Presentation

The CAM2 COMLA7 will be the first American Congress of the 21st century and of the third millennium. It will also be the first of its kind in Central America. In the last decade of the 20th century, Pope John Paul II saw the beginning “of a great Christian springtime for the Church” (cf. RM 86). We are the first beneficiaries of those spring lights. It is up to us to gather the first flowers.

The COMLAs and then the CAM have given the Latin American Church, and seek to do this in the whole of America, missionary guidelines, orientations and mandates that have awakened the conscience of our believing People and opened the doors of the whole world to our particular Churches. They were the ripened fruit of the Pontifical Mission Societies and their highest leaders.

The Missionary Congresses require great preparation; they are marked by various festive expressions in their celebration; they bring together multitudes of people who want to share their faith experiences, charged with life. They also seal their deliberations in commitments that try to respond to the most pressing challenges in the field of the mission.

The host Churches are the ones that benefit most from this ecclesial event. It is important to point out, for example, the commitment taken on in the CAM1 COMLA6 by the Argentine Church to go to Mozambique in the position of two sister Churches who mutually give and receive as a witness to communion and solidarity.

The Puebla Document tells us “The time has finally come for Latin America…to project itself beyond its borders, ad gentes” (P 368).
“This finally is not something that is almost forgotten and added at the last moment so that the thing will be more complete. It is not a decorative figure of ecclesiastical language. It is something that has waited a long time and finally matured as a vital need within the particular Churches of Latin America”.
Finally…the time has come for you to go ad gentes…from your poverty, your smallness and the blood of your martyrs. This is the mature fruit of a long wait. Now there are no compromises, subterfuges and excuses that can delay or impede this happening, this springtime. “The winter is over” of indifference or meanness, and the infinite horizon of solidarity and universal communion is opening up.

Justification

There is no doubt that preparation alone for the CAM2 COMLA7 by the Churches of Central America has highlighted the “passage of the Spirit” for all our particular Churches. The Lord has touched us. He has opened our eyes. This is not just a simple mobilization. A process has taken place of sensitization, animation and missionary formation and organization. It has been an important step, one that cannot be improvised. It has roots, history and dynamism of its own.

The CAM2 COMLA7 is a moment of missionary grace for Central America. It is a grace from the Lord not to be kept jealously or flaunted proudly; it is a Gift to be shared, “to give and share”. The Pope says, “I sense that the moment has come to commit all of the Church's energies to a new evangelization and to the mission ad gentes. No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples” (RM 3).
All of the Church’s energies! The Pope does not want pieces, leftovers, or crumbs that fall from the plentiful tables. No! All of the Church’s energies are for the mission ad gentes: the dynamism of each Church, its pastoral workers, its pastoral plans and projects, all formation, the liturgy, spirituality, and all the organizational structures at the regional, national, diocesan and parish level. All of them!

The Pope joins and relates the new evangelization and the mission ad gentes. He makes one condition the other. There is “the real and growing interdependence which exists between these various saving activities of the Church. Each of them influences, stimulates and assists the others” (RM 34). Without the mission ad gentes it is impossible to understand the new evangelization. Only the mission ad gentes gives the necessary dynamism to our Churches to respond to their internal problems. “Without the mission ad gentes, the Church's very missionary dimension would be deprived of its essential meaning and of the very activity that exemplifies it” (RM 34).

By requiring ourselves, as the People of God peregrinating in Central America, to consolidate all our forces for the mission ad gentes, a need arises: it is the significant and peremptory fact of defining projects, programs and goals that will consolidate and unify these forces as a commitment of the region, as a result of the CAM2 COMLA7.

We want to draw up a Project that will bring together the best of our evangelizing journey, starting from our “smallness, poverty and martyrdom” as our original contribution, and taking advantage of the providential event of the CAM2 COMLA7, which has been adopted collegially as an expression of communion and witness to solidarity among our Churches. We want this Project to be a joint expression of our missionary vocation ad gentes.

Mission Department

The DEMIS only wishes to present areas for work, reflection and convocation that will encourage the study of feasibility, the possibilities, the search for more accessible means and goals during the missionary year so that it will be possible to foresee, as one of the highlights of the CAM2 COMLA7, the presentation of the one, real, definitive Missionary Project, proposed by the Central Commission, with the approval of SEDAC (Executive Secretariat, Mission Department, Central America), and as a contribution of the whole of Central America to the universal Church for the mission ad gentes. This will also be a reference point in the new journey that is awaiting the CAMs COMLAs in this new century and millennium.

