1

“MISSIO DEI”: HOW TO UNDERSTAND OUR MISSION

IN EUROPE IN THIS EPOCHAL CHANGE
WHEN MISSION SHAPES RELIGIOUS LIFE

JOSÉ CRISTO REY GARCÍA PAREDES, CMF

OUTLINE

The title of my article is: “Missio Dei: How to understand our Mission in Europe in
these changing times? When Mission shapes religious life”.
I intend to offer guidelines for a new understanding of mission, not only from a
theological but also an historical perspective. It deals with an authentic change of
paradigm. And this brings with it also a modification in the way of understanding the
Church and the religious life within it: “when mission shapes religious life”. With all
this I intend to say that when the awareness and living out of the mission is alive,
everything revives within us and our life becomes more evangelical; and, negatively,
that when the awareness and the living out of the mission is in crisis our whole life
enters in crisis.
Katharine Jefferst Schori an Episcopalian, refers to this crisis situation in her inau-
gural discourse at the General Convention of the Episcopalian Church on 8 July 2009.
“We are in cardiac crisis in the Church.... The heart of this body is mission. Every
time we gather, the Spirit offers a pacemaker jolt to pull the rhythm of this heart.
The challenge is whether or not. . . the muscle will respond with a strengthened
beat, sending more life out into the world. Can you hear the heartbeat? Mission,
Mission, Mission?”1.
These words raise the question whether, in reality, the "heartbeat" of "Mission,
Mission, Mission" is heard among us, male and female Religious, among our com-
munities and congregations, General and Provincial Chapters. The question is, if we
allow the Spirit, at every level of our religious Institutes, to “offer a pacemaker jolt to
pull the rhythm of our heart”. It is as urgent as ever. I wonder whether mission is the
heart of our religious institutes, of our communities and of us as individuals.

1
Cf. KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI, The heartbeat of God. Finding the Sacred in the middle of everything
(Foreword by Joan Chittister, osb, Sky Path Publishing, 2011; JAMES GRAMSEY, Mission is the heart-
beat of the body of Christ, in Thinking Faith (the Online Journal of the English Jesuits), June 2010
 2

We acknowledge the missional calling of Religious Life. Nevertheless, in many

congregations, mission is understood primarily in “functional” terms: mission re-
mains just a function among many others more pressing tasks or activities. Our reli-
gious institutes shape missions, but mission does not shape religious life; mission has
little or no impact upon the being of the whole congregation or Order. Very often we
are good workers in different commitments. But we lack the mystic of a true mis-
sionary of God. Do we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us to be integrated in his mission?
Are our leaders in this issue?
Almost the entire energy and time of our religious leaders are employed in the so-
lution of our inner needs: they try to develop and maintain our inner and charismatic
life. We are established in a culture of membership more than in a culture of mis-
sionary discipleship2. We try to grow as Institution: vocations, formation (initial and
ongoing), economy, constitution of our communities, surveillance and control about
the spiritual life of the members, a lot of energies in the exaltation and propaganda
of our own charism. But, what is happening with our mission, precisely in this time of
epochal change in human history?
I believe that we need another definition of religious life as “mission-shaped” reli-
gious life, whose very being is constituted in and for mission. It is necessary a fun-
damental reorientation of our religious Institutes to be a “religious life inside out”3.
The words of Katharine Jefferst Schori and her metaphor of the heart in a critical
state, of pacemakers and of the recuperated beating energy, have served me as a in-
spiration for this reflection that I am going to offer you in three parts.
I. The situation: “are we in cardiac crisis?”
II. The theological – spiritual keys: “what type of pacemaker do we need?”
III. The expectations: the beating energy.

I. THE SITUATION: CARDIAC CRISIS?

When we are thinking of confronting our mission in the Europe of our times we
become disheartened. Many are the challenges to which we have to responds and
we tend to be disheartened and even paralysed, when we see ourselves so limited.
Nevertheless, the words of Paul to the Romans echo strongly within us.
“But how can they call upon the name of the Lord without having believed in him?
And how can they believe in him without having first heard about him? And how
will they hear about him if no one preaches about him? And how will they preach
about him if no one sends them? As Scripture says: How beautiful are the feet of
the messenger of Good News” (Rom 10:14-16).

2
Cf. FRED HILTZ, "Go to the World! Go Struggle, Bless, and Pray: Bishops, Theological Schools, and Mis-
sion," in Anglican Theological Review 90 (2008), 307.
3
Title of a book by JOHANNES HOEKENDIJK, Inside out, Westminster, Philadelphia, 1966.
 3

Like the two disciples of Emmaus we feel disheartened and instead of throwing
ourselves into the mission we enter on the path of de-mission: Abandoning the ap-
ostolic group and returning to the life of before (Lk 24:13-23). Something similar
happened to Simon Peter, the two sons of Zebedee and two other disciples. Simon
said to them: “I am going to fish” and they responded: “we are also going to fish with
you”. (Jn 21: 3). This is not dealing with an innocent decision but with the renouncing
of being “fishers of men” (the mission entrusted by Jesus!), the abandoning of fol-
lowing (taking up again the nets that they had left behind previously); in a state of
de-mission, that is to say, of disobedience to the Master, “they caught nothing”; they
succeeded only when they obeyed the word of the Resurrected; the number of fish-
es recalled the nations of the earth. Jesus would later say to Simon Peter “follow
me”!” (Jn. 21: 19) and after testing his love he asked him to feed his sheep (Jn. 21:
15-17). It should not surprise us that something similar happens to us!.

