Mission

Mission Go into the whole world . . .

What is our mission?
John 20:19-22
Mark 16:15: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.”
Matthew 28:19-20: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

What is our mission?
Acts 1:8: But you will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
We are called to bear much fruit (Jn 15:5-8)

The mission of the Church
737 The mission of Christ and the Holy Spirit is brought to completion in the Church, which is the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit.
738 Thus the Church's mission is not an addition to that of Christ and the Holy Spirit, but is its sacrament: in her whole being and in all her members, the Church is sent to announce, bear witness, make present, and spread the mystery of the communion of the Holy Trinity.

Our name comes from, among other things, our mission
831 The Church is catholic because she has been sent out by Christ on a mission to the whole of the human race.
782 [The Church’s] mission is to be salt of the earth and light of the world. (Mt 5:13-16) This people is "a most sure seed of unity, hope, and salvation for the whole human race." (The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church 9.2)

"We wish to confirm once more that the task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church." . . . Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ's sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of His death and glorious resurrection. (Paul VI, Evangelization in the Modern World 14)

Proclamation is the permanent priority of mission. The Church cannot elude Christ's explicit mandate, nor deprive men and women of the "Good News" about their being loved and saved by God. (John Paul II, The Mission of Christ the Redeemer 44)
It is not the Church's mission to work directly on the economic. technical or political levels, or to contribute materially to development. Rather, her mission consists essentially in offering people an opportunity not to "have more" but to “be more”, by awakening their consciences through the Gospel. (Ibid. 58)

The Role of the Holy Spirit
768 So that she can fulfill her mission, the Holy Spirit "bestows upon [the Church] varied hierarchic and charismatic gifts, and in this way directs her." (DCC 4) "Henceforward the Church, endowed with the gifts of her founder and faithfully observing his precepts of charity, humility and self-denial, receives the mission of proclaiming and establishing among all peoples the Kingdom of Christ and of God, and she is on earth the seed and the beginning of that kingdom." (DCC 5)

The Role of the Holy Spirit
How do the gift of the Holy Spirit and the mission we been given relate to the life of the Church?
Now if the Spirit of God has a preeminent place in the whole life of the Church, it is in her evangelizing mission that He is most active. (Paul VI, EMW 75)

The Vitality of the Church
For in the Church's history, missionary drive has always been a sign of vitality, just as its lessening is a sign of a crisis of faith. (MCR 2)
For missionary activity renews the Church, revitalizes faith and Christian identity, and offers fresh enthusiasm and new incentive. Faith is strengthened when it is given to others! (MCR 2)

The Call of the Laity
900 Since, like all the faithful, lay Christians are entrusted by God with the apostolate by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, they have the right and duty, individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth. (Cf. Can. 225 §1)

The Role of the Laity
Thus every layman, in virtue of the very gifts bestowed upon him, is at the same time a witness and a living instrument of the mission of the Church itself "according to the measure of Christ's bestowal". (DCC 33; Eph 4:7)

The Call of the Laity
900 This duty is the more pressing when it is only through them that men can hear the Gospel and know Christ. Their activity in ecclesial communities is so necessary that, for the most part, the apostolate of the pastors cannot be fully effective without it. (DCC 33)

So too the laity go forth as powerful proclaimers of a faith in things to be hoped for (Heb 11:1) when they courageously join to their profession of faith a life springing from faith. This evangelization, that is, this announcing of Christ by a living testimony as well as by the spoken word, takes on a specific quality and a special force in that it is carried out in the ordinary surroundings of the world. (DCC 35)

John Paul II’s, The Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful
The lay faithful, precisely because they are members of the Church, have the vocation and mission of proclaiming the Gospel: they are prepared for this work by the sacraments of Christian initiation and by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. (Ibid. 33)

863 The whole Church is apostolic ... in that she is "sent out" into the whole world. All members of the Church share in this mission, though in various ways. "The Christian vocation is, of its nature, a vocation to the apostolate as well." Indeed, we call an apostolate "every activity of the Mystical Body" that aims "to spread the Kingdom of Christ over all the earth.” (The Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity 2)

Personal Vocation
We must however always keep in mind the truth that every initiative serves true renewal in the Church . . . insofar as the initiative is based on adequate awareness of the individual Christian's vocation and of responsibility for this singular, unique and unrepeatable grace by which each Christian in the community of the People of God builds up the Body of Christ. (The Redeemer of Man 21)

Personal Vocation
For the whole of the community of the People of God and for each member of it what is in question is not just a specific "social membership"; rather, for each and every one what is essential is a particular "vocation". . . . Membership in [the Mystical Body of Christ] has for its source a particular call, united with the saving action of grace. (RM 21)

Personal Vocation
The kingdom will grow insofar as every person learns to turn to God in the intimacy of prayer as to a Father (cf. Lk 11:2; Mt 23:9) and strives to do his will (cf. Mt 7:21). (MCR 13)
Lay people as well are personally called by the Lord, from whom they receive a mission on behalf of the Church and the world. (VMLF 2)

The Necessity of a Response
Finally, the person who has been evangelized goes on to evangelize others. Here lies the test of truth, the touchstone of evangelization: it is unthinkable that a person should accept the Word and give himself to the kingdom without becoming a person who bears witness to it and proclaims it in his turn. (EMW 24)
Every disciple is personally called by name; no disciple can withhold making a response: "Woe to me, if I do not preach the gospel" ( 1 Cor 9:16). (MVLF 33)

The Necessity of a Response
It would be useful if every Christian and every evangelizer were to pray about the following thought: men can gain salvation also in other ways, by God's mercy, even though we do not preach the Gospel to them; but as for us, can we gain salvation if through negligence or fear or shame - what St. Paul called "blushing for the Gospel" (Rm 1:16) - or as a result of false ideas we fail to preach it? (EMW 80)
No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples. (RM 3)

A Call to Fruitfulness
The gospel image of the vine and the branches reveals to us another fundamental aspect of the lay faithful's life and mission: the call to growth and a continual process of maturation, of always bearing much fruit. (VMLF 57)
Even before activity, mission means witness and a way of life that shines out to others. (EMW 41-42; MCR 26)

The Importance of Witness
People today put more trust in witnesses than in teachers, (EN 41) in experience than in teaching, and in life and action than in theories. The witness of a Christian life is the first and irreplaceable form of mission: Christ, whose mission we continue, is the "witness" par excellence (Rv 1:5; 3:14) and the model of all Christian witness. (MCR 42)

A Missionary Spirituality
Docility to the Holy Spirit (MCR 87)
Techniques of evangelization are good, but even the most advanced ones could not replace the gentle action of the Spirit. The most perfect preparation of the evangelizer has no effect without the Holy Spirit. (EMW 75)
Intimate communion with Christ. (MCR 88)

Missionary Spirituality
Those who have the missionary spirit feel Christ's burning love for souls, and love the Church as Christ did. (MCR 89)
Called to holiness AND mission
The universal call to holiness is closely linked to the universal call to mission . (RM 90)

Faith in Christ and his love for us
Mission is an issue of faith , an accurate indicator of our faith in Christ and his love for us. (RM 11)
Eucharistic
Every commitment to holiness, every activity aimed at carrying out the Church's mission, every work of pastoral planning, must draw the strength it needs from the Eucharistic mystery and in turn be directed to that mystery as its culmination. ( On the Eucharist in Its Relationship to the Church 60)

The Eucharist thus appears as both the source and the summit of all evangelization, since its goal is the communion of mankind with Christ and in him with the Father and the Holy Spirit. (PO 5; EE 22)
From the Mass
Go in the peace of Christ
The Mass is ended, go in peace.
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

Mission

by Sean Wenger on Dec 15, 2007

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Mission — Presentation Transcript