Criteria:
We start from five criteria that define the theological, spiritual and pastoral reason for our Project.

1. The Originality of Central America
When the very small delegation from Guatemala, on behalf of all Central America, accepted in Parana to organize the CAM2 COMLA7, the prophetic voice broke in to tell us that they were taking this on from “smallness, poverty and martyrdom”. They echo three Latin words from the Gospel of Luke: “Ecce, fiat, magnificat”. Mary says, “Ecce”: here I am; do unto me according to your will; “Magnificat”: my soul glorifies the Lord because he has done great things in me.

This is also a premonition of the Nican Mopohua when the Virgin says, “Juanito, little Juan Diego, my smallest son…I send you…and you will tell everything you have seen and admired and what you have heard…for this I will enrich you, I will glorify you”. This is the exaltation of what is small in God’s plans, the raw material of his masterpiece: the mission.

Central America has had the first collegiate body on the level of bishops’ conferences in the Church even before CELAM: it is the SEDAC, an experience of communion, participation, service, support and pastoral dynamism.

The witness of Central America martyrs constitutes in modern times an unprecedented fact for the life of the Church on the Continent. If blood is the “seed of Christians”, this seed must burst into bloom in the whole universe, under pain of drowning in its own jug the most dynamic and multiplying Gospel force.

To speak about the originality of the Central American Church is to thank God for its animators of the Word, catechists, city leaders, multi-ethnic and multi cultural diversity, its small, living and dynamic ecclesial communities; its pastors, the struggles for liberation and justice, its staunch hope and the deep community experience expressed in solidarity, indestructible resistance and festive joy.

All this speaks of a unique, rich, unprecedented potential precisely for the mission ad gentes.

2. Communion and Participation
The Puebla Conference invited us to consider the mission from the perspective of communion and participation (DP 15). Today we must acknowledge the profoundly missionary implications of these central dimensions of the mystery of salvation, which is realized in history and projected towards the definitive eschatological revelation of the Kingdom of God. These key themes are impoverished if they are not understood from a universal perspective.

The Council spoke about the Church as a sign and instrument of communion of all men with one another and with God. This communion desired by God is not only realized in each ecclesial community or in the necessary relations between the local Churches; it is projected towards the whole of humanity, to all men and women and all peoples. The universal Church, which is vitally present in each local Church, signifies and realizes this mystery in history.

“Communion” is an element essential in the Church. If communion is not to remain just a lovely word and a pious sentiment, it must be expressed in “communion and participation”. As the Conciliar Decree Ad Gentes states, “in virtue of this communion, the individual churches bear the burden of care for them all, and make their necessities known to one another, and exchange mutual communications regarding their affairs” (AG 38).

On our continent, Puebla will continue to be the prophetic voice that gives a touch of race to our particular Churches and invites them to “announce and promote the evangelical values of communion and participation” (DP 15), “giving from their poverty”, “intensifying the mutual services between particular Churches”, in order to “project themselves beyond their own borders, d gentes” (DP 368).

Therefore, communion has to be the basis of any missionary consciousness and commitment if this is truly meant to be the expression of what is most radical and nuclear about the Church. It is a way of being, a new style and a new conduct within the Church and the relations of the different particular Churches with one another.

Pope John Paul II also attests to this when he states in the Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, “Beginning with intra-ecclesial communion, charity of its nature opens out into a service that is universal; it inspires in us a commitment to practical and concrete love for every human being. This too is an aspect which must clearly mark the Christian life, the Church’s whole activity and her pastoral planning” (NMI 49.1).

With all the patristic power and the practice of the different local Church during the first centuries, we affirm that the “communion between the Churches is inseparable from the mission ad gentes because it includes the function of arousing new Churches” (Cf. Clement Roman to the Corinthians, XLI, 4; XLII).

We recognize the evangelizing potential of baptized people as protagonists – not only as receivers – of the mission. We understand evangelization as an action that is carried out from – and not only towards – the people. In this framework we need to insist on the protagonist role of baptized men and women, especially the faithful laity, by bringing about participation in all the processes of the Church’s evangelizing action.

3. To Give From Our Poverty
One of the great contributions of Latin America to the mission is poverty. This is poverty in the sense of possibility, openness, sharing goods, communion and participation. It is also lifestyle, disinterestedness and simplicity, as well as an announcement of something new that can be gestating in the depths of the suffering and tears of the world’s poor. It is an announcement and a warning: the future has to be different. More than a state, poverty is a sign of newness: it is prophecy.

For the Central American Church to take on poverty in its prophetic dimension, the following is needed:
- the courage to make significant and unequivocal gestures of charity in following Jesus;
- fidelity to the least ones must have social and historical incidence;
- communion and participation must be expressed in concrete services between the particular Churches, such as the exchange of pastoral workers, support for common projects and financial aid;
- inculturation experiences must be promoted that express the authenticity of their cultural roots and represent a contribution to the universal Church;
- the lay ministries must be multiplied as a specific contribution of the laity to the particular Churches, and lastly
- support for the Missionary Project.

We feel poor in terms of our lack of personal and material resources needed for a missionary sending. We feel poor with regard to a generalized missionary tradition. We feel poor before the great pastoral problems that afflict us.

However, in all this, we cannot let ourselves be guided by purely human criteria. The wisdom of the world suggests that we wait until all the human groups of our particular Churches will be evangelized, until we are self-sufficient to undertake a mission to other continents.

But the logic of the Gospel is different: it exhorts the youngest Churches, even those lacking sufficient personnel, to take part as soon as possible in the universal mission (AG 20).

Along these lines, Puebla urges us to intensify our missionary efforts ad gentes immediately, without waiting for an ideal time when there will be no risks or sacrifices. Puebla asks us “to give from our poverty”.

This attitude of giving from poverty reflects God’s style of acting in the history of salvation. He chooses the smallest and the weakest to be his collaborators. This attitude also invites us to adopt missionary models that are simpler and thus more evangelical.

Here a new mission style is born and proposed: Do not bring, but rather discover; do not just give but receive; do not conquer but share the search. Do not be teachers but learners of truth, enriching ourselves with everything that is good and truthful in other peoples and cultures.

This is the call, the choice that God is giving to Central America on the occasion of the CAM2 COMLA7.

4. Renewal
John Paul II has told us on repeated occasions, “The mission renews the Church”. It helps us to open frontiers, to discover new horizons, to know new cultures, to exchange pastoral methodologies and to contemplate God’s presence from lived, celebrated and shared experiences in new theological contexts. Above all, it helps us to break with all routine, mediocrity and passiveness. The mission generates a whole uncontainable process of creativity, imagination and initiatives in building up the Kingdom.

For this we need to incorporate the universal mission more and more into each of our particular Churches, parishes and communities. As the Council states, “The grace of renewal cannot grow in communities unless each of these extends the range of its charity to the ends of the earth, and devotes the same care to those afar off as it does to those who are its own members” (AG 37).

We sincerely believe that the fidelity of our particular Churches of Central America that go ad gentes, despite their poverty and even serious difficulties, will not only be a factor of renewal in them, but also of unification of their different choices and their pluralism that are often so in need of reconciliation and synthesis.

The mission is the great unifying dynamism of the Church, its theology, its pastoral care and its spirituality. The missionary component is related to the center of faith, strengthens and makes theology and overall pastoral care dynamic by generating a new way of being, giving a new taste and a new vitalizing energy: missionary spirituality.

5. The Missionary Teams
The mission has a sign and even more when it is projected from Central America: the witness of the small community. Christian life is a community and its task is to form communities, small groups where love will be a sign and witness. There the Word of God is experienced, lived and realized. The gift of the Spirit is its guide, strength and dynamism. But these communities are missionary: they grow, multiply and generate new potentialities for sending, proclamation and communication of the Gospel.

The mission is neither an adventure or a task for people alone, nor a monopoly of a privileged few or for exclusive sectors. It is the task of the People of God. For this reason, teams made up by priests, men/women religious, and laypersons, in the name of their particular Churches and sent by their bishops, will go ad gentes to announce Jesus Christ.

The missionary team does not renounce its community of origin; it establishes a deeper bond with it of belonging, communion, relation and dependency. This is the most significant and convincing expression of the missionary spirit of their particular Church. Therefore, communication, spiritual experience and solidarity expressed in a host of details will nourish the lives of those who have been sent and those who send them in an increasingly new, creative, generous and vital way. This constitutes the principle of a new way of being the Church: the missionary Church.

General Objective:
To encourage the Churches of Central America so that on the occasion of the CAM2 COMLA7, they will carry out the resolution in a concrete way to project themselves beyond their borders: ad gentes.

Specific Objectives:
- To strengthen the particular Churches so that they will take on their universal commitment;
- To give witness in Central America to the life of the Church as a “home and school of communion” for the missionary effort;
- To center the formation of the People of God, and particularly the pastoral workers, on the unifying dynamism of the mission;
- To form living, mature communities (DP 364) in the choice for the mission;
- To encourage the missionary sending ad gentes in every particular Church of men/women laypersons, men/women religious and priests from the diocesan clergy;
- To promote in the communities the spirituality of the mission based on contemplation.

Receivers:
This project is addressed to the whole People of God peregrinating in Central America, but it focuses in a specific way on two well-defined subjects.

1. The Particular Churches
“If any missionary commitment wants to be radical, it will come from the ‘centrality’ of the particular Church”. This defines the future of the Church as proclaimed by the Second Vatican Council. There the particular Church takes back its protagonism as an active subject of the mission ad gentes. The particular Church attains its maturity when it takes on the totality of Christ’s mission and this totality necessarily includes openness beyond its borders.

Each particular Church is sent by Christ to bring the Gospel to the surrounding contexts and the whole world. It is responsible for its mission and co-responsible in the mission of all the Churches. Today, with greater force, the particular Churches are anxious for the whole Church and are becoming more and more committed to the great universal missionary task.

By nature, the whole Church is missionary. In this sense it could be said that every particular Church must get organized for the mission, send missionaries and support them. Without this missionary impulse, as Pope John Paul II tells us, “it is in danger of remaining incomplete or becoming sick” (Message of John Paul II for the Domund, 1981).

In the beginning of Christianity, the particular Churches took charge of sending missionaries and the formation of new communities. Ephesus, Thessalonica, Philippi and Antioch sent missionaries, and they sent the best. Each community lived the “concern for the Churches”. “Day by day the Lord added to their community those destined to be saved” (Acts 2:47). The “missionary spirit” was not something added on. Their whole life—based on the Word, the Eucharist and Charity—was a witness to and proclamation of Christ. The mission was conceived of and lived as giving and receiving, an exchange of gifts. The changes that took place over time closed this missionary chapter that was recently re-opened in the Second Vatican Council.

The missionary spirit of a particular Church is a requirement of communion: communion with the universal Church, communion between particular Churches, communion as its own expression of the mission. For this reason we speak about the spaces for communion because communion cannot be only theoretical. It is necessary to arrive at its practice, concrete deeds, serious programmed and on-going responses. How can we respond to the Pope when he wants the new million to be the propitious occasion for the Church’s renewal in harmony with the requirements of the Second Vatican Council “ (Cf. NMI 2). The Pope wants renewal for the mission in communion.

The Bishops in Puebla said, “We have to adopt episcopal collegiality with all its dimensions and consequences on the regional and universal level” (DP 702). What are these dimensions and consequences? The Puebla Document itself adds, “The particular Church will have to give more emphasis to its missionary character and to ecclesial communion by sharing values and experiences and favoring the exchange of persons and assets” (DP 655).

When defines the criterion for “the exchange of persons and assets”? Puebla answers, “we give from poverty” (DP 368). The evangelical criterion is the need of others, not human calculations aimed first at acquiring abundance in order to only give what is superfluous. We must give even the last resources for our survival, according to the Gospel. The abundance of ecclesial assets, human resources, money and structures make us blind and deaf to the needs of others. Since we are rich, we give very little.

Puebla says, “It is the bishop’s duty to create all the mechanisms needed for his particular Church to be an evangelized and evangelizing community, suitable for an exchange with the other particular Churches, inspired by a missionary spirit, so that it will radiate the evangelical riches that dwells within it” (Cf. DP 647).

In his Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, the Holy Father tells us that “Communion must be cultivated and extended day by day and at every level…” (NMI 45). Today it is common to speak about communion between the Bishops’ Conferences, between the different Bishops, priests, parishes, the different ecclesial movements, the congregations and orders, the missionary Institutes and in the whole People of God. For what purpose? To renew the Church, to make the mission effective…

However, as long as we do not center our pastoral projects and plans on the mission, I fear that the highly acclaimed and required communion will remain an empty word, and our particular Churches are going to continue in theirs same routine and predicted decadence.

Santo Domingo asks the particular Churches of the Continent “to take on courageously the missionary sending, both of priests as well as of religious and lay persons. They will coordinate the human and material resources that strengthen the processes of formation, sending, accompanying and reinsertion of the missionaries” (SD 128).

2. The Peoples, especially those from the non-evangelized world: Mission ad gentes
The Holy Father notes with sorrow that after two thousand years of proclaiming the Gospel, “the mission ad gentes is still at the beginning” (RM 40). The great majority of humanity does not know Jesus Christ. This reality challenges and moves us, and it challenges all our choices.

This entails missionary activity among the peoples or human groups that do not know Jesus Christ. Its end is to announce Christ and his Gospel in order to arouse the Christian faith in its great newness; to give birth to Christian communities in the different cultures, that is, to let the local Church be born and grow; to promote the values of the Kingdom of God in society. This is the so-called “mission ad gentes”, directed at the non-Christian peoples.

We understand the “mission ad gentes” as a movement of love beyond the Christian frontiers so that every man and woman, all the peoples of the earth, will embrace the Gospel. This is an uninterrupted movement begun by Christ, the Risen Lord, sent by the Father so that men and women will live. The Church continues this through the power of the Spirit by sending men/women missionary to the peoples that have still not heard (on a personal and cultural level) the evangelical message in order to offer it to them and be enriched by the values – the seeds of the Word – already present in them.

Programs:
The Missionary Project for Central America presented here contemplates five programs:

1. The Sister Churches Program
The “Sister Churches” program is action whereby two Churches –on the local, national or continental level with the goal of motivating and fulfilling the duty of the universal mission that falls upon the whole People of God – are committed to contribute missionary aid through a sharing of human, financial and institutional resources.

In this way, two Sister Churches, by living in communion and sharing, achieve a new way of being the Church. No Church can believe that it really understands its universality if it is closed into itself, without thinking of its obligation to make other churches be born and to help the neediest Churches.

This program originated in Brazil. It has gradually taken on strength and form. Very many churches are becoming associated in a truly evangelical sharing of assets. No Church is so poor that it cannot give something, and no Church is so rich that it cannot receive something from its sister Church.

Pius XII’s Encyclical Fidei Donum opened the doors of Africa to the whole universal Church. In Redemptoris Missio, John Paul II asks us to go to Asia. Our Central American Churches need to open up to other cultures, languages and traditions. This is the time to open up our cultural treasures to other table companions. This is the time to go out to share the riches of our Faith with other peoples. Every baptized person is an envoy. The gift of acceptance and going out define the path of the renewal of our Churches today.

It is important in this program to keep in mind the knowledge of both Churches, the cultural elements, the most deeply felt needs, their resources; the choice of personnel that is going to be sent, their preparation and follow-up; the mutual exchanges or the reciprocity of programs between both Churches, and the mutual respect and aid in growth and maturity.

2. The Program of the National Missionary Centers
The Instruction of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples on “Missionary Cooperation” encourages the Bishops’ Conferences to create the National Missionary Council. This Council coordinates all the missionary bodies of our Churches. Among these we can point out the Missionary Center.

Missionary centers are recommended by Santo Domingo. They are in charge of a missionary team, moved by a living spirituality for creative and generous missionary action (Cf. SD 128).

Our Churches need a minimum structure to help them respond effectively to the challenges of the mission. Many times the resources at our disposal do not allow us to respond by ourselves to so many tasks and responsibilities. Therefore, more than diocesan centers, I prefer to speak about national centers. In the concrete case of Central America, it might even be better to speak about an International Missionary Center.

The Center has the shape of a very simple tripod and responds to some concrete tasks in the life of our Churches: organization, animation, formation. A small team is responsible for these functions or responsibilities.

Organization:
This is planning with regard to activities, their leaders, the objectives, goals and the infrastructure to facilitate all the work. It is trying to join together all the living energies of the communities, institutions and all the mechanisms that will ensure the desired outcome.

Animation:
By missionary animation we mean the union of all the living energies of the Church that concentrate their efforts and resources on awakening in the People of God awareness about the Mission which is taken on through concrete choices and commitments by each and every one of its members.

Missionary animation seeks to spread the missionary spirit to the whole Church in its structures, in each of its members, in theological reflection, in pastoral care and in the liturgy. We are aiming at a Church that is entirely missionary and in a state of mission, inspired by the Spirit and open to all the situations and all the dreams and hopes of humanity.

Formation:
Animation is not enough: it could vanish. A solid, conscientious basis is needed that will guarantee the seriousness of the process. Only formation and a missionary formation gives this. One of the first tasks of a Missionary Center is to provide spaces and means of formation for the ecclesial community, and to try to center all the formation of the community on the mission. The announcement of the kerigma, catechesis, preparation for the sacraments, the liturgy, follow-up by the animators and leaders of the communities: all this will have to respond to the well structured formation levels in and from the mission.

Missionary formation must start from the seminaries. They are the most representative centers of the mission in the particular Churches. Without a theology centered on the mission, there will be no missionary pastoral care or missionary spirituality. And without a missionary theology, without a missionary pastoral care, and without missionary spirituality, what will our particular Churches be? Just another Church? A parallel Church in the ecclesial concert?

In the shaping and planning of the Missionary Centers, it is necessary to work in harmony with the Pontifical Mission Societies.

One of the most serious challenges we have to face today in missionary pastoral care is the communications media. The missionary center will have to pay attention to this challenge in its organization, animation and formation.

3. A CENTRAL AMERICAN MISSIONARY SEMINARY
This is an idea that has been maturing for some time. I have the evangelical certainty that the Spirit is moving the minds and hearts of our pastors in this direction. This is not something new; it does not respond to the latest form of snobbism, nor is it the result of improvisation. We are aware of the weight and responsibility implied. It must be a task of the Church, the Church as communion, which can count on the approval of the hierarchy, the support of the priesthood, and the dynamism of our ecclesial communities.

It must be the fruit of a process of prayer, reflection and a feasibility study which, in a context of Faith and Trust in Providence, should be more than enough. It is the fruit, I repeat, of so much blood shed, of so many animators expert in suffering and in hope, of so much suffering, outrage, poverty, smallness, of so much ecclesial life and pastoral dynamism: the mature fruit of CAM2 COMLA 7.

This is not a dream; it is something we can do together. It would only take a small dose of missionary spirit in our Churches and in our pastoral workers. We would not be alone in following this path. The Missionary Institutes of America want to support us in this project. We can get the support of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. I believe, I am absolutely certain that SEDAC would give free rein to this initiative. The spiritual, cultural and ecclesial riches of our people could not leave us alone in this field.

Moreover, this is a challenge; it is the greatest one we can propose at this time to our youth, to our seminarians, to our priests and to our religious. It will be a Seminary that responds to the missionary commitments of each particular Church. Therefore, the best from among our pastoral workers (seminarians, priests, youth leaders, pastoral workers) will swell the ranks of the vanguard group in this commitment, all with the approval of their pastors. The documents of the Church proclaim this to us, they ask us for and require this from us: the best for the mission ad gentes in and from the particular Churches.

I leave this proposal in all your hearts. I pray that some day this will be a successful reality and that we will see our missionaries from Central America on all continents, in fraternal dialogue with all the cultures and in a joint task for the Kingdom with all the religions of the world.

4. The Missionary Parish
This is a mini-project, but perhaps the most practical and feasible one related to what we have been speaking about, as well as the beginning of an uncontainable process of missionary spirit for each of the particular Churches, for the whole of Central America.

We know how strategic the parish can be in a task of missionary awareness building, formation and practice. We start from one simple need: the participation of the laity, without ceasing to be a proposal for the whole People of God.

I will present the project in seven steps, the seven sacraments as it were of the missionary parish:
1. We begin with the creation of a small team of from three to five persons. We call it a “Creative Team”. They have to be people who vibrate, feel and know a bit about the Mission. They will have all the responsibility for the missionary organization, formation and animation of the parish. This will call for a certain amount of leadership, but we will start from what we have and they will be transformed as we go along.
2. A small parish pastoral plan centered on the mission. Everything should breathe, speak of and pulsate the mission. “Your life is Mission”. Spirituality, the liturgy, the sacraments, the devotions and community life will have the mission as its central and transversal axe.
3. Setting up some small missionary circles for study, reading, with different cultural programs, strategically located throughout the parish.
4. Experiences of pastoral work with groups from the parish in other nearby or far-off pastoral areas, according to the possibilities that come up, but outside the parish. This step is fundamental to get the people out of the parish, to go out, to go beyond, so that they can learn about other realities. Each experience should be preceded by good preparation and followed up by an evaluation.
5. To have a sister parish possibly in another continent in order to create bonds of solidarity with it. This broadens the horizon of the parish. The boys and girls from our parish should write to boys and girls from the sister parish; we should learn about the history of the parish, its people and culture. The letters they write to us should be read from time to time at the masses or in the study circles. We should support some small work that they want to carry out there, and this experience should be multiplied between communities, youth groups and pastoral workers.
6. Experience of the mission in another country. Gradually it is possible to arrive at this step. There are some wonderful experiences in this regard. The people get mature in their commitment and choice to the point that they ask for this kind of experience. It is the missionary parish that sends its missionaries.
7. The communications media at the service of the mission: from a flyer, a poster, poster contests in the schools, the homily through symbols created by the parish community itself, videos, a small radio station, computers, etc. All this is in support of the most significant moments of celebration, education, culture and recreation in the life of the parish.

5. The Ministries in the Service of the Mission:
One of the major challenges to the Church as this century begins is undoubtedly that of the ministries, especially the lay ministries. We all have a place, a task and a responsibility in building up the Mission of the Church with solidarity and its commitment ad gentes.

The Second Vatican Council tells us that the Church is “mystery, communion, mission”. These are three terms that say the same thing and express the same reality; it is like saying the life of the Church. We understand “Mystery” as the “visible human space” of God’s self-giving and love in time among us; “Communion” in the diversity of peoples and cultures in the common task of realizing God’s love among us, and “Mission” as the way of being and carrying out the Father’s saving plan.

However, there is a simpler term that is closer and more theological by which the Church can be called. It is “People of God”. Chapter II of Lumen Gentium (The Light of the Peoples) of the Second Vatican Council teaches us this. When we say “People”, we are speaking about a “historical subject” in a given context, in relation to this world, society and history. “This is how the whole Church is manifested”, wrote St. Cyprian, a 3rd century Father of the Church, as “a multitude gathered together by the unity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”.

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God who called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people at all and now you are the People of God; once you were outside the mercy and now you have been given mercy” (1 Pt. 2:9-10).

This Church, “People” and “Mother”, is a “serving” Church. During his visit to the United Nations in 1973, Paul VI proclaimed to the world that “the Church does not have nor does it want any privilege other than that of serving”. This is in Jesus’ example: “Yet here am I among you as one who serves! (Lk. 22:27).

To express this service in the Church we are using a simple term: “ministry”. In the New Testament, “ministry” is the translation of a Greek term “diakonia”, which means service. It expresses a dependency before God, as a giving to the Father in Christ through the Spirit, to be expressed in an attitude of service for the sake of others.

In the New Testament we find a pluralist and varied view of the ministries, which are understood and lived as an extension of the Lord Jesus’ service. And so there is the ministry of the “Twelve, as exceptional witnesses to the Resurrection”, of the “doctors, evangelists and prophets”. According to the spread of the Gospel and the needs felt by the communities, the different services-ministries originate.

This Church as the People of God knows that other peoples also belong to God who acts lovingly in their history in order to lead them all to his “family”. For this reason, the Church cannot consider any concern or dimension of the collective life of peoples alien to its life and mission in the world: the Church is inserted into the peregrinating of peoples as a whole in order to lend them its service and witness.

The Second Vatican Council tells us this: “The Church, which the Spirit guides in way of all truth (15) and which He unified in communion and in works of ministry, He both equips and directs with hierarchical and charismatic gifts and adorns with His fruits” (LG 4).

In the post-synodal document, “The Lay Faithful”, the Pope tells us this: “The Church's mission of salvation in the world is realized not only by the ministers in virtue of the Sacrament of Orders but also by all the lay faithful; indeed, because of their Baptismal state and their specific vocation, in the measure proper to each person, the lay faithful participate in the priestly, prophetic and kingly mission of Christ” (ChL 23).

In the “Proclamation of the Gospel”, Paul VI teaches that “the laity can also feel themselves called, or be called, to work with their pastors in the service of the ecclesial community for its growth and life, by exercising a great variety of ministries according to the grace and charismas which the Lord is pleased to give them” (EN 73).

The first Christian communities -- concrete local communities, Corinth, Jerusalem, Roma, Ephesus -- created the ministries that they believed were necessary for the good functioning of their own community. Since the communities have different cultures, needs and problems, the ministries will be different and varied according to the community, and this will also vary according to the eras. Then we speak about ministries, charismas, talents, gifts, tasks and responsibilities that we have to share in the Church and in society. Each one carries out a specific function. If the Church is a body, as St. Paul tells us, in which the different members carry out functions for the benefit of the whole, in the same way society is an organism in which we all have to be co-responsible and have solidarity for the successful fulfillment of the great human and divine project.

“(We propose…) to build an autochthonous Church with its own countenance, heart, thought, pastoral workers and organisms. This community will express its faith and worship of God in a festive liturgy using the indigenous languages and its own cultural events” (Guatemalan Episcopate).

Puebla tells us that “today the Holy Spirit is arousing in the Church a diversity of ministries exercised also by lay men and women, capable of rejuvenating and strengthening the evangelizing dynamism of the Church” (No. 858). However, “the great ministry or service that the Church gives the world and the people in it is evangelization” (DP 679). The greatest ministry of the Church, the specific, unique service it can carry out in the world and for the world is EVANGELIZATION, that is, the MISSION.

Then the “diakonia”, the ministry, will be the exercise of a function in the Church for building up the community as a missionary orientation. Therefore, the existential context of the services-ministries is service to the Gospel.

From its beginnings, the Church in Latin America has entrusted pastoral services in its evangelizing mission to lay persons too: treasurers, teachers of Christian doctrine, prayers, those in charge of confraternities and other activities of Christian charity, emphasizing the valid task of the natives.

Gradually new ministries were implemented in order to pay attention to the current needs of humanity and the Church itself. Many ministries respond more to the internal needs of the community itself. We ask: And the needs of the mission? The Church has its raison d’etre in the Mission. It is urgent to encourage new ecclesial ministries capable of “rejuvenating and strengthening the evangelizing dynamism of the Church”. The result is that Mission and ministry go together.

It is dangerous for the Church to look only at itself and to only be concerned with ministries that take care of the internal needs of the institution. This could be a selfish way of living. It is necessary to open the doors and produce new ministries that will bring about the mission towards the outside: the ministries of dialogue on all levels; the ministries that set up relations with all the institutions on the political, economic and social levels; the ministry of discernment that will make us try to have contact with all the values that exist outside Christianity; the ministry of missionary animation, etc.

We need to open up the horizon of the mission. Today the ministries of solidarity can be a door needed to make our witness and evangelizing commitment possible. To draw closer to man, to every man and woman, as “paths of the Church” is a charisma that we must awaken today in our missionary Church.

I offer this doctrine as a guiding principle in order to multiply the ministries for the mission ad gentes today in Central America. Each Church will do this according to the needs felt, and the whole Church with regard to the great need that is very strongly felt for the mission ad gentes.

Conclusion:

We have spoken about the Missionary Project for Central America taken on as a commitment of the CAM2 COMLA7. It is project with five steps. These steps are not separate wheels but a whole unit. One could not be understood without the other. The five programs seek to forge the missionary awareness of our particular Churches by making all its bodies dynamic, animating the life of the community in the dynamism of the mission, and projecting the pastoral practice towards the mission ad gentes.

With well organized mission centers and some missionary parishes where the ministries for the mission flourish, the Spirit of the Lord will give us an abundant harvest of vocations that will enable us to tighten the bonds of communion, fraternity and solidarity with Churches of other continents that are crying out to us to go to their aid in sowing the Gospel abundantly.

Church in Central America, “Your Life is Mission”.

Bogotá, November 20, 2002