1. Disheartened by the cultural situation of the West

Europe needs to be evangelised. The cultural evolution of the west is progressive-
ly distancing itself from the christen tradition. Religion is in a process of “deconstruc-
tion”. The official Catholicism does not penetrate into society.
“In the time of ultra-modernity, the society which abandons religion eliminates
even the footprints that it has left in the culture”4.
Therefore, the number of Europeans who do no believe in Jesus and in his Gospel
increases.
There is, challenging us, the phenomenon: of the “new atheism”5 with an prolif-
eration of best sellers that define the non-existence of God and directly opposes re-
ligion. It does not deal with the return of the “passionate atheism” defended by the
teachers of the suspect Marx, Freud, Nietzsche6. What is emerging now is a very
strong reaction to the fundamentalist monotheisms7. The new atheism accuses
Christianity specifically:
of having left the western culture with a “violent legacy” (Regina Schwartz8),
of suffering a type of “mental illness” which damages ourselves and others
(Richard Dawkins9),
of believing in God because we are a society without a father (Paul C Vitz10).

4
Cf. DANIÈLE HERVIEU-LÉGER, Catholicisme, la fin d’un monde, Bayard, Paris 2003.
5
Cf. GARY WOLF, The Church of the Non-Believers, en “Wired” February 27, 2009.
6
Cf. JOHANN BAPTIST METZ, A passion for God: the mystical-political dimension of Christianity, Paulist
Press, 1998; cf. A. COMTE-SPONVILLE, The Little book of atheist spirituality, Viking Press, 2007.
7
In this ways think authors like Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg, Victor Stenger, Regina M.
Schwartz.
8
Cf. REGINA M. SCHWARTZ, The curse of Cain: the violent legacy of monotheism, University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, 1997.
9
Cf. RICHARD DAWKINS, The God delussion, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York 2007.
 4

All of this has come out in advertisings on the London buses that say: “There’s
probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life”: and it comes out in the
atheist processions that are organised in our cities.
With these questions that the atheists or the indifferent plants in us – including
our own families – it shrinks our heart and if we do not react violently – giving them
reason – we keep quiet and we say that “it is better not to touch this topic”. The an-
swers of before are not useful of entering into a serious and illuminating dialogue
with these brothers and sisters of ours. Cardinal Walter Kasper a little while ago
dared to write the following in respect of the church institution:
“Frequently their deception with the church does not respond so much with a lack
of understanding for the religious on their part, rather that in this institution they
often receive stones in place of spiritual bread” 11.
Worse, perhaps, is the falsification of God. Martin Buber said, many years ago,
that the tragic destiny of God in our history is to be falsified, disfigured, abused, ma-
nipulated; and that, because of this, for the bible the biggest enemy of God never is
unbelief but idolatry, not the absence of God but the falsification of God. Our God al-
lows these disfigurements and falsifications, because He is humble, discreet, because
he never shows power nor is he ostentatious.
Europe is not only a stage of secularisation and atheism; it is also a stage of a
growing confessional and religious pluralism, owing in part to migration. This means
that we often live with men and women of other religions (Judaism, Islam, Bud-
dhism, Hinduism) and even new religions, as also other Christian confessions. The in-
ter-confessional and inter-religious dialogue is given to us as a challenge, and again
our heart shrinks and is paralysed because we feel unprepared.
With all this, the discourse about God in Europe becomes enormously complex
and difficult. Many of us feel unprepared from the intellectual perspective and lack-
ing credibility from an ethical and spiritual point of view. A spirituality with a low
profile hardly makes credible the testimony of God. And here is rooted one of the
principle causes of our missionary demoralisation, of our de-mission.
We have to give thanks, nevertheless, for the effort and wisdom of not a few
brothers and sisters, especially in the area of fundamental theology, for their contri-
butions to the discourse about God in our time. They offer us pointers for dialogue,
to collaborate in the mission12. They continue in their purpose despite the misunder-

10
Cf. PAUL C. VITZ, The faith of the fatherless: the Psychology of Atheism, Spence Publishing Company,
Dallas, 2000.
11
WALTER KASPER, La Nueva Evangelización: un desafío pastoral, teológico y espiritual, en GEORGE AU-
GUSTIN (ed), El desafío de la nueva evangelización. Impulsos para la revitalización de la fe, Sal Ter-
rae, Santander, 2012, p. 22.
12
Cf. GLENN B. SINISCALCHI, Evangelization and the new Atheism, in “American Theological Inquiry” 15
(2009), pp. 29-41; RYAN DUECK, Angry at the God who isn't there: the new atheism as theodicy, in
“Direction” 40 (2011), pp.3-16.
 5

standings that they find among us, in the same church. We have to be, at the same
time, very thankful for brave people who have found and shown the most tender,
compassionate and merciful face of God into the dregs of society, in the fourth world
of poverty, marginalisation, exploitation; and thankful also to those believing people
who carry out the anti-idolatrous denouncement of the prophets and preach the re-
turn of the Covenant.

2. A Christianity of identity but not belonging.

For further discouragement we find ourselves with another phenomenon that af-
fects those already baptised and belonging to the Church. It deals with a growing
number of Christians that opt for a Christianity of identity, rather than of belonging;
they declare themselves Catholic or Christian but without adhesion to the communi-
ty, to its institutions, to its magisterium; they have piety; their faith – not objectively
cultivated, is not an infantile faith – of the catechism of First Communion, but rather
atrophied; this gives rise to a certain illiterate belief; everything that they learn con-
cerning faith, comes through the mass media, with its need for brevity and sensa-
tionalism. These Christians are probably honourable, upright, with their beliefs and
devotions but they show no interest in believing with others, in participating in the
social gatherings of the faith, in the institutions of our Church. Marcel Gauchet –
french sociologist- states that:
“it is emerging a new form –really adapted to our times- of assuming Christian
faith: it is individual, free and critic. The core of this assumption is not obedience,
but spiritual thirst and the search of meaning and quality in life. People is not
moved by necessity but by the need of improvement”13.
We are not confident in communicating the faith when the institutions find
themselves in such a crisis. This also results in discouragement.
This is the context in which the questions of saint Paul in the letter to the Romans
plaque us: how can they believe in him without having first heard about him? And
how will they hear about him if no one preaches about him? Our preaching makes
possible that our contemporaries “hear” the voice of God, his Word. We are the
spokesmen of the Word. It is not enough to give out bibles. It is necessary to come
close to the living bibles, who are the witnesses of God.
And another question follows: “how will they preach about him if no one sends
them?” We know that it is no good to write a message or an email if we do not click
on the space that says “send”. We know that our vocation as messengers and wit-
nesses is no good if we are not sent, if we remain quartered in our houses, convents
or ecclesiastical buildings.

13
MARCEL GAUCHET, La religión en la democracia, El Cobre ediciones, Barcelona, 2003. Cf. GIANNI
VATTIMO, Después de la cristiandad: por un cristianismo no religioso, Paidós Ibérica, Barcelona,
2003.
 6

3. We are the problem!

As we can see, the situation in Europe is not easy. And it is understandable that
the Church feels as times too dazed and the heart is paralysed or stops (the beats of
the mission!).
We are the problem when we stay put instead of going out when we oppose to
being sent; when we keep quiet instead of speaking; when we become embroiled in
internal problems, between churches, instead of committing ourselves to the big
causes of humanity; when we think of a quiet retirement, instead of being a mis-
sionary “till death”, as they say in the sporting arena; when we content ourselves
with a low profile witness and we renounce the explicit proclamation of Jesus14. We
are the problem. In this is the cardiac crisis.
But we have a secret hope that somebody will implant a pacemaker in us. The
poet Leon Felipe expressed this very well using another image, that of the Wind of
the Spirit in his Verses of the Walker.
“Don’t wander
and look for your path.
– leave me
Now will come your strong wind
that will take me to my place”.
I believe that this “strong wind” is the evangelising passion, the mission. Of this I
am now going to speak.

II. THE KEYS: THE PACEMAKER

An artificial pacemaker is an electronic device designed to produce electronic im-

pulses whose objective is to stimulate the heart when the physiological or normal
stimulation fails. After all that has been analysed, do we need in the church to im-
plant a pacemaker so that the heart functions well? Is it not this pacemaker a new
awareness and living out of “mission”, that only can be implanted by the Holy Spirit
in the heart of the Church, of our Congregations, communities and individuals?

1. The ‘missio Dei’ - ‘missio Spiritus’

a) Dei-centric perspective of Mission

The mission is often confused with apostolic works, with things that need to be
done ‘for the kingdom of God’ in a particular place. One forgets that “mission” is,

14
Cf. RINO FISICHELLA, El futuro de la vida cristiana, en J.M. Alday (ed.), Un futuro para la vida consagra-
da, Publicaciones Claretianas, Madrid, 2012, p. 64.
 7

above all, an attribute of God–trinity and not so much an activity of the church: it is
“missio Dei”, “missio Trinitatis”.
For some this new thinking about mission as mission Dei, is like a Copernican rev-
olution in mission reflection and practice: it shifts the agency in mission from the
church to God, from the missionary projects of religious life to the surprising inspira-
tion and action of the Holy Spirit. However, the new emphasis on the “mission Dei”
has to be attentive at some important issues: 1) not emphasize upon the sending of
the Son by the Father without an equal emphasis upon the role of the Spirit –as we
will deal immediately-; 2) not by centered exclusively in the work of Christ divorcing
salvation from creation; mission has not to be reduced to the “conversion” of those
who are outside the church. We have not to forget the activity of God in creation of
the mission creationis; 3) not to broaden so the concept of mission that "if every-
thing is mission, then nothing is mission."
In fact, one characteristic of many religious men and women is an acute sense of
obligation to do something, somewhere, to someone, connected with "agenda-
anxiety". The statements of many General or Provincial Chapters are formulated as a
list of “to-do” things.
We religious need to move away from an ecclesiocentric and narrow interpreta-
tion of the missio Dei to a broader framework. A Dei-centric Ecclesiology is very dif-
ferent from other ecclesiologies, such as the one shaped by the dominant theologi-
cal axis, centered around the "creation-fall-redemption" matrix. In the latter, the
emphasis is upon a christocentric exclusivism which envisages that the church is the
only locus of salvation. The purpose of its mission, therefore, is the conversion of
those who are outside it and to that end it plants churches everywhere so that the
"benefits of Christ's passion" may be dispensed15.
: “Start with the church and the mission will probably be lost. Start with mission
and it is likely that the church will be found." We can add: “Start with the religious
Life and the mission will probably be lost. Start with mission and it is likely that the
religious life will be found”.
In the present phase of the history of salvation, the Holy Spirit is the principal
agent of mission. The church is his ally; the present Catholic Church is very conscious
of this.

