Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Chiclayo (Fides Service) – The spiritual dimension is a priority in the work of evangelisation because “mission cannot bear fruit unless it is based on convinced and sound missionary spirituality…. Those who evangelise without praying end up not evangelising”: these are some of the conclusions reached at the end of the Peru's first National Mission Congress held recently in Peru in preparation for the American Mission Congress CAM”.
It was agreed that there is urgent need for “ongoing and systematic missionary formation, at the parish level, inter-parish level and diocesan level, to promote deeper missionary spirituality and to animate pastoral work in its spiritual dimension: “It is indispensable to deepen the roots of faith in order to be able to give reasons for our hope”. Moreover, theological formation “without depriving it of its basis, must be incarnated in the concrete reality of the missionary situations of the Church”: in other words it must form missionaries, pastoral agents able to proclaim the good news in the different cultural realities, new forums and also in those place which are reluctant to accept the values of the Gospel”.
Another aspect underlined by the Mission Congress was the urgency and necessity of opening to mission ad gentes. It is necessary “to have an organisation which is creative and generous” that is to say, which allows every Particular Church to satisfy its own needs but also to put into motion missionary animation which favours the sending of missionaries, urged on by the Holy Spirit, who go to lands where there is most need of their presence. Dioceses are called to send priests not only to the places most in need in their own country but also beyond national frontiers, and to recognise and boost diocesan and parish missionary Centres as “valid and effective means for missionary animation, formation communion organisation and cooperation”.
The first National Mission Congress in Peru affirmed the importance of “creating and developing small groups and communities of faithful all over the parish territory, so they may be a living presence of the Gospel in the different situations in which people live”. Lastly a series of appeals were launched: to bishops, first to be responsible for mission, to be the first promoters; to priests, born animators of Christian communities to pass their enthusiasm for the mission of the Church on to the faithful; to laity and consecrated persons to express the joy of having discovered Christ, and to assume commitments to allow others to meet Christ, “to stop being his disciples only in private and to become apostles in public ”. See conclusions in Spanish and photographs of first national mission Congress at www.fides.org
RZ (Fides Service 17/9/2003 EM lines 32 Words: 419)
