|
On this second day of your reflection on the state of mission in the Church and the Order of the Augustinian Recollects, I would like to focus on something which is often overlooked in mission work. We sometimes talk about the “missionary community” and the “mission of the community”. We need to talk also, however, about the “community of missionaries”.
Out Gospel reading gives us the keynote of our reflection. In the Gospel of John chapter 13, the Lord gave his disciples the mandatum novum: “Love one another as I have loved you.” We have to remember that the Lord gave this new commandment first before he sent them out to preach the good news to all nations. He first constituted them into a community before they were sent as missionaries. The Lord knew that there cannot be a missionary community without a community of missionaries. Men and women sent on mission often have a romanticized concept of mission. Yet, when they are already in the mission land, the reality of their new environment can be jarring and shocking to one who thinks mission is always an exciting enterprise. After the initial adjustment to the environment, the missionary settles down to the ordinariness of life in the locality, and none can be more discomforting than the ordinariness of everyday life. The lives of St. Ezekiel Moreno, of St. Francis Xavier, of Matteo Ricci and many famous missionaries may sound like the stuff of legends, but what we know are compressed accounts of their activities spanning several decades. The reality can be far less exciting, for the everyday life does not lend to great and glorious strides. These great missionaries may not have even been aware of the fruit of their labors, for what they saw during their lifetime may be far less than what we see now from the perspective of historical distance.
In the face of either boredom or excitement, what the missionary needs is a community that can support him whenever the pangs of loneliness or the anxieties of everyday life set in. By community, I do not only mean the immediate community, but the whole order or congregation itself, which must exist not only for itself as a religious institute but also for each and every missionary in the field. Each member of the Order or Congregation therefore, wherever he may be assigned, whether in the relative comfort of the headquarters in Rome or the snake-infested forests of South America, must unite himself to each and every member of the Order. Every member, therefore must never feel that he is alone fighting his own demons, but that all his other brethren live and pray and work with him in their heart and mind.
This unity of hearts and minds in the community missionaries has implications in the spirituality and lifestyle of all members of the Order. It means, first of all, an intense life of prayer for everyone, for the work of mission is not only for those who are out there in mission lands, but also for those who work in offices and schools. Those who work in Christian areas must be as zealous in their ministry as those who are in mission lands, for the Lord enjoins us all to “put out into the deep.” There is no room for complacency in the Church, not because we are without hope, but precisely because our hope urges us to do more in making the Lord’s love known to the world.
Second, the unity of hearts in minds in the community of missionaries means a simple and edifying way of life for all. What we give up for the sake of the mission we must not take up somewhere else. The community of missionaries must live life truly in “common,” that is, consistent with the economic condition of the common people. Though priests and religious are not supposed to live miserably, we are however called to live simple and austere lives, consistent with the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience.
Third, the unity of hearts and minds in the community of missionaries require that the members of the Order be true to the charism of the Founder as approved by the Holy See. Nothing is more discouraging for the missionary than to hear of dissension within his own Order, or upon returning to the Mother House, he realizes that his Order has changed its priorities and no longer has in its vision-mission the work he has so painstakingly accomplished in obedience to the original charism of the Order. The way to a bountiful harvest in the mission is through the unity of hearts and minds in the community of missionaries, and the way to this unity is fidelity to the charism of the Order and to the Magisterium of the Church. Let us not fall victim to passing fads and earth-bound ideologies, for things may pass away, but the words of the Lord will not pass away. It is to the source of these words, the one assurance of the authenticity of these words that we must return once again or risk losing the work which generations of missionaries have labored long and hard.
In closing, I entrust you as a community of missionaries to the care of Our Lady of Consolation, so that in your life as missionaries of the Word, you may always find the consoling guidance of Our Lady. Amen.
|
