LEADERS AND WORKERS IN THE MISSIONARY APOSTOLATE

Abstract

EDITH BERNARD [*] To encapsulate my presentation, I have chosen the title of Chapter 6 of John Paul II's encyclical on mission, , The Mission of the Redeemer (abbreviated as RM[1]), 1990, N[degrees] 61 to 76. In this paper I shall not come back to the fundamentals of mission developed in Jean Stromberg's paper. As Jacques Matthey stressed (The) Ecumenical Affirmation...brings together developments since 1960 by combining in a remarkable way the fruit of previous mission conferences, as well as insights the Orthodox churches, Roman Catholic missionary orders and congregations, and dialogues with evangelicals. [2] The result is a comprehensive view of mission, which, together with the 1974 Lausanne Covenant and the 1975 Evangelii Nuntiandi, forms a corpus of documents that are essential reading. [3] For this short presentation, I will concentrate more on the practitioners of mission as developed in the Encyclical, and I hope you can thus perceive some of the main accents and priorities in Catholic circles in recent decades and today. From a Catholic point of view, only the as a whole can assume the missionary task in all its complexities. Christ sent His life-giving Spirit upon His disciples and through His disciples established His body, the Church, as the universal of [4] Thus, God's mission was not entrusted to one individual but to the twelve, to the church. It is the as a whole that stands as the sacrament of salvation. That is why evangelization is necessarily an ecclesial act. The Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, published after the Bishop's Synod on Evangelization (1974), specifies that the missionary work is Attached to the evangelizing activity of the whole Church by links, but also by links in the order of grace. [5] Both these aspects -- the institutional one and the profound invisible one -- are closely linked. For the church, as for all societies, it happens that some obligations apply to the whole group but that some of the corresponding tasks have to be entrusted to members of the group. For example, the concern for solidarity is to be shared by all the citizens of a country, although some are to be more specifically in charge of implementing it. So section VI of Redemptoris Missio gets straight to the point: Without witnesses there can be no witness? Just as without missionaries, there can be no missionary activity (RM6l). RM cites the typical example of the Antioch community -- a local church which, being evangelized becomes evangelizing and sends to others (cf. Acts 13:2-3). The early Church experiences her mission as a community task, while acknowledging in her midst certain envoys or missionaries devoted to the Gentiles, such as Paul and Barnabas (RM 61). Ecclesial communities, be they younger or older, must unite, exchange their energies and means, draw on the riches of the other, and engage together in the unique and common mission to announce and live the Gospel (RM 62 cf. AG 20, my emphasis). 1. Those primarily responsible for missionary activity Both with regard to new evangelization and the universal mission, My brother bishops are directly responsible, together with me, for the evangelization of the both as members of the College of Bishops and as pastors of the particular Churches says John Paul II in RM 63 (my emphasis). The Synod of Bishops must have a special concern for the missionary apostolate, which is the most important and sacred task of the church. Mission is a community task which concerns all the members of the community and firstly its leaders. This is for the younger churches' bishops as well as for the older ones. Those who are poor, let them give their poverty, and then mission will be from everywhere to everywhere in the world, which is quite a revolutionary situation for the members of the so-called mother churches. …