Reflection - Leave your comfort zone

At Saint Peter’s Basilica, Rome, on 24 November 2013, Pope Francis released the Apostolic Exhortation, "Evangelii Gaudium", (The Joy of the Gospel). This document highlights the importance of evangelization for the Church and gives a special focus to the poorest and most vulnerable. The document begins with this inspiring statement: "The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus." In the article printed below, Columban Fr Peter Woodruff highlights for us the missionary perspective running through "Evangelii Gaudium".

Reflection - Leave your comfort zone

Becoming a Church that Evangelizes

The title of the first chapter, "The Church’s Missionary Transformation", sets the tone for whole document. Pope Francis uses the word "missionary" 70 times and the word "mission" 48 times throughout his Exhortation.

Pope Francis begins by spelling out his vision of Church renewal.

15) …“today missionary activity still represents the greatest challenge for the Church”  and “the missionary task must remain foremost”.

He reminds us that the missionary mandate is taken from Jesus’ words of farewell to his disciples:

19) Evangelization takes place in obedience to the missionary mandate of Jesus: “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” (Mt 28:19-20).

He insists that all Christians have a role to play in this mission in which Gospel joy is equated with missionary joy (No. 21) and we go out on mission in the firm knowledge that the Lord has loved us first [1 Jn 4:19] (No. 24).

20) …Each Christian and every community must discern the path that the Lord points out, but all of us are asked to obey his call to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the “peripheries” in need of the light of the Gospel.

Reflection - Leave your comfort zoneWe as Christians are required to go beyond our comfort zone: ‘“Mere administration” can no longer be enough. Throughout the world, let us be “permanently in a state of mission”’ (No. 25).

27) I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channelled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation...

Going forth to all

Pope Francis proposes a simple but profound approach to our missionary outreach: “the message has to concentrate on the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at the same time most necessary” (No. 35).

He insists that the Church “has to go forth to everyone without exception. But to whom should she go first? When we read the Gospel we find a clear indication: not so much our friends and wealthy neighbours, but above all the poor and the sick, those who are usually despised and overlooked, “those who cannot repay you” (Lk 14:14)” (No. 48).  Then he goes well beyond a first-aid approach to the poor – those pushed out on to the periphery:

53) …Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “disposable” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised – they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers”.

Effort and dedication required for mission

Reflection - Leave your comfort zone

While emphasising the joy of mission in No. 160 the Pope also reminds us of the effort and dedication required to follow through with our missionary responsibility:

…it is clear 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).

He goes to the heart of some of the requirements of missionary commitment:

262) Spirit-filled evangelizers are evangelizers who pray and work. Mystical notions without a solid social and missionary outreach are of no help to evangelization, nor are dissertations or social or pastoral practices which lack a spirituality which can change hearts.

264) The primary reason for evangelizing is the love of Jesus which we have received, the experience of salvation which urges us to ever greater love of him.

Not our mission but God's

While we may not be able to verify our progress empirically we are challenged to trust in God.  After all, it is not our mission in which we are engaged, but God’s:

279) Because we do not always see these seeds (of a new world) growing, we need an interior certainty, a conviction that God is able to act in every situation, even amid apparent setbacks: “we have this treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Cor 4:7). This certainty is often called “a sense of mystery”. It involves knowing with certitude that all those who entrust themselves to God in love will bear good fruit (cf. Jn 15:5).

We walk our missionary path constantly asking the Holy Spirit to support and guide us:

280) Keeping our missionary fervour alive calls for firm trust in the Holy Spirit, for it is he who “helps us in our weakness” (Rom 8:26). But this generous trust has to be nourished, and so we need to invoke the Spirit constantly. He can heal whatever causes us to flag in the missionary endeavour.

Fr Peter Woodruff SSC is currently working at the Columban Mission Centre in Australia.

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