By Sr. Teresa Joseph, FMA –
“Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations” (Deuteronomy 7:9). In the context of the Extraordinary Missionary Month October 2019, it is possible to reflect on Mission without frontiers because Our God is a God of faithfulness and love. Where is this foreseeing and faithful love of God leading us today? Are we aware that the places where we already work constitute ever new frontiers, are we ready to commit ourselves to be present there as witnesses? We can dare to dream missionary dreams spurred on by the missionary fervor that is deep within each one of us.
God’s unconditional love manifested in Jesus
Fidelity to the covenant in the dynamics of ongoing personal and community renewal is possible thanks to God’s unconditional love for us. The enhancement of our humanity requires a spirit of renewal and it helps to enliven and strengthen our mission, our sense of direction and our lives.
The Christian Community recognizes Christ’s life and death as the pivotal renewal in humanity’s history. He brought a new relationship between human beings on earth and the beings of the spiritual worlds. Through his indwelling in the sacraments, this revitalizing impulse continues to be available to us individually and in community. Christ replenishes our life in sacramental community, which in turn offers us as individuals the opportunity to find and connect with his regenerating impulse in our own lives, in the life of the whole of humanity, and in the life of the entire cosmos. It is only through the meeting of the Lord in the Eucharist and in the Word that we will be able to discover what future: mission without frontiers is all about.
Led by the Spirit Witnesses of the Father
In the Eucharist, the Spirit of the Lord leads us to experience the power of God’s love, and our encounter with Jesus spurs us on to be ever more faithful to Him and to be witnesses of the Father’s love. Jesus is the one who can teach us the art of living our fidelity to the covenant in the dynamics of ongoing renewal. We have to make ourselves loved in order to take Christ to those around us. This is the personal legacy we can take to our mission.
A small band of persons totally committed to their mission can change the course of history. It is up to us to make our homes and parish communities places where the prophecy of love is lived in daily joyful self-giving and witnessing presence. Attention and openness to mission without frontiers will help us to make our dynamism of love to reach out to every corner of our work in India, spreading harmony, peace, and dialogue among believers of various religions. Motivated by single-mindedness, we can let nothing distract us from our commitment to God and people. As missionaries attentive to the frontiers of mission today, the Lord Jesus, can inspire all of us to think ahead, to look critically and creatively at our concrete situation, clarify our vision and to improve the quality of our lives and our service.
Witness to lasting fidelities
In a world that is witnessing rapid changes, marked economic growth and far reaching scientific and technological advancement, our mission challenges us to be a group set apart that witnesses to a set of core values and belief systems that are remarkable. Today, more than ever we need visionary missionaries who understand life well enough to delve beyond the rules of reason and create a healthy community pattern in which all can enjoy life and proclaim its beauty and splendor to those around.
Experience at home is the rock on which lasting fidelities are lived to its full. Relationships are the key to lasting fidelities. “Fidelity” writes Erikson “is the ability to sustain loyalties freely pledged inspite of the inevitable contradictions of value systems” (Erikson, Insight and Responsibility, p.125). Sharing love and life in the apostolic mission reveal the beauty of missionary commitment as living out of a covenant relationship.
Communication of the Good News
The Good News that God is love has to be shouted out even today. People of our time are searching for God. We can lead them to the springs of living waters. In a time where there is much talk about accompaniment, spiritual direction and discernment, there need to be an overflowing of the missionary dynamism from within our families to those around especially to those who are genuine seekers of the Truth.
In the tranquility and calm of dialogue the “crooked paths are made straight and the hills are brought low.” God’s foreseeing love that we experience personally and as families can’t be just kept in our hearts. It has to be proclaimed through a healthy communication of the Good News of Jesus Christ. “Christ the Redeemer ‘fully reveals man to himself’” (John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 1979, n.10).
The new frontiers of mission challenge us to be ever more rooted in Jesus and to make every effort to make Him known and loved. It is up to us as individuals and as communities to welcome this challenge and respond to it also by preparing new and adequate material in the form of manuals, audiovisual aids etc. Net-working with the families no doubt can embellish our communication of the Good News for the family is “the bearer of the heritage of humanity itself” Ecclesia in Asia, 1999, n.46.
Family A net-work of relationships
The “I love you” is expressed in a family through million gestures of love and communication. When the partners are aware of their greatest communication strengths and weaknesses, the flow of message is made easier. Late Pope St. John Paul II has evidenced this in Ecclesia in Asia, 1999, n.46: “The Christian family, like the Church as a whole, should be a place where the truth of the Gospel is the rule of life and the gift which the family members bring to the wider community. The family is not simply the object of the Church’s pastoral care; it is also one of the Church’s most effective agents of evangelization.”
Today is the time for openness and renewal. Mission without frontiers is a net work of relationships. It is: re-founding of existing Christian communities, formation of catechists, rediscovering of missionary motivation, formation of missionaries capable of combining strong convictions, zealous ambitions and energetic work. No more as mere spectators but as active participants in a world of religious pluralism, Contemplatives and mystics on the street corners, with sanctity and agility, ready to enter in dialogue. Thanks to the power of our personal experience of Jesus and called to carry on the mission of Christ, we have to become missionaries who are ever attentive to discern the signs of the times, in the extraordinary complexity of our contexts.