Having an intimate and personal relationship with Christ - We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life -- (…) -- we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 1 John 1:1,3
Theologian Karl Rahner said that the Christians of the future are either mystics or they are not Christians. To be a Christian is fundamentally to have an affective and effective relationship with Christ like the first Christians, his disciples; in fact, He chose them not primarily to be continuators of his work, but to live with him (Mark 3:14).
Christianity is therefore not a doctrine or philosophy of life; it is an affective relationship with Christ that leads to an affective relationship with all those around us. For today's Christian, as always, the affective must be effective, that is, it must change one’s life and give a sense of self fulfillment and joy to today’s Christian.
The main role of a missionary is to evangelize, not to catechize or do charity work, but to testify to the personal and intimate relationship of love that he has with the Lord and to offer that same experience to others. No one gives what he does not have; if we do not have this relationship, we cannot and should not be missionaries.
The evangelizer who announces the One with whom he does not have an intimate relationship is like a parrot; he talks about what he has learned and, instead of putting himself at the service of the Word, he puts the Word at his service, that is, he subliminally uses it to parade and promote himself.
Gift of the Word
The missionary must be what is known as a motivational speaker -- exciting, full of ardour and enthusiasm. A good communicator can sell even snake oil. Our product, the Word of God, has already proved its excellence and worth for more than two thousand years.
A Word of Life communicated without life disavows itself. We, more than anyone, have reasons to be joyful because we possess a faith that gives meaning to our existence here and now and launches us into the future, full of Hope, with nothing to fear.
Know the Bible
‘Therefore, every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’ Matthew 13:52
The evangelizer of our time must be a good connoisseur of the Sacred Scripture. He must also be able to bring reality to the Scripture in order to find enlightenment, answers and solutions in it or bring Scripture to reality so that the Word of God is embodied in attitudes, behaviours and concrete actions.
Many Christian sects and the Copts in Ethiopia place the New alongside the Old, giving equal importance to one and the other. This is wrong because the New Testament, the New Covenant, cannot have the same value as the Old; if that were the case, we would not need the New. The New Covenant came to replace and fulfill the old one. The Old Testament must be read from the perspective of the New and to the extent that it agrees with the New Testament.
The Old Testament contextualizes the New, so one cannot understand the New Testament without understanding the Old; just as one cannot understand the Old Testament without knowing and understanding the history of the people of Israel.
Knowing our culture
Christianity begins with Christmas; the missionary is the one who brings birth to Christ, that is, he embodies the Word of God in every moment and in every place. To this end, he needs to possess a deep knowledge of the culture, the historical moment and the existential situation in which the people is living. He must have "the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other" as the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth used to say.
To embody the Word is to know how to find salvation in it for the "here and now" of a people; that is, the answer to the questions and the solution to the problems of the present moment. In this sense, the missionary is called to be a prophet, the man who knows how to read the signs of the times; "the man of the year", the natural leader, a Moses who can guide the people along the path of salvation, that is, of full spiritual, physical, mental and moral health.
Conclusion – As the bishop says at the ordination of a deacon as he hands him the Gospel, so should a missionary be today: "Receive the Gospel of Christ, which you have a mission to proclaim. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and live what you teach".
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
No comments:
Post a Comment