Wilfredo T. Dulay, CICM
Imaging the Future of Mission

On October 11, 1962 the eighty-year-old Pope John XXIII solemnly opened Vatican II, the 21st Ecumenical Council. Soon enough, it was hailed by both Catholic and Protestant theologians, among them the eminent South African mis-siologist, David Jacobus Bosch, as the first "truly global council, not only a Western one". The Pastor of Rome, the fatherly Papa Giovanni, wanted the Church to dialogue with the world. He opened the windows of the Vatican so the fresh air of aggiornamento could reach the dark corners of the Church and the Roman curia. What rushed in was a hurricane. And that¹s probably an under-statement.

Since then religious communities and missionary societies have dizzyingly gone through the gamut of change: elation, confusion, transition, conflict, turbulence, upheaval, transforma-tion, division, merger, federalization, diminution, decline, death, revival, restora-tion, renewal, re-imaging, refounding. Scheut-CICM could not, of course, be insulated from the pull of the post-Vatican maelstrom which to this day is far from dissipated. We cannot minimize the far-reaching effects, for instance, of the departure from the Institute of so many con-freres and the eventual closure of all our formation houses in Belgium and Holland. Neverthe-less, we went through that period in our usual scheutist way - very sober, very low-key - that prevents any dramatic upheaval from being registered in the CICM seismograph. Yet, as we must acknowledge, albeit reluctantly, there had been some rum-blings. And though nowadays more felt than heard, they are still there:

"Scheut has be-come unrecognizable! This is no more the Congregation I joined. What has become of it? They even call it an Institute!" "What will we do, or what will they do, when the money from Europe stops coming? How will it be when the ‘White fathers’ are gone? Will it die out?" "What will become of Scheut?" To be sure the double-entendre of the forecast that the future of Scheut is dark has become stale. But its ambivalence remains. For while it referred jokingly to the darker skin tone of younger non-Caucasian members, the undercurrent of pessimism pointing to a bleak future for the Institute continues to run its course. And it would be a mistake to think that this is only the resigned pessimism of some aging confreres. There is also apprehension and discouragement among younger members, Europeans or not. The euphoria of Vatican II has long fizzled out but the anxiety for the future lingers, like the smog that hovers on the Eternal City and later sticks to your skin.

Indeed, we may ask: What is our future? What will the CICM of tomorrow be like? Will it survive? Or will it quietly fade away in the wake of Vatican II? Is there a future for missionaries? Is there a future for mission?

Christ and the future of mission

The first step in imaging the future of mission is to clarify, and if needed, to re-establish, the link between Christ and mission. This means a revindication for our times of the vital christocentrism of mission. Maybe mission has focused too much on the person of the missionary, or had become too Church-conscious, and not sufficiently Christ-centered. As a community of missionaries we cannot begin to contemplate our own fu-ture without looking into the bigger picture of the future of mission. In so doing we are unavoidably led to something both obvious and mysterious. For as we check our bearings and try to retrace to its source what we have long taken for granted to be "our mission" we find ourselves entering a paradox. As we step back to the source we are also led forward to the future. By re-establishing that Jesus Christ is the real source and center of mission, we cannot fail to recognize that he is also its future. On the personal level the memory of our future returns to the screen of our mind. We knew at a certain moment of our vocation history that Christ was not only the Alpha of our missionary calling, he was also to be its Omega (Apoc 1.8). The Incarnate Word is both pledge and plenitude of God’s mission. We are in need of reaffirming our Christian future.

Imaging our future as missionaries ought to be a twofold plea for a deeper insight into Jesus Christ as God’s ultimate mission and a greater understanding of discipleship. Discerning the future of mission is inseparable from discerning disci-pleship. Very simply put, Jesus Christ is the future of mission. He is, therefore, our future; there can be no other. Mission is God¹s initiative which found completion in and through Christ. It is fundamental for every missionary and every missionary community to recognize that mission is life in Christ. There is no missionary life apart from him. The ultimate foundation of mission is none other than God’s self-revelation. The call from God to us is to participate actively in his mission to recreate the world and humankind. But it is He who is bringing about the progressive reconciliation of the world in and through Christ. It is Jesus Christ who accomplishes all salvation and no one can complete his mission if he does not achieve it himself (cf. A Consulta-tion on Mission organized by the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, 1982). In the wake of the collapse of traditional support structures in missionary communities the weakened link between Christ and mission will have to be strengthened. These structures were not meant to last forever. And notwithstand-ing the frenetic efforts of restorationist groups within the Church, they cannot be brought back. The first step in imaging the future of mission is to re-source our spirituality in Christ. Tomorrow's missionary, and already the missionary of to-day, will have to be a deeply spiritual person.