15
See WATI LONGCHAR, JOSEF R WIDYATMADJA, and M. R JOSEPH (eds.), They Left by Another Road: Rerout-
ing Mission and Ecumenism in Asia, Chiangmai, Thailand: Christian Conference of Asia, 2007; KEN
CHRISTOPH MIYAMOTO, God's Mission in Asia, Pickwick Publications, 2007; LALSANGKIM PACHUAU (ed.),
Ecumenical Missiology: Contemporary Trends, Issues and Themes, United Theological College, Ban-
galore, 2002; CHOAN SENG SONG, Christian Mission in Reconstruction: An Asian Analysis, Orbis Books,
Maryknoll, 1977; M. M. THOMAS, Salvation and Humanization: Some Critical Issues in the Theology
of Mission in Contemporary India, Christian Literature Society, Madras, 1971). Another significant
collection of provocative reflections is G. V. JOB, et al., Rethinking Christianity in India, Christian Lit-
erature Society, Madras, 1938.
 8

“The Church is missionary, because she finds her origin in the mission of Jesus
Christ and the mission of the Holy Spirit, according to the plan of God the Father..
Furthermore, the Church is missionary, because she returns and relives her begin-
nings by proclaiming and witnessing to this revelation of God and by gathering
together the scattered People of God, so that in this way she might fulfil the
prophecy of Isaiah which the Church Fathers applied to her: “Spread your tent, ex-
tend the curtain of your dwelling without saving, lengthen the cord, strengthen
your poles, so that you might be widened to the right and to the left and your de-
scendants will possess nations, will populate once deserted cities” (Is 54:2, 3)”. 16
But it does not cease to be disturbing that even theology itself is affected by a re-
ductive understanding of mission. Frequently the architectural and structural princi-
ple of mission is blamed; in such a way that missiology is considered like a secondary
or auxiliary matter in respect to ecclesiology. And this allows us to diagnose in the
same systematic theology a state of cardiac crisis. Authors like Karl Barth have
warned us and corrected us about it17. George Carey, a former Archbishop of Can-
terbury, said – and with every reason – that “ecclesiology is a subsection of the doc-
trine of mission” 18, and David J Bosch, in his famous book “Transforming Mission:
paradigm shifts in Theology of Mission” wrote:
“Just as the church ceases to be church if it is not missionary, so theology ceases
to be theology if it loses its missionary character. …We need a missionary agenda
for theology instead of a theological agenda for mission; because theology, suffi-
ciently understood, does not have any other reason to exist than to critically ac-
company the Missio Dei”19.

b) The Mission of the Son

Mission is born from the heart of God the Father who sent his Son into the world.
For this, Jesus is called “Apostolos (Heb 3:1), the Shiloeh, the Sent (John). The entire
life of Jesus was a response to this missionary vocation: His sustenance is to carry
out the work that the Abba entrusted to him (John 4: 34), until the “it is consum-
mated” on the cross (Jn 19:28.30).
It is striking, nevertheless, how at a particular moment Jesus makes His mission
relative: “Believe me, it is better for you that I go away, because as long as I do not
leave, the Helper will not come to you”. (John 16: 7) The risen Jesus promised the
disciples that they will receive the power when “the Holy Spirit comes upon you; and
you will be my witnesses (mou ma¿rtureß) in Jerusalem….even to the ends of the
earth (e˙sca¿tou thvß ghvß)”. (Acts 1: 8)

16
Lineamenta Synod New Evangelization, 2.
17
Karl Barth has being the only theologian integrating the topic of Mission in his systematic Theology:
cf. his book “Creed” (1935).
18
Quoted by JOHN HULL, Mission shaped Church: a theological response, SCM Press, London 2006, p. 1.
19
DAVID J. BOSCH, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, Orbis Books,
Maryknoll, N.Y 1991, p. 494.
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The Spirit is already given at the death of Jesus, according to the forth Gospel: “he
gave up the Spirit ” (pare÷dwken to\ pneuvma)” (John 19: 30). In the Acts of the Apos-
tles the Spirit was poured out on the disciples, on the world and on every mortal (e˙pi«
pa◊san sa¿rka)”(Acts 2: 17). The Spirit is the one sent from Abba and from Jesus.

c) The Mission of the Spirit and its Dimensions

The Spirit of Pentecost is, paradoxically, also the Spirit of Creation, breath of the
creator God (My$IhølaT Aj…wêr◊w: Gen 1: 2), he who spoke through the prophets, he who made
possible the virginal conception of Jesus, he who descended over Jesus the Messiah
and energized him till the end of his life. Now, in the new stage, the Spirit gives con-
tinuity to the work of creation and of redemption20:
“it will be your distinctive mark on the day of salvation (e˙n wˆ— e˙sfragi÷sqhte ei˙ß
hJme÷ran aÓpolutrw¿sewß: Eph 4: 30)

The Spirit of the cosmos, of nature and of humanity – to whom all religions con-
fess – is the Spirit of Jesus. So, those who do not know Jesus do not know the mys-
tery of the Spirit21. The mission of the Spirit is intimately connected with the historic
mission of Jesus: He will teach you everything. He will remind you of everything with
reference to Jesus22. He will give witness and those moved by the Spirit will unite, as
a community, through this witness23. The Spirit of Jesus is such that, together with
the Church, the Body and Bride of Jesus longs for Jesus to come again: “The Spirit
and the Bride say, ‘Come! Whoever hears let him say, Come! (Ap. 22:17)…This collec-
tive and deep longing is satisfied, in anticipation, in the Word and the Sacraments.
It is the Spirit of the Church. The Spirit recreates it in all its charismatic and minis-
terial diversity and, at the same time, makes it enter into fellowship; the Spirit unites
it into communities and sends it out on mission. From the mission of the Spirit the
church is born: the mission is the mother of the church24. The mission has not been
entrusted to the Church but that the Spirit counts on the Church to carry out “its
mission”. The Spirit is the principal protagonist of the mission; it directs, guides, ori-
ents and precedes the church in the mission.

20
John V. Taylor in his book The Go-Between God (1972) states that the Spirit –at the core in the
Paul’s Theology- is the same Spirit of the Old Testament: the breath of God. Mission of the Spirit is
to continue the work of creation in collaboration with the Creator and Redeemer (pp. 36-40).
21
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forev-
er— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him.
But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17).
22
“But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things
and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” (John 14:26).
23
“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father —the Spirit of truth who goes
out from the Father—he will testify about me. And you also must testify, for you have been with
me from the beginning” (John 15:26-27).
24
In the Gospel of Luke mission comes like the accomplishment of a promise (“you will become my
witnesses”) in the experience of the Spirit at Pentecost (Lk 24:46-49; Acts 1:8;2).
 10

The Redemptoris Missio of John Paul II (1990) includes a relevant chapter entitled
“The Holy Spirit: Principal Agent of Mission”:
“The mission of the Church is God's work. The coming of the Holy Spirit makes
them witnesses and prophets. The Spirit gives them the ability to bear witness to
Jesus with "boldness. "The working of the Spirit is manifested particularly in the
impetus given to the mission which, in accordance with Christ's words, spreads out
from Jerusalem to all of Judea and Samaria, and to the farthest ends of the
earth.”25
“The Spirit manifests himself in a special way in the Church and in her members.
Whatever the Spirit brings about in human hearts and in the history of peoples, in
cultures and religions serves as a preparation for the Gospel.” 26
In the thinking of the Orthodox Church “the sending” of mission consists essen-
tially in the sending of the Spirit (Jn 14:26) which manifests precisely the life of God
as fellowship (2 Cor, 13:13). For the Orthodox Church the object of mission is not
primarily the propagation or transmission of intellectual convictions, doctrines, mor-
al commandments, rather to witness the presence and the action of the Spirit of Je-
sus. Orthodox theologians prefer to use the concept of Martyria, or witness, to de-
scribe this concept, rather than the word “mission” which could be associated in or-
thodox thinking with western political programmes of expansion, frequently at the
expense of the land where orthodoxy is established.
Leslie Newbigin wrote:
“the mission is not something that the church does; it is something that is carried
out by the Holy Spirit who is the same who gives witness and who changes at the
same time the world and the church” 27.
The Spirit loves the church as it’s most intimate and close “ally” that announces
Jesus and gives witness to Him and His Gospel. Like a companion of the Spirit, the
church should not get the idea of thinking that everything depends her. Activism can
become autonomous in respect to the Spirit and then very susceptible to be inhabit-
ed by “evil spirits”. At an opportune moment, at major crossroads, secure that the
Spirit will raise up “visionaries”, “prophets” capable of plotting new maps, itinerar-
ies, horizons and mission projects. Here a warning: don’t kill the prophet, don’t mock
the vision, don’t be blind guides! The church is not so much the one who sends ra-
ther the one sent by the Spirit to where He wishes, when He wishes and at the time
that He wishes28.

25
JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Missio, n. 24
26
Ib.
27
LESSLIE NEWBIGIN, The Open Secret. An introduction to the Theology of Mission, B. Eerdmans Publish-
ing, Gran Rapids, 1978.1995, pp. 56-61.
28
Cf. D. BOSCH, o.c., p. 370.
 11

The language about the Spirit and spirits in the theology of mission has an enor-
mous potential for many reasons: the language about the Spirit is shared by Chris-
tians of many denominations. It is a vehicle for ecumenical discussion. The language
of the Spirit of the world is found in the bible, and thus forms part of the biblical tra-
dition. It also has enormous potential within the theology of pluralism. The language
of the Spirit can be applied to social, economic, political movements and forces, both
constructive and destructive. The spirits are connected by matter, the human heart,
the gifts, morality, the Gospel. The language of the Spirit and of the spirits can be al-
so applied to unity, dialogue and reconciliation.
Cardinal Walter Kasper has written very beautifully the following:
“only the church filled with the Holy Spirit is able to mission. But the church moved
by the Spirit of God is not able to do less than to go out from itself and give wit-
ness to the gospel to the whole world. ……Fidelity to the faith transmitted does not
consist in limiting itself to repeat it; above all it has to be valued in the Holy Spirit
in a way that is always new, young and fresh” 29.
In its mission the Spirit does not only count on the church and all its forms of life
and ministry but also with every human being of goodwill; it counts on the authentic
arsenal of charisms and physical-cosmic processes to carry out its mission. It is the
Spirit of Humanity, of the Cosmos. The mission is one but the ministries, charisms
and dynamisms are multiple. There are prophets of other Christian confessions, of
other religions and even secular prophets and so many human beings of goodwill
who help humanity to improve in all its dimensions.

d) The Mission of the “Creator Spirit”

Collaborating in the mission of the Spirit is also the mysterious material energy
and the whole interconnected and expanding universe30. The mission of the Spirit is
a mega-project in which everything is involved and interconnected. Theilhard de
Chardin in his “Hymn of the Universe” gives us, firstly the grand project of the Spirit
in the following terms:
“As the centuries go by it seems that a comprehensive plan is indeed being slowly
carried out around us. A process is at work in the universe, an issue is at stake,
which can best be compared to the processes of gestation and birth; the birth of
that spiritual reality which is formed by souls and by such material reality as their
existence involves. Laboriously, through and thanks to the activity of mankind, the
new earth is being formed and purified and is taking on definition and clarity. No,
we are not like the cut flowers that make up a bouquet: we are like the leaves and

29
WALTER KASPER, La Nueva Evangelización: un desafío pastoral, teológico y espiritual, en GEORGE AU-
GUSTIN (ed), El desafío de la nueva evangelización. Impulsos para la revitalización de la fe, Sal Ter-
rae, Santander, 2012, p. 29.
30
Cf. DAVID TOOLAN, At home in the Cosmos, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 2001, pp. 127-192.
 12

buds of a great tree on which everything appears at its proper time and place as
required and determined by the good of the whole” 31.
To this reflection Theilhard de Chardin adds a profoundly fertile thought: the “div-
inisation of our activities” and the “divinisation of our passivities”:
“The deeper I look into myself the more clearly I become aware of this psychologi-
cal truth: that no man would lift his little finger to attempt the smallest task unless
he were spurred on by a more or less obscure conviction that in some infinitesi-
mally tiny way he is contributing, at least indirectly, to the building up of some-
thing permanent — in other words, to your own work, Lord.”32
Theilhard is masterly when he says that the mission is also “sub-mission”, it is
mystical of communion with the universe and the discovery in it of the Good News.
In the grand mega-project of the Spirit, our task consists in discovering the mystery
that penetrates us and announcing it in order to live it in a new phase of awareness,
like a cosmic movement towards the Omega-point which is Christ33.
This vision expresses authentically the real meaning of the so called “shared mis-
sion”. Mission is always a shared mission in several levels: not only charismatic or ec-
clesial, but also theological and physical and cosmic. The “missio Dei” is mission in
network, with interconnections including aspects we have never thought of. And the
Spirit carries it all out without cutting off freedom nor the processes of nature34.

2. Consequences of this understanding of mission

This understanding of mission means that God is the main player, the first mover.
From this movement the Church is born. Mission is the mother of the Church35. The

31
PIERRE THEILHARD DE CHARDIN, Hymn of the Universe, IV. The spiritual power of matter 2. Humanity in
progress, n. 20, Perennial Library, Harper and Row, New York – London, 1961.
32
THEILHARD DE CHARDIN, Hymn of the Universe, IV, The spiritual power of matter IV: The meaning of
human endeavour, n.55.
33
“Now that I have learnt to see you as he who is ‘more me than myself’, grant that when my hour
has come I may recognize you under the appearances of every alien or hostile power that seems
bent on destroying or dispossessing me. When the erosions of age begin to leave their mark on my
body, and still more on my mind; when the ills that must diminish my life or put an end to it strike
me down from without or grow up from within me; when I reach that painful moment at which I
suddenly realize that I am a sick man or that I am growing old; above all at that final moment when
I feel I am losing hold on myself and becoming wholly passive in the hands of those great unknown
forces which first formed me: at all these sombre moments grant me, Lord, to understand that it is
you (provided my faith is strong enough) who are painfully separating the fibres of my being so as
to penetrate to the very marrow of my substance and draw me into yourself” (THEILHARD DE CHAR-
DIN, The hymn of the Universe. 2. Humanity in progress, n. 30
34
ou∞ de« to\ pneuvma kuri÷ou, e˙leuqeri÷a: 2 Cor 3:17.
35
In Luke’s Gospel, mission comes to the disciples as a promise: You will be my witnesses” that is ful-
filled in the experience of the Spirit (Lk 24:46-49; Act 1:8;2). The Holy Spirit is the motivator of
Christian mission. The Spirit initiates, guides and empowers the disciple’s mission. The Spirit directs
the disciples through prayer, visions and dreams.
 13

Church is being given to the Spirit’s mission, not the Spirit’s mission to the Church36.
The Spirit and not the Church is the main agent in Mission37. Mission does not aim
primarily at the propagation or transmission of intellectual convictions, doctrines,
moral commands, etc., but at the witnessing of the presence and action of the Spir-
it38.
The Church and Religious Life within it, are not an end in themselves and mission
is not an optional extra to their being. The mission of the Spirit is their reason for ex-
istence. From this awareness of “missio Dei”, the church changes from being the
sender to being the one sent39; and the same Religious Life. We are not sent by our
superiors, or our community: our superiors, communities and congregations are sent
by the Spirit. The Spirit is the One calling us to collaborate with her mission.
The potential of the language of Spirit and spirits for mission theology deserves
further exploration for a number of reasons: Spirit language is shared between Chris-
tians of very different theological persuasions. It is a vehicle of ecumenical discus-
sion. The language of the spirit-world is found in the Bible, and for that is it part of
the biblical tradition; but also it has potential for a theology of pluralism. The lan-
guage of spirits can we applied to social, economic and political movements and
forces, both destructive and constructive. Spirits are connected with matters of the
human heart, giftedness, morality and evangelism. The language of Spirit and spirits
can be applied also to unity, dialogue and reconciliation.
Through the church, as the body of Christ Jesus, the Spirit carries out the mission,
entrusted by the Father ad the risen Jesus. To do so, the Spirit gives each and every
person, each and every community his charisms, as energies for collaboration with
mission. Moreover, the Holy Spirit does not restrict the number of collaborators: he
speaks through the prophets, both through Christian prophecy as well as through
prophetic people in other religions, and even through secular prophets. The Spirit is
also the Spirit of matter-energy and of all kind of interconnectedness in a universe in
expansion40.

36
Cf. Taylor, 1972: 83-84, 133.
37
“Redemptoris Missio” of Pope John Paul II (1990) included a relevant chapter is headed “The Holy
Spirit: the principal agent of Mission”: “The mission of the Church is… the work of the Spirit… The
coming of the Holy Spirit makes them witnesses and prophets…. The Spirit gives them the ability to
bear witness to Jesus with boldness… The working of the Spirit is manifested particularly in the im-
petus given to the mission which, in accordance with Christ’s words, spreads out from Jerusalem to
all of Judea and Samaria, and to the farthest ends of the earth” (RM: n. 24). “The Spirit manifests
himself in a special way in the Church and in her members”…. Whatever the Spirit brings about in
human hearts and in the history of peoples, in cultures and religions serves as a preparation for the
Gospel” (RM). In the Orthodox thought “the sending” of mission is essentially the sendig of the
Spirit (Jn 14:26), who manifests precisely the life of God as communion (2 Cor 13:13).
38
Orthodox theologian have preferred to use the concept of martyria, or witness, to describe this
concept, rather than the word “mission” which may be associated in Orthodox minds with Western
political programs of expansion, often at the expense of Orthodox lands.
39
D., Bosch, Transforming mission, 1991, p. 370.
40
Cf. DAVID TOOLAN, At home in the Cosmos, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 2001, pp. 127-192.
 14

The Holy Spirit displays his mission counting with all the human beings of good
will and their charismatic creativity and activity. The Holy Spirit uses a huge range of
charisms, and all the physical and cosmic processes to carry out his mission. The Spir-
it will never show his face, will never appear, but is in everything, being the main
protagonist of the Mission, the great facilitator, the great unifier. "The mission is
one" (Apostoliocam Actuositatem, n.2), but, in the background, the Spirit acts
through a great variety of ministries, services, charisms and dynamisms. All they
form the “fellowship of Spirit’s mission”.
In this epochal change we have to emphasize the need of a new vision, of dis-
cernment of Spirit, involvement in the Missio Spiritus at its different levels:
The need of a new vision, a new awareness of the new context. Without that,
mission becomes blind, an activity outside of reality. For that purpose the
Spirit arises visionaries, dreamers, people gifted for offering us new maps,
new itineraries, new horizons. Jesus complained many times of the blindness
of the leaders in Israel, totally close to the epochal change that his life
brought about.
The need of discernment between so many spirits, good and evil: unfortu-
nately we are not living in a peaceful and innocent world. If we look at our
history with apocalyptic eyes, immediately we will see opposite forces strug-
gling among themselves. We have not collaborate with all sort of spirits, only
with the Spirit of God and those collaborating with him. To learn the art of
discernment and involvement in the mission of the Holy Spirit we need a
strong spirituality, contextualized in our times, the mystic of the “open eyes”.
The conviction that mission is always shared mission, as collaborator of the
“Missio Dei”. Any group or person monopolizes mission. The mission of the
Spirit happens at different levels: physical, anthropological, Christian, charis-
matic level. Missio Dei is network mission, with interconnections even there
where we do not imagine. In this mission of the Spirit, we Christians, offer
that what is given to us: the Christian Faith, the Gospel of Jesus, the Revela-
tion trough the Books of the Bible, our apocalyptic vision of the Kingdom of
God, the celebration of the everlasting Covenant in the Sacraments, a catho-
lic community of sisters and brothers called, anointed and sent to the world.
But the Spirit never acts on behalf of those who collaborate with him in a violent
way. "Where the Spirit is, so too is freedom”. Hence, he applies no pressure and so it
is very easy to "sadden the Spirit" in this game of freedoms in which we reject com-
pliance and try to impose our own will.

3. Mission as “new evangelisation”

In this mission of the Spirit we Christians offer that which we have been given: the
Christian faith, the Gospel of Jesus, the revelation through the books of the bible,
our apocalyptic vision of the Kingdom of God, the celebration of the definitive Cove-
 15

