Has Anyone REALLY not Heard of Christ?

This is a particularly hard moment in world history to talk about missionary work.  Looking through the annals of time, there are many legitimate criticisms one could level at those who, for lack of a better term, we could call “career missionaries”. “Colonizers” and “Christian Nationalists” are the buzzwords often used today to discredit them and their contributions to the developing world.  This derogatory sentiment towards missionaries is not entirely unfounded, as any activity is rarely an act of real altruism and without human hubris.  Too often, in the name of Christian missionary work, have the resources of third world countries been depleted, ransacked, and abused for the benefit of more developed countries.  But the controversy of modern missionary work is not reserved for history: the exorbitant lengths to which the modern age is given to preserve freedom from any religion lend a certain heavy-handed denunciation of any evangelization attempts to our neighbors here in our own homeland.  And so, we have before us today a missionary crisis in the Church.  How can we value missionary work and its essential place in the charge of the Church in light of its controversial past and tenuous future?  Thankfully, JPII tackles this work in his encyclical, Redemptoris Missio, or On the permanent validity of the Church's missionary mandate.

Some concession might be made to the necessity of being a missionary to our neighbors, that is, being a witness to Christ by our own lives.  In the 21st century, however, it might be hard to imagine that the need for spreading Christ’s word abroad to the nations (missionary work ad gentes) is needed.  In a post-internet world, who has not heard of Jesus?  Where is Christianity not, for better or worse, a household talking point?!  To suppose this much, however, is a gross misunderstanding of the nature of the world.  In fact, “The mission of Christ the Redeemer, which is entrusted to the Church, is still very far from completion,” as JPII opens his encyclical.  He writes, “As the second millennium after Christ's coming draws to an end, an overall view of the human race shows that this mission is still only beginning and that we must commit ourselves wholeheartedly to its service (RM, para. 1).”  The reason the missionary work of the Church is just beginning is quite simple: there are more people in the world.

The missionary work of the Church stems not so much from peoples in the remote corners of the earth that have not heard the name of Jesus (though this is, to be sure, still a reality).  The Church as a missionary figure in the world is not a pyramid scheme or a check-the-box activity: it is not enough to simply make sure the name of Jesus is talked about and He as a historical figure is acknowledged.  The missionary work of the Church is aimed at helping people to know Christ.  It is aimed at the human experience and encounter of Christ as a Person, not as an intellectual registry of something that happened by someone long ago, or even worse the empty recitation and practices of rituals and memorized prayers.  In short, the crisis facing the Church today in light of her more forcible missionary exercises of the past is to not only remember her own missionary nature, but also to, “assure non-Christians and particularly the authorities of countries to which missionary activity is being directed that all of this has but one purpose: to serve man by revealing to him the love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ (RM, para. 2).”

The goal of the missionary work of the Church is simple.  We as members of the Church are called to witness to the life of Christ, to live within His grace, and to exhort others to come to Him and live in communion with Him.  The Church, from her missionary office: “Peoples everywhere, open the doors to Christ (RM, para. 3)”.    And, in this, we see as always the fundamental human focus and the anthropological nature of the Church.  The Church exists to bring man, as fully human, to Christ.  As long as any part of his nature - intellect, will, or passion - is left outside, there is more missionary work to do.