosques, temples and music festivals. Imagine a new megachurch with a 35,000-capacity being built in Russia.
Mission institutes often cling to a false sense of security and nostalgia. Instead, we should embrace creative anxiety, ask difficult questions for the benefit of others, and persevere with hope and positivity.
Young people today are not joining long-term movements. They are focusing on issues and their resolution in the short term. However, collective sentimental emotional occasions lacking collective moral ideals struggling for equality, fraternity and solidarity will be transient and ineffective.
Mission today is related to issues, building bridges, solidarity, and resolving tensions. Mission today is beyond geography. Migration is the human heart on a journey of hope. Hope is the dynamic force in a pandemic-ridden world.
Authentic mission must be asking: who are the excluded? Who is denied contributive justice? The severest poverty is that of not being wanted. Mission now is about encounter, welcome and witness expressed in a wide range of new informal participatory ministries challenging dehumanizing secular liberalism in which the market is God, profit is sanctifying grace, heaven is homeowner occupied, to be poor is to be damned, excluded.
The Church is called to remind everyone that for God, no one is a foreigner or excluded. It is called to awaken consciences dormant in indifference to the reality of migrants. (Pope Francis)
Columban Fr Bobby Gilmore lives and works in Ireland.
Related links
- Read more from the current Columban eBulletin.
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