Becoming a Missionary & Evangelising church
If you are wondering what does it takes to become a missionary and evangelizing church, Pope Francis offered a glimpse on how such a church would look like in one of his Wednesday’s audience in 2014. He anchored it in understanding the importance of baptism in the Church. He said that the important fruit from this sacrament is that we are made members of the Body of Christ and of the People of God. Why is this important? The Pope used the image of a river to describe the Christian People. Just like the river flowing through to irrigate the land, Christian People spread God’s blessings throughout the world wherever they go. This is the mission of the Church as People of God - we bring the Good News wherever we go.
By virtue of our baptism, we are made missionary disciples, bringing the Gospel to the world. (E.G. 120) This simply means that as long as one is baptized, regardless of the person’s position in the church or the stage of faith growth, one becomes an agent of evangelization. Everyone, the entire People of God is involved in the business of bringing the Good News to the world. Pope Francis said that the People of God is a ‘Disciple People’ because it receives the faith and also a ‘Missionary People’ because it transmits the faith. This means that baptism is important for the community because it is through baptism in the community that we receive the faith and we transmit the faith. The Pope quoted the final document of Aparecida that the ‘Christian faith is born and lives in the Church, and in baptism families and parishes celebrate the incorporation of a new member in Christ and in his Body which is the Church.’ He went on to illustrate his point by referring to the Christian community in Japan. The faith of the community continued to be received and transmitted in the 17th century when there was no priest left and the local church was under persecution. This was done by the lay faithful who continue living, baptizing and growing in faith in their families while in hiding. This is one example of how a missionary and evangelizing church would look like with every member taking responsibility to live and transmit the faith. It starts with activating every member to be the agent of evangelization. In Evangelii Gaudium #24, Pope Francis gave us a pastoral plan beginning with getting everyone to embrace human life, getting in touch with the sufferings of others. The Pope wrote that evangelizers needed to take on the ‘smell of the sheep’ by getting involved in the lives of people. This requires us to first move out, wake up from our ‘slumbers’ to take notice of people – the activation. We are activated to become interested in people’s lives and not just concerned with our personal needs and wants. As we are involved in people’s lives, we exercise patience, standing by people every step of the way with no regards to constraints of time. This is because the Lord wants us, the community to bear fruit, so we exercise patience for the Word to take root and for faith to grow in the people we are involved in. Then, remember that we do this joyfully because we have received nourishments and renewal from the Lord in the liturgy and we pass on this faith with joy to others. These are simple steps but if done well will activate us to act upon our baptismal call to share this faith to all and become a missionary and evangelizing church. Against these simple steps, we can evaluate the life of our communities. What are we concerned with? Are we doing the steps well? What can we improve on? Let us make an effort to help everyone on this journey to become a church that is missionary.