Prot. N. 23/2005
Tools to Prepare for the 7th General Conference
Introduction
The 20th and 21st General Chapters noted and reflected on changes that affect our world. We need to face the challenges arising from them and to find answers. The “We, the Congregation” is our globalization, accomplished in solidarity, seeking and responding together. “Refoundation” is a desire to provide meaningful answers to the world in which we live, answers rooted in the faith experience of Fr. Dehon whose beatification gives witness to their currency.
These radical changes and the need to come up with our own particular plan of action profoundly affect what are accustomed to call ”missionary activity” (Cst. 31).
The population shifts of the Christian majority and ecclesiastical energy from countries with the oldest Christian tradition to those whose tradition is only recent together with phenomena like secularization, migrations of peoples, changing theological thinking, all require a new look at our missionary “policies”.
To plot a missionary strategy and to provide orientation for our own participation in the mission of the Church, the 21st General Chapter ordered that the next General Conference (May, 2006 in Poland) should reflect on the theme of proclaiming the Gospel to those who are not Christian and to the support of young churches.
The materials that you have in hand, lengthy to the point of exhaustion, are intended to be a tool to aid reflection, to obtain a more complete understanding of what we do, and to gather recommendations in preparation for the General Conference of 2006 which will be entitled: Dehonians on mission “ad gentes”. These materials have been thought through for SCJ communities dispersed about the world and it is to these that this invitation is directed: take the materials into consideration and make them the object of your reflection.
We ask that each community send their answers, thoughts, suggestions to their own province / region / district by June 30. Each such entity will make arrangements then to make a synthesis of the materials and send it on to the preparation commission at the General Curia no later than July 31 (email may be used).
Individual confreres wishing to send us their personal reflections, suggestions, bibliographical notations, witness on missionary activity, etc., can do so by transmission to the electronic address: . We express our thanks in advance to those who do so.
We invite you to collaborate in the success of the next General Conference by making your contribution on time, by expanding your knowledge with reading on the topic, and by making it the object of your prayers.
The Preparatory Commission:
Fr. Claudio Dalla Zuanna, scj (CU)
Fr. Leopold Mfouakouet, scj (CM)
Fr. Jerzy Sędzik, scj (CM)
Fr. Paulus Sugino, scj (IN)
Fr. Eduardo Emilio Agüero, scj (PHI)
Rome, Feast of Epiphany, 2005
1. The Mission of the Church
Christ, only savior of man, after having completed his mission and before returning to the Father, left the church with the mission of bringing the good news of salvation to the ends of the earth (cf. Mk. 15:15). Faithful to the will of the Lord and aware of the importance of their task, the apostles went to various regions to proclaim Christ and to bring churches to life despite difficulties and obstacles. Throughout the course of the history of the church, this missionary awareness has been appreciated in variety of ways.
At present the fervor for this task seems faint for various reasons but, additionally, to a certain ambiguity in the concepts of mission and salvation. The mission “ad gentes” seems to have become somewhat unclear, somehow melded into the concept of the mission of the people of God.
The pope has re-examined this aspect in his encyclical Redemptoris Missio (RM), where he clarifies that the mission of the church is the only one of its kind but that it also comports various differing elements and activities like the “missio ad gentes,” pastoral care, and the new evangelization. Reminding Christians of the current real urgency of the “mission ad gentes” he states that mission is directed to peoples, groups and socio-cultural situations “in which Christ and his Gospel are not known, or which lack Christian communities sufficiently mature to be able to incarnate the faith in their own environment and proclaim it to other groups”(RM, 33). This kind of mission is aimed, therefore, in a special way to those who have not yet received the gospel.
Aware of changes taking place in our contemporary world, the “missio ad gentes” goes beyond traditional geographical criteria and must bring evangelization to new phenomena linked to urbanization and population migration as well as to social sectors like the worlds of media and communications, scientific research, international relations and any other realities that make up the modern arena (cf. RM, 37).
Even if we rightly affirm that the entire church is missionary in nature, it shall indeed fully become so in the measure in which certain persons within her consecrate themselves radically to this kind of activity. The specific scope of the encyclical is therefore to reconfirm the necessity of the mission and of missions toward those who have never heard the gospel proclaimed and who still today constitute the majority of peoples. For this undertaking, religious institutes are first to respond.
Reflection Questions
1) What do you understand by “mission ad gentes”?
2) In the introduction to the encyclical Redemptoris Missio, the pope speaks of the urgency of missionary activity. What does this urgency mean to you?
2. Missionary Dimension of the Congregation
Our institute, “although…not founded for a specific work, …gets from the Founder some apostolic orientations which characterize its mission in the Church” (Cst. 30). Among these orientations: “For him missionary activity was a privileged form of apostolic service” (Cst. 31). The 21st General Chapter has set the “missio ad gentes” among its preferred apostolic services (Cf. nn. 49, 54, 56 Final Document).
These are the choices that Fr. Dehon made to demonstrate the importance he gave this apostolic field. Some background is in order to provide understanding. In 1888, just 10 years after foundation, he sent the first missionaries to Ecuador. In 1897, after having sent missionaries to Brazil, he began the mission to the Congo. In that year the congregation had 121 professed of which the majority were youths in formation. This new mission was not readily accepted by the members of the young congregation and Fr. Dehon personally had to take on responsibility for its beginning. Actually, the houses in Europe did not have sufficient members and there were financial problems as well. Some confreres were critical of such decisions and judged them to be forms of activism; they sought to have him step down as superior general of the congregation.
Fr. Dehon responded by affirming that “to offer to the Heart of Jesus a generous sacrifice like that of an apostolate in Africa was a blessing for the ‘work’ “ (NQ XII/1898, 126). He personally committed himself to find vocations and means for supporting the missions. Stating that “his dear missionaries travel a long distance for the Reign of the Sacred Heart paying the price of great sufferings and sacrifices. Their lives are lives of reparation and immolation as our vocation requires of us (To my missionaries: AD B 38/6; Inv. 668.01).
When he died – in 1925 – the congregation was present in 17 countries, from Brazil to the Cameroon, from the Congo to Finland, from Indonesia to South Dakota.
Throughout its 127 years of existence as a congregation, about 1600 SCJs have provided missionary service. In 1950, a year in which the congregation had as many members in perpetual vows as it has now, missionaries numbered 430; today there are slightly more than 300 SCJs engaged in the work of evangelization “ad gentes” outside their province of origin. Of these, about half come from just two provinces: PO and IS, while only 7 of the 21 provinces presently have more than 10 missionaries. The average age of missionaries is 58 while the average age of the congregation is 53. Yet, in truth, one needs to keep in mind that in those countries once referred to as missions there are now numerous native confreres.
A number of conclusions can be drawn from these brief considerations. Within the congregation the mission “ad gentes” has always been considered a “privileged form of apostolic service” and a situation that suits “living out our vocation”. But the flow of missionaries coming from countries where the congregation originated is now drastically reduced. The average age of those working outside their own province of origin is much higher and has a tendency to increase more rapidly than elsewhere within the congregation. In many provinces, particularly among those from which our missionary work began, there is a certain difficulty in participating in the mission outside their own country.
Reflection Questions
1) How can the “missio ad gentes” contribute to the process of renewal and refoundation undertaken by the 21st General Chapter?
2) Does your province / region / district seem sufficiently committed to the mission “ad gentes”? What is it doing? What could it do?
3) New missionary ventures must foresee the implanting of the congregation in what locations? What relationship is there between missionary service and the plantatio congregationis [establishment of the congregation]?
3. Profile of an SCJ Missionary
A Dehonian missionary is one who lives the values and outlook sought by the church for those who proclaim the gospel in the spirit of our Institute.
In his life this person deeply experiences the love of Christ who loved us and gave himself for us (cf Gal. 2:20). His faithful attention to the word of God reveals to him the mystery of God and his love for men. He nourishes his union with Christ by a contemplation of his pierced Heart. All this is reinforced by a daily eucharistic celebration and adoration which serve to make the oblation of Christ, to which he unites his own personal oblation, present on the altar. He remains docile to the action of the Holy Spirit which guides him on the path to perfection.
This love, which is personally lived and experienced by the individual, moves him to proclaim to men the riches of the love of God and to invite their response by a life that is new and filled with love. The example of Christ who gave his life for the church (cf. Eph. 5:25) is the starting point of his apostolic zeal.
Conscious of human suffering, poverty, injustice, he involves himself in social concerns, in the fullest development of the human being to promote their dignity, in creating a better world. He is not discouraged by failures but is assured of and committed to the coming of God’s Kingdom.
The Dehonian missionary is open to all persons and all cultures among whom he lives and works, particularly among the weak and poor. “As such, he overcomes barriers and divisions of race, cast or ideology. He is a sign of God's love in the world—a love without exclusion or partiality” (RM). He is capable of accepting new surroundings, of insertion into the socio-cultural world of those to whom he is sent. In work as in life, he prefers the spirit of fraternity. He is actively engaged in ecumenical and inter-religious dialog so as to promote fraternity in respect of the religious convictions of others.
He is a person who is convinced of the worth of community life as “the primary expression of our apostolic life” (Cst. 60). He seeks to promote and build up a communion among persons and to make our communities “authentic centers of Gospel life, particularly by openness, sharing and hospitality” (Cst. 63).
He looks out for vocations locally. He helps young people discover their vocation and encourages them to respond generously. He collaborates, as well, with great intensity to the growth of the Institute wherever he fulfills his mission. He is always being called to be more closely conformed to the example of Jesus: a witness able in the midst of his brothers to call forth love for Christ, savior of mankind, who continues his saving action in the church through the Holy Spirit.
Reflection Questions
1) What aspects of our spirituality favor and promote missionary service?
2) Among those aspects indicated above, which seem to you most characteristic of an SCJ missionary?
3) Beyond those already given in the text, what other aspects would you like to see added?
4. Missionary Dimension of Formation
Vatican Council II affirms that “the pilgrim church is missionary by her very nature” (Ad Gentes, 2). And members of religious institutes, because of their “closer bond” to Christ sent by the Father and to the church mandated by him to bring the world the joyful news of salvation have the missionary spirit grafted onto their very being (Vita Consecrata, 25): “the sense of mission is at the very heart of every form of consecrated life”. Religious have the principal task of “making Christ present to the world through personal witness” (VC, 72) which in a particular way is manifest in “the fervent proclamation of Jesus Christ to those who do not yet know him, to those who have forgotten him, and to the poor in a preferential way” (VC 75). It is clear that the missionary dimension serves as an intrinsic component of formation in all its various phases. Above all, it is fundamental for initial formation.