God’s grace has been revealed, and it has made salvation possible for the whole human race (Titus 2:11)

At the beginning of the year of this very important celebration, as representative of the Bishops of Guatemala, I greet in the Lord Jesus the People of God who are peregrinating in America, and in particular their pastors, and I invite them to the immediate preparation and the celebration of the Congress.

Faithful to the mission of Jesus Christ
2. In the fullness of time, the Father sent his Son, born of a woman (Cf. Gal. 4:4). This event is the sign that the world and our history are founded on one unique design of love: “God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost and may have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16).

The Father’s sending of his Son to us is extended in time in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit which the Son requested from the Father on our behalf: “I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you for ever” (Jn. 14:16). To fulfill the Father’s design of love and to make history a time of love and grace, Jesus Christ sent his disciples to be witnesses to the Gospel, just as He had been sent by the Father, by instilling the Spirit in them: “As the Father sent me, so am I sending you…Receive the Holy Spirit” (Jn. 20:21, 22).

Starting from the Resurrection, the Risen Christ gave his disciples the mission to proclaim to all nations what He had taught them, to announce the conversion and forgiveness of sins (Cf. Lk. 24:47-49), and to baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (cf. Mt. 28:19): “They, going out, preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word by the signs that accompanied it” (Mk. 16:20).

Since that time, all those who believe in this message and put it to work make up the Church and are the light of the world and the salt of the earth (cf. Mt. 5:13, 14).

The missionary path of the Church
3. Five hundred years ago the Gospel of Jesus Christ reached these American lands with explicit knowledge about his person and the Church in order to arouse the faith that leads to salvation. We receive and accept the gift of salvation in order to achieve a more human life now and the hope of eternal life with God. Moreover, the encounter with the Gospel brings the signs of evangelical preparation that the Spirit puts in every culture to their fullness.

Today, like yesterday, the task of evangelization is urgent. The ways of the Kingdom of God continue to call for the hands and feet of men and women messengers who will be witnesses to the Word of God everywhere on earth.

Every baptized man and woman has the mission to make the Gospel shine in every age and place by rejecting and denouncing anything that endangers the dignity of the sons and daughters of God: violence, injustice, oppression and exploitation.

Many human situations need redemption and call for our more decisive defense of life, freedom, human rights, and building peace, promoting reconciliation, truth and love. For this reason, we must continue to announce the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our towns and cities throughout the Continent.

In carrying out this task, we are urged on and inspired by the witness of men and women saints and martyrs of America, such as Rosa de Lima, Brother Pedro de San José Betancur, Juan Diego, Toribio de Mogrovejo, Pedro Claver, Ezequiel Moreno, Miguel Febres Cordero, Martin de Porres, Maria de Jesus Sacramentado Vanegas, Marguerite Bourgeois, Frances Xavier Cabrini, Kateri Tekakwitha, Encarnacion Rosal, Maria Romero, Teresita de los Andes, Alura Vicuna and the missionary saints Roque Gonzalez, Joséde de Anchieta, Junipero Serra, Felipe de Jesus, Juan de Brebeuf, Isaac Jogues and companions.

Characteristics of our missionary action
4. Every particular Church and every era carries out the missionary task based on inevitable cultural and historical conditioning. Therefore, the missionary task from these Central American lands is marked by some traits that characterize our way of living the Gospel and being the Church. We want to be witnesses to the Gospel of life from smallness, poverty and martyrdom.

From smallness
We are not great in number, resources or size. Since we are small, we trust in God. We believe that the success of the missionary task will be what God wants to give it. We make the words of the Apostle Paul our own: “Far from relying on any power of my own, I came among you in great ‘fear and trembling’ and in my speeches and the sermons that I gave, there were none of the arguments that belong to philosophy; only a demonstration of the power of the Spirit. And I did this so that your faith should not depend on human philosophy but on the power of God” (1 Cor. 2:3-5). We take on the challenges, problems and difficulties that arise in carrying out the mission with the conviction that God will bring the missionary undertaking to its conclusion. “Neither the planter nor the waterer matters: only God, who makes things grow” (1 Cor. 3:7).

From poverty
As evangelizers, we are aware that “we are only the earthenware jars that hold this treasure, to make it clear that such an overwhelming power comes from God and not from us” (2 Cor. 4:7). As a matter of fact, the human means and resources, whether financial or technical, or the personnel that other Churches in other eras were able to put in the service of the mission are not within our reach. We want to continue to be apostles of Jesus from our humble and simple possibilities. We give what we have received: we give our faith and our joy. Therefore, the mission to which we can give impulse from Central America is based on the spirituality of poverty, and on men and woman to carry this out who have no other resource to proclaim the Gospel than sincere hearts filled with faith and hope, generous hands to share, and swift feet to transmit with urgency the Word of the Lord, the true gift of God for all peoples.

From the experience and witness of martyrdom
Lastly, we carry out the mission from martyrdom. Our particular Churches of Central America, and especially those of Guatemala, are marked by a recent history of persecution and martyrdom. Scores of priests and men/women religious have given up their lives for their faith or for exercising their ministry; there are hundreds of laypersons who have risked and offered their lives because they were apostles or simply Christians. This history marks our missionary attitude in such a way that the memory of so many witnesses to the faith motivates us in our pastoral work and strengthens us to be ever joyful in the Lord. “Happy are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven” (Mt. 5:11-12). Anyone who has based the value of his/her life on friendship with God is willing to give it up and does not fear the powers of this world or the uncertainties of history. The true messenger of the Gospel puts his joy in the Lord alone. “If you can have some share in the sufferings of Christ, be glad, because you will enjoy a much greater gladness when his glory is revealed” (1 Pt. 4:13).

The ad gentes mission of our Church
5. The particular Churches of the American Continent are aware that the Church of Jesus “is missionary by nature” (cf. AG 2). Active participation in the universal mission is a task and a condition for our fidelity and belonging to the Church.

For three years in Central America we have been getting prepared through prayer, reflection and organization to take on major evangelization commitments both within and outside of our frontiers (cf. SD 295; Puebla 368). We are convinced that “it is America’s missionary hour” (SD 295), an hour of grace and blessings for our Churches. We want to take on this unrenounceable challenge from the scarcity of our evangelizing personnel and limited resources (cf. Puebla 368; AG 20), but above all from the wealth of the gift of the Christian faith received more than 500 years ago.

Today, at the beginning of the third millennium, before the immense majority of people -- our brothers and sisters who still do not know Jesus Christ as Savior -- his word is urging us and inviting us to raise our eyes and realize that the harvest is great and the workers few (cf. Jn. 4:35; Mt. 9:37-38). “The particular Churches in America are called to extend their missionary efforts beyond the bounds of the continent. They cannot keep for themselves the immense riches of their Christian heritage. They must take this heritage to the whole world and share it with those who do not yet know it. Here it is a question of many millions of men and women who, without faith, suffer the most serious kind of poverty” (EinA 74).

The needs of our local Churches are pressing, but the urgency of the universal mission ad gentes is even greater. We have to take it on with courage and introduce it into the organic pastoral care of our particular Churches as a primordial element (cf. RMi 83; SD 128), because the mission is the priority cause of the Church and the first service to humanity (cf. RMi 2, 34).

We know that the grace of renewal of our communities passes through a greater commitment to the universal mission (cf. AG 37; SD 295). We also know that a saint is a real and better missionary (cf. RMi 90) because the mission is born from contemplation and living the mystery of God interiorly. Therefore, by contemplating Christ whom we love, we hear his words: “Put out into the deep” (Lk. 5:4; cf. NMI 58).

Convocation
6. Based on these motivations, in the name of the Bishops’ Conference of Guatemala, and after consulting the chairmen of the Bishops’ Conferences of Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, I hereby convene the American Missionary Congress (CAM2), equivalent to the Seventh Latin American Missionary Congress (COMLA7), to be held in Guatemala City from November 25-30 of the present year 2003. We would like children and young people to feel invited in a special way.

The objective of the Congress will be to animate the life of the particular Churches of the Continent so that from their evangelizing experience they will take on, with responsibility and solidarity, the commitment to the mission ad gentes. These Churches should be strongly committed so that the announcement of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will profoundly change the hearts of persons and the social, economic and cultural structures in such a way that the values of truth, justice, love and freedom will be the pillars of the true peace that America needs (cf. John Paul II, Message for the World Day of Prayer for Peace, January 2003).

For this reason, during the Congress themes will be dealt with which remind the participants that the mission is the announcement of the Gospel of life.

Conclusion
7. Pope John Paul II has invited us to contemplate on and pray the Holy Rosary during the present year. We urge the sick, the elderly and children to unite the preparatory work for the Second American Missionary Congress to the prayer of the Rosary. We also entrust the success of this Congress to the prayers of all the faithful of the Church on earth, and to the women and men saints of America who praise God in heaven.

Mary of Nazareth, the first evangelizer who brought the news of the Savior’s birth to the mother of the Precursor, and who at the beginning of the Continent’s evangelization visited our lands under the name of Holy Mary of Guadalupe, intercede for us now too so that the ardor will grow in all of us to announce Jesus Christ to those who do not know him yet, not only among the inhabitants of America, but also among the peoples of other regions of the world.

Guatemala of the Assumption, February 2, 2003
Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord