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