The Purpose of the Itinerant Mission

"Unus Christianus, nullus Christianus," said St. Augustine. The natural habitat of a Christian is the community. We cannot be a Christian alone, and we cannot live and persevere in the faith without a community as our point of reference. In order to grow in faith, it is not enough to personally confront God and his Word; it is also necessary to confront the community and, at the same time, become a part of it, by being an integral and active member of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church.

In most parishes because they are large, cold and unwelcoming, people do not know or relate with each other, and as a result, they are becoming less and less a reference point for growing in faith.

For this reason, many have left the Church to join smaller Protestant churches, or even sects, subjecting themselves to paying tithes in order to obtain a more personalized and less massified treatment. Still others, to cope with the feeling of "depersonalization" resulting from massification, have taken refuge in certain ecclesial movements that have emerged, in order to experience the faith in a more personal and customized way.

All these movements have as their point of reference the small Christian community of which some even see themselves as their inventors. They forget that the Church of the first centuries, before Emperor Constantine, was a church made up of small communities that met in people's homes.

The model and inspiration for the Itinerant Mission is St. Paul: a tireless evangelist, he spread the seed of the gospel by forming small Christian communities – in Corinth, in Thessalonica, in Ephesus, etc. This model was followed by us missionaries in Africa with the Small Christian Communities and in Latin America with the “Base Communities”.

This, then, is the objective of the Itinerant Mission: to help parishes, surrounded by paganism, to spread the faith to the limits of their borders. How? Through street activities, in shopping centres, in cultural centres, or two by two and from door to door with the aim of forming a small Christian community in this or that neighbourhood!

This "small Christian community" meets weekly or fortnightly, taking turn in different members’ homes. Starting with the Word of God, the members share their lives in a context of prayer and, almost, of a support/therapeutic group. On Sundays, all the small Christian communities in a parish gather in the Church to celebrate the Lord's Day. This celebration is a true celebration of life and from life because this parish is now a "Community of communities", as the Second Vatican Council envisioned 50 years ago.

Ready to help, here is an appeal: is there a parish priest who, being the Good Shepherd, wants to go out in search of the lost sheep living somewhere within the geographical space of his parish?

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC