Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - Pope Benedict XVI in his first Deus caritas est (25 December 2005) wrote: The task of the Church is to communicate this divine love through the vivifying action of the Spirit. "The Spirit is also the energy which transforms the heart of the ecclesial community, so that it becomes a witness before the world to the love of the Father, who wishes to make humanity a single family in his Son.” (n. 19). Moreover in his discourse to participants taking part in a Meeting promoted by the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples (May 2006) he spoke of the new impulse given to the Church's mission by Ad Gentes Decree, with these precise words: “The Church assumed more clearly the awareness of her innate missionary vocation, recognising in it a constitutive element of her vary nature, in obedience to the command of Christ who sent his disciples to announce the Gospel to all peoples, not something optional, but the vocation proper of the people of God a duty stemming from the mandate of the Lord Jesus Christ”. The Pontiff, referring to his first encyclical said that charity is "soul of the mission. Unless the mission is oriented by charity, that is, unless it springs from a profound act of divine love, it risks being reduced to mere philanthropic and social activity" If mission is animated by this spirit it becomes "an indispensable and ongoing commitment for all believers. ” (Message for 80th World Mission Sunday, 22 October 2006).
Even more explicit in affirming the necessity of belonging to the Church is the Declaration Dominus Iesus issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2000) which, although of mainly Christological nature, also speaks of the Church as a salvific mystery, when it affirms that Christ, the only mediator between God and mankind, He who accomplished the Father's plan for salvation, “The Lord Jesus, the only Saviour, did not only establish a simple community of disciples, but constituted the Church as a salvific mystery: he himself is in the Church and the Church is in him Therefore, the fullness of Christ's salvific mystery belongs also to the Church, inseparably united to her Lord. Indeed, Jesus Christ continues his presence and his work of salvation in the Church and by means of the Church” (DI 16).
To obtain salvation it is then necessary to be a member of the Church, although it is true that in many different ways "All men are called to be part of this catholic unity of the people of God which in promoting universal peace presages it. And there belong to or are related to it in various ways, the Catholic faithful, all who believe in Christ, and indeed the whole of mankind, for all men are called by the grace of God to salvation.” (LG 13; cf GS 22).
At the conclusion of this review of the texts of Vatican II and post-Council Magisterium it emerges that the Church is born as mission of the act of the Father who sends his Son to us, accepted and believed thanks to the mission of the Spirit: Christ, sent by the Father, carries out his mission in total filial fidelity, led by the Holy Spirit. With out Christ there can be no mission: of mission He is the beginning, the object and the principal agent.
Christ is God's first missionary, the prophet of the Kingdom, the one and only mediator of salvation. He was sent by the Father with a Trinitarian plan for salvation which he undertakes in his life on earth, especially with his Incarnation and Paschal Hour. The Church's mission continues the mission of Christ, not in the sense that the mission of Christ succeeds that of the Church, but in the sense that the mission of Christ continues in the mission of the Church, Christ is on mission with Her, indeed since Christ is the principal missionary, the Church is on mission with Him. Thus we have the great event of the contemporaneity of Christ. Christ can be the saviour only if he is our contemporary.
The Church's mission renders Christ contemporary, because he can save all men and women. This is the basis for the concrete modalities of the Church's missionary activity and interreligious dialogue, which can also be traced to a modality of evangelisation. "Because she believes in God's universal plan of salvation, the Church must be missionary” (DI 22). (6 - continua) (Agenzia Fides 4/12/2007; righe 47, parole 685)
