Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service) - According to a widespread religious conviction Christian missionary activity is first of all the expression of active generous and unselfish availability, willingness to carry the news of the Gospel to the most remote and savage tribes of the less civilised countries. Less evident would appear, what it really means to “be a missionary”: the believer’s reflection, response to God’s gift, welcome and epiphany of his original Charity. It is true that the Gospel of Matthew closes with the words of Jesus: “Go and teach all nations” (Mt 28 19), but this is echoed with the final statement of that same chapter “Behold, I am with you always until the end of time” (Mt 28,20; cf. 1,20).
Sharing the gift of God is an essential demand of the charity which the Holy Spirit pours into the heart of the disciple of Jesus: “As the Father sent me, so I send you” (Jn 20, 21). Willingness to carry the good news of God’s love to the ends of the earth, is not something which flows originally from the human heart, thanks to a particular grace or a vocation to universal communion: it is first of all God, the first love, the metaphysical principle of that charity described by scholastics as bonum diffusivum sui.
God is essentially gift of self, constant and inexhaustible bestowal of Love, which through its essence spreads, communicates itself; it even creates man to enter into an interpersonal relationship with him. By reflection the dynamic of human love is not only a marvellous pedagogy which teaches man how to become more and more the image of God, it is also the glow in the human person of that divine image in which he or she was thought of, desired and created.
The Virgin Mary, exemplary prototype of missionary activity
It is neither common nor easily understandable, beyond a generic Marian devotion, to invoke Mary as Queen of Missionaries. In fact neither the Gospels nor the Acts of the Apostles, nor the Letters of Saint Paul speak of direct and explicit involvement of Mary in the proclamation of her Son. But if we think carefully, was there ever anyone more missionary than the Virgin Mary? Has anyone been more directly involved in the mystery of universal salvation than Mary? It was in fact through Mary, the Mother of God, that the Father gave His Son to mankind. It was through her humility, her docile acceptance of God’s plan that the new salvific plan, eschaton, the fullness of the time occurred: the Incarnation of the Word
Mary exemplifies with her virginal motherhood, missionary activity lived in every fibre of her existence: obedience to the Word of God made her, as the Gospel says and as the Fathers aptly comment, Mother of Jesus and of all his disciples, guide on the pilgrimage of faith, icon of the Church, universal Mother, Mediatrix of all graces.
Contemplating Mary we see a missionary spirit able to express itself, starting from acceptance of the faith, even to the point of generating Christ in our human flesh: the root, her oblation is silent opening to the God’s gift, which in that ‘Be it done unto me’, from the conception of the Word, gives Him to all mankind. In Mary there shines a motherhood which matures in universal compassion (Queen of Martyrs, Mother of Sorrows, Queen of all Peoples) and faithful presence, which accompanies the course of history (Theotokos, Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Fatima…). This is confirmed by all the Mysteries of the Holy Rosary: contemplation of the life of Mary leads to the encounter with her Son, from the Annunciation to the Assumption into Heaven, from the Visitation to prayerful waiting with the Apostles in the Upper Room, awaiting the descent of the Holy Spirit.
Eucharist and missionary activity
Contemplation of Mary’s unique missionary spirit leads with exemplarity to the perception of the power effused by Charity. Universal communion is first of all a dimension of the spirit and it can be expressed, in nuce, only through the original disposition of prayer. Our Father…
The gift of God made flesh, the Lord Jesus, who came to us through the humble and open faith of the Virgin Mary, remains sacramentally in the Mystery of the Eucharist. In the history of Christianity nothing more than the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ mediates the presence of the Risen Lord in the life of every man and woman, of all times: the presence of God with us, made bread of Life, food of Salvation, gushing source of eternal life.
The Eucharist is the sacramental expression of the ontological effusion of divine Charity: remaining always and everywhere in the flowing of time, incarnating in a sacramental way God’s the gift which, desired before time, embraces and creates time to come to completion in time.
Missionary spirit is therefore a dimension of the spirit: an oblate attitude of charity which responds in the human heart, in the witness of the Church, to the incessant gift of the Father’s Love in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, achieved in a sacramental way in the Eucharistic Mystery. The Virgin Mary, docile and faithful disciple of God, human mediation of the Incarnation, is the creature who better reflects and exemplifies mankind’s obedient acceptance of God’s universal giving of self. (Agenzia Fides 26/4/2004, Righe 61, Parole 840)
