THE DREAM OF POPE FRANCIS: “THE MISSIONARY OPTION”

Joseph, from the pages of the Old Testament, was called by his brothers, who did not like him, “the dreamer”. Joseph from the pages of the New Testament was given providential help by way of his dreams. Martin Luther King had a dream which has profoundly impacted for the good our country’s social fabric. Now, our Holy Father Francis tells us that he too has a dream, and this evening we gather here to find out what the Pope’s dream is all about, and to ask ourselves whether under God’s grace we are willing to appropriate the Pope’s dream and thus come to know the Joy of the Gospel.

INTRODUCTION

1. Pope Francis calls his dream “A Missionary Option”. How does Francis phrase his missionary option? He writes – “I dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is, a mission impulse capable of transforming everything so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her own self-preservation”. He describes this option as an ecclesial renewal that cannot be deferred. He then quotes John Paul II in his support: “All renewal in the Church must have mission as its goal if it is not to fall prey to a kind of ecclesial introversion”.

2. The Apostolic Exhortation – under the title “The Joy of the Gospel” – is the papal response to and creative summary of the work that took place at the 13th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops that gathered in Rome in October 2012 to discuss “the New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith”. You may recall that it was Pope Benedict who presided over the 2012 Synod of Bishops. It was Benedict who had proposed the topic “Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith”. To prepare for the Synod Pope Benedict inaugurated the “Year of Faith”. To guide us through the Year of Faith, Pope Benedict issued his Apostolic Letter, “Porta Fidei”, the Door of Faith. It was Benedict who had already issued two excellent encyclicals – one on the virtue of charity and the second on the virtue of hope – and who began a third encyclical on faith which he left to Pope Francis to complete and make his own. It’s title is, “Lumen Fidei” – the Light of Faith. Did we ever think we would see the day when two popes, one emeritus, would issue together one encyclical? The two popes are so very different in style and personality, but from my reading quite similar in their thinking. How often Benedict spoke about evangelization and how often he referred to the joy of the Gospel. I mention this at this time only to say, that while I’m most enthusiastic and hopeful about our new Pope Francis and I applaud excitedly his call for reform, for simplicity, for poverty, I deplore what sometimes happen in the communications industry which speaks so unfavorably and, I would suggest so unlearnedly, about Pope Benedict.

3. How does Francis express his purpose in this exhortation? He tells us – “In this exhortation I wish to encourage the Christian faithful to embark on a new chapter of evangelization… while pointing out new paths for the Church’s journey in years to come”. In paragraph 3 of the exhortation, the Pope makes an amazing and bold request: he writes – “I invite all Christians everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or, at least, an openness to letting him encounter them. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her since no one is excluded from the joy brought to us by the Lord.” To support this profound and serious request, Francis adds – “I never tire of repeating the words of Benedict XVI that take us to the heart of the Gospel – ‘Being a Christian’, Benedict writes, ‘is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but an encounter with an event, a person, which gives life to a new horizon and a decisive direction’.” This event, this person, obviously is the risen Christ who came in human history to call the nations into the peace of the Father’s kingdom and who comes now in word and in sacrament so that we may encounter him as he encounters us. This request which Francis directs to each one of us is crucial; on it rests the rise or fall of the missionary option. If we, all of us, respond favorably, the Pope’s missionary option will become reality. If not, “the Joy of the Gospel” will just be a document filed away in the Vatican Museum. It would seem that Francis is saying to each one of us – if we give ourselves to the Lord who gives himself to us, we will become mission-minded, we will become evangelizers, and then we will experience the joy that comes from the Gospel. We cannot be joyful just because someone tells us, even the Pope, to be joyful. Joy is the echo of God’s life within us.

4. This document we are studying did not fall whole and entire from the heavens in some mysterious fashion. Evangelization is the work of Jesus, the great evangelizer, and he is at work within us reviving in our days the mystery of the Church through which the risen Christ continues down the centuries the work he first began in his human history. Only Jesus is the evangelizer who needs no evangelization. The Church, all of us, called to the work of evangelizing must ourselves be evangelized. (This suggests a great problem in the Church today. Many have fallen away from the practice of the faith. So many of our young people receive Confirmation and then are no longer participants in the faith. Many have become baptized unbelievers in the world of this time. There are many reasons for this state of affairs which we cannot handle at this time. What I can say is that many of these baptized unbelievers of ours have attended Catholic schools and colleges. The problem, as I see it, is this – they may have been catechized but not truly evangelized. Catechesis without evangelization cannot suffice.)

5. Let’s talk about evangelization. Chapter One of our document is called, “The Church’s Missionary Transformation”. Paragraph 19 reminds us that evangelization takes place in obedience to the mandate of Jesus, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” This is from Matthew’s Gospel. Each of the other Gospels has the same missionary command. Although most of us were brought up in the Church to cherish as most important the mission of the Church in fields afar (the foreign missions), it is not easy to get a good grasp on the nature of evangelization. It won’t be particularly helpful to offer some abstract definitions. The best thing to do is to pick up one of the Gospels and watch what Jesus does and what he says. Pick up the book we call the Acts of the Apostles and see what Peter, James and John are doing and saying. That’s evangelization. Think of someone like Francis Xavier who left his native Paris and education at the University of Paris and followed Ignatius into the Jesuits and spent his life preaching and teaching Jesus in the Far East. That’s evangelization. Or think of Thérèse of Lisieux who never left her Carmelite Convent and died at the age of 24, who dreamed of being a preacher like St. Paul, a teacher like St. Thomas, a scripture scholar like St. Jerome. She even dreamt also of learning Greek and Hebrew so she could read the New Testament in its original languages. These were only her dreams as she offered her prayers and works and sufferings to God for the work of the missions of the Church as she went about her humble tasks in her Carmelite Convent, and is now co-patron with Xavier in heaven of the Church’s missionary work. That’s evangelization. What about ourselves? On the day of our baptism, the celebrant said to us – “God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has freed you from sin, has given you a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit and has welcomed you into his holy people. He now anoints you with the chrism of salvation. As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.” We share in the three-fold office of Christ who is Priest, Prophet and King by the sacraments of initiation. When we pray, when we celebrate Sunday Eucharist, when we live the sacrificial demands of the Gospel, we share in the life of Christ the Priest, and that’s evangelization. When we teach our children the Catechism, when we continuously inform ourselves about the adult consequences of our faith, when we represent and speak up about our faith in the public square, we advance the work of Christ the teacher, Christ the Prophet, and that’s evangelization. But what does it mean to advance the work of Christ the King? We continue the work of Christ the King when we bring the teachings of the Gospel to society and culture through family life, through the arts and technology, through education and economics, through labor and management, through medicine and politics. This primarily is the work of the lay members of the Church which is to order the temporal things of the world in the light of the Gospel. And that is evangelization.

6. Pope Francis envisions three principal settings for the work of evangelization. He writes, “In first place, we can mention the area of ordinary pastoral ministry, which is ‘animated by the fire of the Spirit, so as to inflame the hearts of the faithful who regularly take part in community worship and gather on the Lord’s day to be nourished by his word and by the bread of eternal life’. In this category we can also include those members of the faithful who preserve a deep and sincere faith, expressing it in different ways, but seldom taking part in worship. Ordinary pastoral ministry seeks to help such believers to grow spiritually so that they can respond to God’s love ever more fully in their lives. A second area is that of ‘the baptized whose lives do not reflect the demands of Baptism’, who lack a meaningful relationship to the Church and no longer experience the consolation born of faith. The Church, in her maternal concern, tries to help them experience a conversion which will restore the joy of faith to their hearts and inspire a commitment to the Gospel.” Thirdly, the Pope reminds us “we cannot forget that evangelization is first and foremost about preaching the Gospel to those who do not know Jesus Christ or who have always rejected him. All of them have a right to receive the Gospel.”

A. CHURCH AND MISSION

1. So much for the introduction. My charge this evening is the Pope’s first chapter. It is entitled “The Church’s Missionary Transformation”. Transformation is indeed the big word. It involves us all and it will take decades for us to begin to appreciate its implementation whether we are parishioners, pastors, bishops or Popes. This first chapter covers four particular themes: Church and Mission, Conversion and Mission, Communication and Mission, and Mission within the Limitations of Language.

2. First, the Church and Mission – Evangelization takes place in obedience to the missionary command of the risen Christ to his bewildered disciples on the day of the Lord’s glorious return to his heavenly Father. The Church, of course, has no choice; the Church must obey and the Church has obeyed as we can see in the missionary efforts of so many religious congregations at work “in fields afar”. From our earliest days, we began to realize our role of prayer and financial assistance that we were asked to offer as help to the generous men and women who labored so well and so successfully, even unto martyrdom, in bringing God’s Gospel to those who had never heard of God’s love for them. However, times have changed. The present situation is so radically different. Missionary efforts are still essential in far off lands – now brought so incredibly close by modern technology. But now we know that God is dead for the majority of folks living in our own backyards. God loves them and wills only what is for their happiness, now and beyond the grave. We begin to see the dimensions of evangelization beyond praying and paying and we begin to see what the Lord expects of all of us, especially in our parishes which must become centers for evangelization. What is Pope Francis envisioning, and what is he expecting from you and me? In our day Jesus’ command to “go and make disciples” echoes in the changing scenarios and ever-new challenges to the Church’s mission of evangelization. And all of us, in countless diverse ways, are now caught up in this new missionary “going forth”. The Pope’s document is eighty-four pages of exhortation. It is not a document or a job description which every parish must strive to compose. Each parish by the grace of the Holy Spirit must strive to become a parish of “other Christs” following in the steps of Jesus the Evangelizer. Each parish must be seen as “on the move”, going forth like Moses of old to whom God said – “Go – I send you”, or like Jeremiah the prophet – “To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I command you, you shall speak. Have no fear before them because I am with you to deliver you”, says the Lord. Each Christian in every community must discern the path that the Lord will point out, but all of us are asked to obey in hundreds of different ways the call to evangelize and thus to go forth, as Francis tell us, from our comfort zones in order to reach all those living in periphery situations so needing the light of the Gospel. The Pope writes – “As every evangelizing community gets involved by word and deed in people’s daily lives, it bridges distances and it embraces human lives and suffering. It is always supportive, standing by people in need or in difficulty.” The parish, as we will see in the next section, is key as it is a parish that holds itself responsible for all people within its borders, a parish of “other Christs” known for their kindness, love and mercy for all they encounter.

B. CONVERSION AND MISSION

1. The section on Church and Mission has helped us, I trust, see the challenges Pope Francis gives us in his exhortation. Now we must ask – What ought the Church be like in terms of the New Evangelization? Our second section – Conversion and Mission – outlines what the new evangelization will cost us all in terms of conversion, both communal and personal. The Pope writes – “I am aware that nowadays documents do not arouse the same interest as in the past and that they are quickly forgotten. Nevertheless, I want to emphasize that what I am trying to express here has a programmatic significance and important consequences. I hope that all communities will devote the necessary effort to advancing along the path of a pastoral and missionary conversion which cannot leave things as they presently are. ‘Mere administration’ can no longer be enough. Throughout the world, let us be ‘permanently in a state of mission’.”

2. The Pope makes reference to Pope Paul’s pastoral encyclical on evangelization telling us that the Church exists for evangelization and making the key distinction between an ideal image of the Church which only the Lord can envisage and the actual image which the Church presents, not particularly favorable or helpful, to the world at this time. This distinction is the source of the Church’s “impatient struggle” for renewal, for conversion, to correct the flaws and sins which are so counter-productive for preaching the Word of God. Thus, this exhortation reminds us that the Second Vatican Council presented ecclesial conversion as openness to a constant self-renewal born of fidelity to Jesus Christ. Christ summons the Church as she goes her pilgrim way to that continual reformation of which she always has need, in so far as she is a human institution.

3. Who must respond to this call for conversion – the parish, other pastoral institutions, such as basic ecclesial communities, the new movements in the Church, such as Opus Dei, Communio e Liberazone, the neo-catechumenates, the presbyterates of the world, the episcopacy, and the papacy? Of course, the answer is – All of the above. There’s not much you and I can do about reforming the papacy, although Pope Francis seems to be off to a hopeful start. You and I can’t do anything practical with regard to bishops and the new lay communities in the Church. For our purposes this evening we must focus on the parish. Paragraph 28 is key – “The parish is not an outdated institution; precisely because it possesses great flexibility, it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and missionary creativity of the pastor and the community. While certainly not the only institution which evangelizes, if the parish proves capable of self-renewal and constant adaptivity, it continues to be ‘the Church living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters’. This presumes that it really is in contact with the homes and the lives of its people, and does not become a useless structure out of touch with people or a self-absorbed group made up of a chosen few. The parish is the presence of the Church in a given territory, an environment for hearing God’s word, for growth in the Christian life, for dialogue, proclamation, charitable outreach, worship and celebration.”

4. With regard to conversion, pastoral ministry today must be a missionary ministry which seeks to overcome the complacent attitude that says – “We have always done it this way”. And so the Holy Father invites everyone to be bold and creative in this task of re-thinking the goals, structures, styles and methods of evangelization in their own respective communities. Early in the nineteen hundreds, it was Pope Pius XI who sought to enlist us all under the banner of Christ the King. Even at that time it was obvious to Pope Pius that the culture of the West was being so threatened by secularization and it could only be encountered by what was then called “Catholic action”, that is, all of us seeking to live the Gospel under the banner of Christ our King It’s motto was “Seek, judge and act”. This is what our Holy Father is asking of us today. We must fearlessly seek to study what the missionary task is for us here and now, and how we are to carry it out in our everyday lives. This is nothing other than what the Second Vatican Council urged on all of us in the Church in its document on the Church in the world of this time – “This Council exhorts Christians, as citizens of two cities, to strive to discharge their earthly duties conscientiously and in response to the Gospel spirit. They are mistaken who, knowing that we have here no abiding city but seek one which is to come, think that they may therefore shirk their earthly responsibilities. For they are forgetting that by the faith itself they are more obliged than ever to measure up to these duties, each according to his/her proper vocation. Nor, on the contrary, are they any less wide of the mark who think that religion consists in acts of worship alone and in the discharge of certain moral obligations, and who imagine they can plunge themselves into earthly affairs in such a way as to imply that these are altogether divorced from the religious life. This split between the faith that many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age.”

C. COMMUNICATION AND MISSION

1. Putting all things in a missionary key affects the way we communicate our Catholic faith: “In today’s world of instant communication and occasionally biased media coverage, the message we preach runs the greater risk of being distorted or being reduced to some of its secondary aspects. In this way certain issues which are part of the Church’s teaching, especially in the moral area, are taken out of context, a context with gives them their meaning. The biggest problem is when the message we preach then seems identified with the secondary aspects which, important though they are, do not in and of themselves convey the heart of Christ’s message.” We need to be realistic, Francis tells us, and not assume that our potential audience understands the full background of what we are saying, or is capable of relating what we say to the very heart of the Gospel which gives it meaning, beauty and attractiveness.

2. This section from the Pope’s exhortation needs careful reading. In my presentation, I have entitled this section “Communication and Mission”. Actually, the Pope has entitled it, “From the Heart of the Gospel”. We find two expressions in this section of Chapter One: The text speaks of what comes from the heart of the Gospel and speaks also of what is of secondary rank. The Pope does not want these two expressions to be identified when it comes to evangelization. Words like “secondary” do not mean what is unimportant or insignificant. There are many issues which are enormously important such as, teachings about abortion, teachings about marital issues and sexual concerns; however, they are not necessarily part and parcel of missionary proclamation. Missionary proclamation means telling the world about God who loves the world and sent his divine Son among us so that we might become sons and daughters of such a wonderful Father whose life we share through the cross. Missionary proclamation tells the world about Jesus who came among us to show us the way to the Father. Jesus teaches us that God wills only what is for our happiness, and how God the Father calls us and all peoples to be numbered among his people. As we seek to explore this section of the document, it might be good to raise the question – How does the Church communicate its faith in the public square? The answer is – The Church does so in three distinct but important ways: evangelization, catechesis and theology. Each has a particular form of language and the language of evangelization is proclamation which comes from the heart of the Gospel. What we must keep in mind is the quotation which Francis takes from Pope Benedict which I have already mentioned: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea but an encounter with an event, the Christ event, an incarnate divine person which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”. It is not possible to teach the Catechism to someone who has not been evangelized; it is not possible for a person to be engaged in the work of theology who has not been properly catechized; furthermore, it is not possible to engage in the work of evangelization if one is not properly evangelized. This is why in paragraph 3 at the beginning of this exhortation on the Joy of the Gospel, and as I have already alluded to, Pope Francis has made a request of every Christian – “I invite all Christians everywhere to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ.” If this does not happen, of course, the rest of the document won’t make much sense.

3. All revealed truths derive from the same divine source and are to be believed with the same faith, yet some of these are more important for giving direct expression to the heart of the Gospel, so that what shows forth is the saving will of God made manifest in Our Lord Jesus Christ who died and rose for the glory of the Father and the true happiness of all people. The Second Vatican Council, in its decree on ecumenism, underscores the teaching that there is an order or hierarchy of truth in the Gospel message since truths vary in their relative relationship to the foundation of the faith. We read in the Council’s decree on ecumenism – “When comparing doctrines with one another, we should remember that in Catholic teaching there exists an order or a hierarchy of truths since they vary in their relation to the foundation of the Christian faith”. The Holy Father turns to Thomas Aquinas who long before the Second Vatican Council taught that the Church’s moral teaching has its own hierarchy in terms of the virtues and the actions which proceed from the virtues. What counts above all else in the moral life is “faith working through love”. (Gal. 5:6) Works of love directed to one’s neighbor are the most perfect external manifestations of the interior grace of the Holy Spirit. The foundation of the new law is – the grace of the Holy Spirit who is manifested in the faith that works through love. St. Thomas tells us that the greatest of all the virtues is mercy since all the others revolve around it. Does not St. Paul in Ephesians tell us that we must be imitators of God and it is proper to God to have mercy through which his omnipotence is manifested in the greatest degree. All this is good wisdom for those who preach or teach the Catholic faith. Such preaching and teaching must manifest a fitting sense of proportion which can be seen in the frequency with which certain themes are brought up and given emphasis. The Pope gives an excellent example – “If in the course of a liturgical year, the parish priest speaks about temperance ten to twelve times and only mentions mercy and justice twice, then an imbalance results. The same thing happens when we speak more about law than about grace, more about the Church than about Christ, and more about the Pope than God’s word.”

4. The other day in The New York Times, the columnist David Brooks wrote – “There is a strong vein of hostility against orthodox religious believers in America today, especially among the young. When secular or mostly secular people are asked by researchers to give their impression of the devoutly faithful, whether Jewish, Christian or other, the words that come up frequently are ‘judgmental’, ‘hypocritical’, ‘old fashion’ and ‘out of touch’.” In his interesting article, Brooks quotes Rabbi Heschel. The Rabbi’s concern centered upon the way that many believers expressed their faith. They speak, for example, about faith as though completely replaced by the Creed, and about worship as though completely replaced by discipline; and when the culture of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; and when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; and when religion speaks only in the nuance of authority rather than with the voice of compassion”.

D. A MISSION EMBODIED WITHIN HUMAN LIMITS: MISSION AND THE HUMAN LIMITS OF LANGUAGE

1. The Church by its very nature is a missionary disciple. This was made luminously clear in the Vatican document on missions – “The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature for it is from the mission of the Son and mission of the Holy Spirit that she takes her origin in accordance with the decree of God the Father”. Francis entitles the fourth section of Chapter One – “A Mission Embodied Within Human Limits”. In keeping with the terminology I have been using, we could call this section: “Mission and the Human Limits of Language”. Like all disciplines, whatever the area of concern, it takes time for the Church to mature in its missionary challenge. In order to mature in its challenge, the Church stands in need, need for the work of scripture scholars and the work of theology, the work of sociology and the various social sciences and the expertise and talents of so many of our lay folks. It’s helpful to note that the Church cannot control the evolution of language. Take, for example, the word “propaganda”. For centuries it referred to the universal or catholic outreach of the good news of the Gospel to all peoples everywhere. Now think of what “propaganda” means in our world today. As Pope John XXIII remarked at the opening of the Second Vatican Council – “The Deposit of the Faith is one thing; the way the Deposit of the Faith is expressed at any given time is another”. Francis observes – For those who long for a monolithic body of doctrine guarded by all and leaving no room for nuance, this might appear as undesirable and leading to confusion. But the variety of languages can serve to bring out the different facets of the inexhaustible riches of the Gospel. We ought to say to every preacher what every mother often has to say to her son – Watch your language. When I was a seminarian, a missionary bishop spoke to us about preaching. He told us, and I wondered at the time if this was something of an exaggeration, that twenty percent of the people listening to a homily go away with precisely the opposite view of what the preacher intended. Such are the limits of language.

2. The limits that mission encounters go beyond the limits of language. Certain customs of the past may not speak today to the peoples of our times, and the Holy Father quotes St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine – “Insist that preachers and teachers are not to burden the lives of the faithful who often face limits in terms of ignorance, fear, inordinate attachments and other psychological or social attachments.” Thus, evangelization is no easy task. Faith always remains something of a cross. Francis tells us that we will never be able to make the Church’s teachings always easily understood or appreciated by everyone. And furthermore, people of our day only will listen to teachers who are also witnesses of what they teach. This last section has many wonderful and practical suggestions. I will end by quoting the last paragraph of Chapter One – “Let us go forth, then, let us go forth to offer everyone the life of Jesus Christ. Here I repeat for the entire Church what I have often said to the priests and laity of Buenos Aires: I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security. I do not want a Church concerned with being at the center and which then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures. If something should rightly disturb us and trouble our consciences, it is the fact that so many of our brothers and sisters are living without the strength, light and consolation born of friendship with Jesus Christ, without a community of faith to support them, without meaning and a goal in life. More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: ‘Give them something to eat’ (Mk 6:37).”