Mission: challenges and trends

In his presentation, Professor Barreda has highlighted some of the key issues in today’s mission. He has not so much expounded theological and pastoral trends in mission in our time, but rather explained its centre and its identity as Missio Dei, participation in the divine communion and, therefore, as Opus Dei . Within this framework, he has stressed that mission is essentially an act of love whose greatest gift is Jesus Christ. Therefore, the professor has pointed out, the missionary is one who experiences Christ and presents him to others. The missionary , therefore, is identified more by his being rather than his doing and by his ability to make disciples – in fact, this is the Gospel dynamic: the foundation the Christian identity is the encounter with the person of Jesus Christ.

Vatican II has opened a new understanding of mission, and hence of the Church: she does not exist without mission and mission is indeed the hermeneutics of faith. Fr. Barreda has reiterated how little the missionary yearning is present in the Christians today. The whole Church must be 'in a state of mission': in particular the local church the true protagonist of announcing the Gospel of the Kingdom - even though, Fr. Barreda has underlined, some local churches have been born old because of a lack of missionary zeal. The professor has wondered if the missionaries are truly part of a local church and true members of a Christian community or, rather, separated ones as if the missionary vocation could exist without a vital relationship with the community.

Finally, Fr . Barreda has highlighted two other important issues of mission: kenosis as the spiritual aspect of the proclamation of the Gospel of the crucified Christ so much so that humility and the emptying from any worldly power are the missionaries’ signs to be credible witnesses of the kenosis of Christ; and, secondly, the milieu in which mission takes place today which is multicultural, that is an environment where different cultures meet and live side by side. Europe today, the Professor has concluded, needs the first proclamation of the Gospel – more than new evangelization – because large segments of the population do not know who Jesus Christ is.