Mission to the end of Time

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, (...) And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." Mathew 28:19-20

"(...) When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" Luke 18:8

Christ’s missionary mandate took place when, before ascending to heaven, he fulfilled his mission as the one sent by the Father. Thus began the mission Ad Gentes, or the mission of space, as Christ sent his disciples all over the world.

But as spatial-temporal beings that we are, mission also has a historical and temporal dimension, Intra Gentes, which consists of passing on the gospel from generation to generation to the ends of time. In short, mission Ad Gentes to the ends of the earth and mission Intra Gentes to the ends of time.

Recap of what was said before
The witness of authentic Christians arouses the faith of those who witness it; those who dare to make the choice of faith will come, through their experience of God, to the full conviction that they have not believed in vain; this experience, that is, the personal encounter with Christ and the establishment of a loving and intimate relationship with him, leads to salvation, in other words, to health of body and soul, to conversion, to a change of life.

Finally, this new Christian in turn begins to bear witness to the salvation that God has worked in his life, and he too can awaken faith in those who come into contact with him. It is in this sense that we missionaries always insist that every authentic Christian must be a missionary or he is not a Christian. We began with testimony, and we return to testimony as the beginning of the process that leads: to the choice of faith - to the experience of God - to a change of life, and - to the mission, which is nothing other than singing, like Mary, our personal Magnificat, that is, bearing witness to the wonders that the Lord has worked in us.

Mission Intra Gentes
As the disciples began to put into practice the mandate they had received from the Lord in Jerusalem, converts were springing up everywhere. These new Christians were invited to gather into small communities. St. Paul was the founder of many of them, those in Corinth, Ephesus, Thessalonica etc.

While St. Paul and the other apostles continued their toil as "fishers of men", a name that the Lord himself had given to his apostles, someone had to look after these small, newly formed communities. Thus, came about the first shepherds to look after the sheep of the Lord's flock. Titus, Timothy, and Philemon were some of these collaborators to whom the Apostle entrusted the communities he had set up.

Therefore, already in apostolic times, as a logical consequence of the mission Ad Gentes – that of taking the gospel to the whole world – the mission Intra Gentes was born, that is, the mission that takes place within the bosom of a people and consists of passing on the gospel from generation to generation to the ends of time. We can therefore conclude that the mission Ad Gentes is the mission of fishermen, while the mission Intra Gentes is the mission of shepherds.

The mission Intra Gentes, like every welfare state, is based on the ethical value of solidarity between generations: those who work now contribute a percentage of their salary so that their parents, the previous generation, can enjoy a pension. In social state, solidarity is with the previous generation; in mission Intra Gentes, it is with the next generation. Like all education, Christian education is also aerial: when parents live their Christianity authentically, they awaken faith and the same experience in their children.

With all that it has done for the spiritual and material progress of peoples, the mission Ad Gentes has been called by some "the washed face of the Church". Plagued by scandals and dropouts, the mission Intra Gentes appears to have a less presentable face. The gospel seems to be progressing at the forefront and regressing at the rear.

In the Western world, during the Ancient and Middle Ages, passing on the gospel from generation to generation was a relatively easy task; since the Renaissance, the flock has been losing sheep. The attempt of the Second Vatican Council to adapt the Church to the modern world has not reversed this trend; today the problem is alarming. Proof of this is the constant concern of the popes, from Paul VI who declared the first Year of Faith, then John Paul II launched the New Evangelization, and later, Benedict XVI declared the Year of Faith the second time in the Church.

"Faith either holds fast or fades away"
"I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word" (John 17:20). In his priestly prayer, Christ thought of all those who, from generation to generation, would receive the Good News. Our faith in Christ is apostolic because since the apostles it has been passed down from generation to generation, like the baton in a relay race is passed from athlete to athlete.

I am with you always, to the end of the age. We can take it for granted that Christ will always be with us, but will we always be with him?

When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth? It is an enigma and a possibility; parents, catechists, teachers, pastors, and educators in general are failing to pass on the faith to future generations, who are becoming increasingly unbelieving. A faith that is weakened from generation to generation could end up disappearing from human history altogether; it is possible that when Christ comes the second time, to judge the living and the dead, he will find no faith on earth.

When a radio or television signal arrives weakly at a place, it is necessary to erect an antenna tower to strengthen the signal. As someone once said, "Faith either holds fast or fades away". The passing on of Christ from generation to generation is the equivalent of Christ’s resurrection for that generation and for the generations that follow: not passing on is the equivalent of his death for both the present and the future generations.

Christ is being resurrected from one generation to the next, or is dying from one generation to the next. If the current trend continues, one day the historical death of Christ could become the death of Christ in history. In order not to be part of the problem, let us be part of the solution; that is, in this relay race or chain of transmission of the faith, let us not be the weakest link. We are always in a time of mission because it only ends when Christ is all in all (1Corinthians 15:28).

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Mission to the end of the Earth

"Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation." Mark 16:15

Christ did not come into the world to save only those who lived in his country during the 33 years of his earthly life. He was aware of being, in his person, the salvation of humanity, both for those who lived during his existence in the world, and for those who lived before him, as well as for those who will live after him.

Just as a stone thrown into the middle of a lake causes waves in the shape of concentric circles, which from the center extend outwards to the ends of the lake, so Christ appearing in the middle of human history extends his salvific action to the ends of the earth and time.

The Church is Christ here and now
Since we are spatial-temporal beings, that is, we occupy a space for a time, Christ founded the Church to continue his Mission for all times and places. The Church, as the mystical body of Christ, represents Christ in all the here and now of human history.

Every Christian is a missionary, just as every seed has the vocation to be fruit, just as every man has the vocation to be a father and every woman to be a mother. A glass only proves that it is full when it spills out some of the liquid it holds: "The mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart", a Christian as a whole cannot fail to proclaim by words and deeds what animates him. The neighbour who felt cured by this tea or that remedy does not stop urging her friends to try it too.

Everything in life, including life itself, is a gift.  You only have gifts when you give them, and they are lost when they are not shared and exercised. Just like the gift of singing, painting, writing, playing football etc., which increase when they are exercised and shared, the gift of faith does the same. Those who do not exercise their gifts, as the parable of the talents suggests, lose what little they have.

Through the Mission Ad Gentes, the Church is called to go out of herself, to leave the comfort zone of passively shepherding the 99, and set out, like a fisherman or a hunter, in search of the lost sheep, facing the dangers and risks of going like a lamb into a world full of wolves.

What motivates and inspires missionaries of all times is the zeal for the gospel like that of the great apostle Paul, whose goal was to take the gospel to the ends of the world of his time, to Spain, and that of St. Francis of Xavier who took the gospel till his last breath to the gates of China, where he died.

Asia, the Mission's new frontier
Two thousand years have passed since Christ sent us out into the whole world to proclaim the gospel to every creature; and although we have evangelized Africa and the Americas well, most of the people in Asia, the largest continent on this planet, have still not been exposed to the light of Christ. We are far from being able to say that our mission is accomplished, so let’s get to work, we can't sit back.

"To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (...). To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (...) so that I might win those outside the law. (...)I have become all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel…". (1Corinthians 9:20-23)

In Asia, especially in Japan and China, but also in India, the Church has not been able to emulate the great apostle Paul, who managed to purge Christianity of Judaism by making it more credible to the Gentiles of his time.

The Jesuit Mateo Ricci was a true follower of St. Paul in his effort to purge the gospel of western culture in order to bring it to Chinese culture. But just like before, in the days of St. Paul when the fundamentalists of the Jerusalem community tried to obstruct his effort to inculturate the gospel into Greco-Roman culture, but were unsuccessful, those in Rome during Mateo Ricci’s time did the same and unfortunately, were successful.

And here is our Achilles heel. The Mission in America was easy, because in the face of a primitive culture, the gospel was imposed rather than proposed, a little by the sword and a little by the cross. In Africa, the Mission triumphed because it went hand in hand with material progress: schools, hospitals, the fight against hunger etc... during the Ethiopian famine, the Orthodox Coptic Church even accused us of buying proselytes with flour.

In Asia, we were up against a different culture, in no way inferior to our own, and we had neither the courage of St. Paul to inculturate Christianity into the pagan world of his time, nor the wisdom of the Church Fathers to inculturate Christianity into the superior Greco-Roman culture that reigned in Europe at that time.

We still have time to make the Church more universal, in terms of diversity of cultures, and not wait for the world to become more and more westernized.

As the greatest theologian of the last century, Karl Rahner, used to say, God in His infinite mercy will save all those who, through no fault of their own, did not have the opportunity to know Christ and his gospel; but will we be saved, those who had a duty to proclaim Him but did not?
 
Conclusion - Just as a stone thrown into the middle of a lake causes waves in the form of concentric circles, which from the centre widen towards the periphery to the ends of the lake, so Christ, emerging amid human history, extends his saving action to the ends of the earth and to the ends of time.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC