The Missionary Attitude

The Missionary community of the Church can be summed up in one short phrase: no one must be idle.  Pope Saint John Paul II writes that, “The Church’s missionary activity is based on deep-seated theological premises, on an understanding of the very essence of the Church, and on its universality and catholicity, corresponding to the eternal design that all should be saved by God’s action and redeemed through Christ.  In the light of this truth of faith, ‘The Church, which has been sent by Christ to reveal and communicate the love of God to all men and to all peoples, is aware that for her a tremendous missionary work still remains to be done’ (John Paul II, Sources of Renewal, page 400).”  The evangelizing aspect of Christianity is one that we as Catholics too often overlook, and in one sense we are outdone in evangelization by our Protestant brothers and sisters. Specifically in raw proclaimation of the fact that Jesus is real and that He died for our sins.

To be clear: I say we are outdone by the Protestants only in a sense, because while they do indeed hold evangelization to be very important and a sort of defining point of their faith, their version of it seems to take the form of what I would almost liken to a pyramid scheme.  In their version, you must become saved, something that is either true of all times or not, and there is nothing you can do about it.  After you have become saved you must study the Scriptures and see what they say, and finally you must turn around and get more people to realize that they have been saved.  This is the extent to which their faith and the Apostolic Attitude is a part of their faith, that is, of telling other people about Christ and introducing them to the idea of Salvation and the God-Man.

For our part, it can be easy and tempting at times to see our Faith simply as one which requires of us pious practices and a personal relationship with Christ which we maintain through constant reception of the Sacraments; this attitude is not entirely incorrect, as far as it goes.  We are responsible for our own spiritual well-being and Salvation first and foremost.  Frequent reception of the Sacraments is necessary for all men, ourselves most definitely not excluded.  The Church is our Mother who walks with us at every stage of our lives, present to us at every major marker in a special way through the Sacraments. For us as Laity, we receive the grace and presence of the Church through those special individuals who hold the role and perform the function of Holy Orders in the Church: the Priests.

The Laity however have a much more nuanced participation in the Priestly function of the Church: we live in connection with the world as opposed to detached from it, such that “the lay condition [the link with the world which is the basis of their specific apostolate] is at the service of sanctity and is therefore far from being a denial of it: it is rooted in the very essence of the Christian vocation of the laity and is a characteristic feature and expression of their specific apostolate (Sources of Renewal,  page 341).”  It is a task specially suited to the Laity to make the kingdom of God present in all corners of the earth because we in fact live in all corners of the earth; JPII writes this as “perfecting the whole order of temporal things (page . 343)”, and that “it is along these lines that [the laity] should seek their apostolic tasks and cultivate the apostolic attitude.  ‘The mission of the church is not only to bring the message and grace of Christ (this is chiefly the task of the hierarchy), but also to permeate and improve the whole range of the temporal with the evangelical spirit (page . 344).”  JPII spends a good amount of time talking about the education portion of the laity’s task of improving the whole range of the temporal, since it is by our own lives and wills which make this true.  

In today’s day where there are no more worlds left to conquer, where everything that happens in the world is known by a mere click of a button and travel between continents is nothing more than a tedious inconvenience, it can be easy to question who has not heard of Christ.  Who is there left to be a missionary to?  The answer is many, and a growing number at that.  Those closest to home are the ones who subscribe to nihilism, to those whose presence in our own communities gives an air of gravity and spiritual pain unnecessary and inappropriate after the history of Salvation and the institution of the Sacraments so that such a Divine gift can be readily seen and celebrated for all times.  Through education certainly, but more effectively through living the life of Faith as if it had consequences in our own lives we bear witness to Christ and serve as missionaries in union with the evangelical attitude which is such an integral part of the Church’s identity. It is not enough though to hide our lights under a basket while the harvest goes on around us. We as the laity, in union with the priests and under the responsibility and authority of the Bishop are truly one community in the Church. And through the Church lives the light and Salvation of Christ in every corner of the world. We are not given gifts or blessings for our own use. Everything we have is so that others can benefit and see Christ through their interactions with us. This is what is meant by bearing witness to Him.