Does God still call communties to mission?

Imaging the future of mission is first of all a prayer for the reign of God to come. To recognize that Christ is God's mission is the starting point of imaging the future and the true basis for the continuing existence of missionary communities. An intimately lived faith-knowledge of Christ as mission and missionary will be required more than ever. Our missionary spirituality is Christian to the extent that it participates in God's mission. All our missionary activities can only be au-thenticated by their identification with Christ¹s own way of fulfilling his Father's mission. Christ himself was explicit and unequivocal: "I am the way, the truth and the life" (Jn 14.6). It is on this fundament that missionaries may and must engage in the analysis of context, the actual and current circumstances of God’s saving activity. For all its simplicity, the basic guide question remains: How would Jesus Christ himself be a missionary today? Situated within the search for God, imaging the future of mission becomes a journey towards Him, itself a profoundly missionary activity. Outside the ongoing Christian pilgrimage, mission loses its meaning. The difficulties we would en-counter in understanding mission are in direct proportion to the difficulties we en-counter in the search for God. Thus, members of settled affluent societies having difficulties to find a place for God in their lives are finding it more and more difficult to understand, much less appreciate, the missionary concerns of the Church. There is a correlation between finding God and understanding mission. For this reason Gustavo Gutiérrez warns us that "finding God requires a search. Conse-quently, if we are to find God acting in history, we must have an attitude of faith that is open to novelty and mystery." Imaging mission is imaging Christ is imaging God.

Church as responsive participation in God’s mission

There is a popular belief among Christians that mission is the pious work of an established Church in the foreign missions. But if we trace mission to Christ we would realize that Church history is the story of mission. To be even more precise, Church history is necessarily an incomplete documentation of God’s mission in the world. It’s time to shake off the illusion that the Church determines the future of mission. The inaccuracy has been overlooked for generations. Such an interpretation, though widespread, is arrogantly contrary to the evidence of history. What is true is the opposite: the future of mission will determine the Church. "Without mission, the Church cannot be catholic" (Josef Glazik).

"Mission and its different forms, for example, foreign missions, are not col-lections of projects to be programmed into the closed circuits of the Church. They are not even generous actions to redress injustice, lighten darkness or relieve dis-tress. Mission is the consequence of, and witness to, the sending of the Son by the Father, in the power of the Spirit. It is a grateful response to Christ and a confes-sion of faith" (G. Chevalley). In my estimation David J. Bosch¹s 1991 formulation, poetic and theologically precise, is unsurpassed:

Mission has its origin in the heart of God. God is a fountain of sending love. This is the deepest source of mission. It is impossible to pene-trate deeper still; there is mission because God loves people. Mission is, primarily and ultimately, the work of the Triune God, Creator, Re-deemer, and Sanctifier, for the sake of the world, a ministry in which the Church is privileged to participate. (Transforming Mission, p 392)

Hopefully, by the witness of dedicated lives, missionaries could help the Church to set its priorities right and be reminded to be more concerned about be-ing "sign and instrument, the visible sacrament of saving unity" (LG #s 1 & 9). In other words, the Church ought to be a more consistent practitioner of God¹s truth-ful love (the real gospel). Too much attention - energy, talent, resources - has gone and is going to her secondary functions as patroness of the arts, custodian of mon-umental structures, curator of museums, collector of ancient manuscripts, and compiler of complicated theologies usually beyond the grasp of ordinary Chris-tians. At best these are complementary activities, definitely not the pri-orities of a Church founded on a missionary Christ.

Were they to become humbler in mien, simpler in lifestyle, more daring where it matters, optimistic about the future, in other words, more spiritual, i.e., faithful to Christ, God's own mission in the world, missionaries could assist the Church to become a more truly servant Church, "more committed to truth and love than to any show of power ... more concerned with living the Gospel than with making formulations" (Samuel Rayan, S.J.).

It is well possible that the history of God's mission has already entered an-other phase. And no less than the Spirit of Christ is guiding the transition and providing the hints for transformation.

Sightings of mission in the future

Hospitality, koinonia and diakonia

The shift in the source of missionary personnel together with other factors, like the secularism prevailing in the Chris-tian West, leads us to envision mission that is less power-based and unable to proselytize. It will have to be humbler in approach and more capable of giving un-self-conscious witnessing to God's love for the poor and the needy.

We are living in harsh times. Our mission cannot consist only of proclama-tion, even if we are proclaiming a God who shows no partiality (Acts 10.34). Our claim that Christianity is against racism has been sorely tested by the active, if not eager collaboration of Christians in Nazism, Fascism and apartheid. There is a great need "to open heart, home and church in acts of hospital-ity" (Hampton Mor-gan Jr.). Mission today and tomorrow must focus on welcome, hospitality, commu-nion and service, which are really one and the same (Lk 22.24-7). This dimension of Christianity should stand out in high relief during these times when entire popu-lations are brutally displaced from their homelands, when refugees number in the millions. Missionary communities should become welcome houses, veritable oases, open to receive strangers as Abraham and Sarah did by the oaks of Mamre (Gen 18.1-8). This is certainly a heritage we share with both our Muslim and Jew-ish brethren, and could serve as a meeting point for godly encounters with them.

universality & dialogue. After Vatican II it became apparent, theologi-cally and practically, that mis-sion could not remain the exclusive enterprise of the Western Church. While there are no signs that the sharp decrease of mis-sionary vocations in the First World is abating, bigger numbers of missionaries from the Third World are going forth worldwide (cf. Omer De-grijse¹s Going Forth: Mission-ary Consciousness in Third World Catholic Churches). Even considering the very real possibility that some Third World missionaries might try to replicate the western model, another way of doing mission is bound to arise. The mere fact that they do not come from the First World and do not have the same material possibil-ities will prevent, if not preclude, a repeat performance. There¹s nothing new about this. Christianity is never cyclic and rejects remakes or reincarnations. The history of salvation proceeds inexorably linear. The way the early Jesuits and Dominicans went about converting pagans was somewhat differ-ent from the way St. Paul and the early Jewish missionaries pleaded the Christian cause. Christian-ity was an insignificant breakaway sect of Judaism and the Church was not yet a Byzantine bride. Paul founded communities of welcome, friendship and support; he did not establish power bases.

The internationalization of missionary communities will occasion greater diversity in pastoral approaches and types of missionary presence. This will neces-sitate dialogue within the multi-national membership of communities and with the local population. Hopefully the internationalization of missionary in-stitutes will also enhance the catholicity of the Church, provoking a greater awareness of the universality of the gospel it proclaims.

missionary temporality. The Greek noun paroikia means staying or dwelling in a foreign land or country where you do not belong. And so the early Chris-tians adapted the term and gave it an eschatological meaning: we are not of this world (Jn 15.19) and life on earth is temporary. Isn¹t it the height of irony that a concept originally intended to remind us of the temporariness of our earthly so-journ became the Church¹s most established organizational unit? In fact, the ex-istence of parishes is universally accepted as the clearest indicator of an already established local church! Perhaps by way of recovering this sense of Christian journeying, more and more missionary institutes insist on clear agreements with local ordinaries stipu-lating, among others, the duration of their services. The existence of such agree-ments or contracts also avoids the unnecessary and protracted dependence of local churches on foreign personnel and resources. Furthermore, they serve as a built-in incentive for the native clergy to assume leadership the soonest possible.

Prophetic simplicity

Even a cursory look at the person of Christ as por-trayed in the four versions of the gospel reveals a person who shunned pomp and power. He assumed a patently simple life-and-work style. Considering that all power and authority have been given to him both in heaven and on earth (Mt.28.18) no room is left for doubt that Christ freely opted to undertake the re-demption of the world in all simplicity. Mission tomorrow will have to pro-ceed similarly and distance itself from all forms of power play and assuming dom-i-nance.

Christ-centered and gospel-oriented.

While John XXIII's pioneering contribution to the Second Vatican Council was his openness for dialogue with the world, Paul VI sealed its Christ-centered-ness. He followed this up by his ground-breaking encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi which highlighted the need for the Church to focus on the mission and witness of Christ himself as the first evangelizer (EN #7ff). Centering on Christ's saving mis-sion is a renewed invitation for missionaries to concentrate on the biblical por-trayal of Christ, a call to derive inspiration from his way of doing mission. The New Testament is not only every Christian's first book of reference, it is also the missionary's original text of missiology. It tells and shows us how Jesus was mission and missionary. It is replete with vibrant testimonies of the experi-ences of Jesus, his first disciples, and the first missionaries of the Church. Today's and tomorrow's missionary must continue drinking from these original missionary sources. The gospel - the good news - should be able to revive the flagging opti-mism of many a missionary.

All these considerations are only so many words to say that Christ is the model of mission for all missionaries. Our optimism for the future of mission rests on the promise of his presence among us till the end of times. We can only respond to his faithfulness by our consistent adherence to his ways, the final norm for our participation in mission. And as to our worries concerning "the numbers game", was expansion ever really the issue? Did not the Lord say we were only meant to be as the leaven in the dough? I guess we missionaries, young and old, will have to let our worries rest in Him. A little trust, a little more faith can't do us any harm.

w.t.dulay, cicm

rome, 15.03.99