nant in the sacraments, a catholic community of sisters and brothers, called, anoint-
ed and sent to the world.
But at this time and in this context, the mission of the Spirit is configured as “new
evangelisation”. The language of the evangelisation is not new. Evangelisation began
to be used in the 1950s to speak of the first announcement of the faith and to distin-
guish it from catechesis. It was the document of Puebla (1979 – Third General Con-
ference of Latin American Bishops) which, for the first time, used the expression
“new evangelization” when speaking of “new situations that arise from socio-
cultural changes and that require a new evangelisation” (Puebla, n. 366). John Paul II
starting from his first visit to Poland in 1979 frequently used this expression with dif-
ferent meanings41. In Vita Consecrata n. 81 he says that:
“The new evangelization demands that consecrated persons have a thorough
awareness of the theological significance of the challenges of our time. These
challenges must be weighed with careful joint discernment, with a view to renew-
ing the mission.”
The Lineamenta of the next synod tries to describe the meaning of “new evangeli-
sation”, both in a negative way (what it is not) and in a positive way (what it is) 42. In
the first part the Lineamenta describe what is new evangelisation: meaning, new
schemes, new spirituality, new ways of being church, first evangelisation. In the se-
cond part the Lineamenta take on the theme from the perspective of the proclama-
tion of Jesus Christ: encounter and communion with Him, transmission and peda-
gogy of faith –lived out by the Church-, subjects, style and fruits. In the third part the
Lineamenta concentrate on an important and decisive aspect of the new evangelisa-
tion: the initiation into the Christian experience, understood as process and as sac-
ramental celebration. This third part is divided into four subsections: the first an-
nouncement and the discourse on God, the processes of initiation and the sacra-
mental celebrations, the catechesis and the educative mission of the church and the
condition of witnesses who are called to exercise the ministry of the new evangelisa-
tion.
To say “new evangelisation” is, in itself, redundant because it means “new Good
News”. But the tautology is significant. It means the sudden revelation of something
that is there and we have not been able to see;
“the new evangelisation is thus converted into a remembrance of a crisis, in
acknowledgement of an obvious fact: that the Christian Good News has been con-
verted for many into an old story of a past death. It is important therefore, to

41
Cf. Redemptoris Missio, n.33.
42
Cf. BRUNO SECONDIN, Originalità e fragilità, I Lineamenta del Sinodo 2012, en “Consacrazione e
Servizio”. 2 Febbraio 2012, p. 33.
 16

show it again with its original force, in its pristine creativity of a renewed experi-
ence” 43.
The new evangelisation wishes to introduce notable innovations in the proposal
or communication of our faith through new languages, methods, styles that respond
to the challenges that are presented today44. It does not deal with announcing a new
Gospel, rather announcing the Gospel in a new way to our society of today.
The new evangelisation is the initiative of the Spirit to heal the church of a trans-
versal paralysis that afflicts it; thus the new evangelisation is also a transversal task
that has to influence and configure every dimension of the church and of our Orders
and Congregations.
In summary: this is called the pacemaker that the Spirit grants today to the church
“mission of new evangelisation”. Do we allow, those of us who belong to the Conse-
crated Life, the Spirit to implant this pacemaker into us?

III. EXPECTATIONS - THE NEW BEATS OF THE HEART

In many places the heart of the church is already beating in a powerful way send-
ing the blood and life throughout. Because of this, our expectations are more of a
prayer than a prediction based on our efforts: “do not take from us, O Lord, your Ho-
ly Spirit” (Ps. 50).

1. The beat of a new experience of God in our time

The new evangelisation invites us to “initiate in the Christian experience”. But one
may ask: in what does the Christian experience exist in these times? The change
produced in Europe is of such calibre that it asks for a new interpretation of the
Christian experience precisely in order to be faithful to the original apostolic experi-
ence. In every era the Spirit shows us how time to rediscover and re-interpret revela-
tion and also to live it in a new way. For us it is not valid a Christian experience that
sends us to a past that has to be repeated. Women such as Madelaine Delbrel, Etty
Hillesum and Dorothy Day have shown us the Christian experiences in conditions of
poverty, of exclusion, of death. The Cistercian martyrs of Algiers, the Christian wom-
en imprisoned in Eastern countries, demonstrate to us how the Spirit activates the
Christian experience in situations of desperation and death.
We call ourselves religious because our life is permanently referred to God. Be-
cause of this we must re-invent our way of living, feeling, conceiving God. It is not
worth supplying the lack of life with rituals from the past that say very little to our
society.

43
Cf. ANDRÉS TORRES QUEIRUGA, Del terror de Isaac al Abbá de Jesús: hacia una nueva imagen de Dios,
Verbo Divino, Estella, 2000, p. 325.
44
Lineamenta, nn.1-9.
 17

The living out of the Gospel is the primary way of evangelising; the first impulse
that the missionary heart of the church needs. Yes, we must learn a new way of be-
ing Christians and religious in this century and in the Europe of today:
“These new circumstances in the Church's mission make us realize that, in the end,
the expression "new evangelization" requires finding new approaches to evangeli-
zation so as "to be Church" in today's ever-changing social and cultural situa-
tions”45.
When this happens, a new vibration appears in the world46.
In the background, in each era, the Covenant needs to be “renewed” with our
God, and it is not correct to initiate it with formulations of the Covenant that are al-
ready outdated.

2. The beat of the mission in new situations.

We have not to forget that the Spirit is not only the Spirit of my Congregation;
that the Holy Spirit is not imprisoned in our own charism. She is the Spirit of the
Church and Churches, the Spirit of humanity, the Spirit of nature and creation, the
Spirit of Cosmos. Our Congregations and its charisms are not the only concern of the
“mission Spiritus”. The One who has the mission of leading us, is also leading the
whole reality. If we share the vision of the Spirit we will contemplate the mega-
project in which we are inserted. The book of Revelation talks about “the seven eyes,
which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth” (Rev 5:6). The vision
that sustains the Spirit’s mission goes beyond the very limited concerns of our Con-
gregations and beyond the same concerns of the Church.
Where the Holy Spirit is leading us? The answer will not be: “Take care of domes-
tic questions and problems! Be your main concern the growth in numbers, in mem-
bership the growth of your institutions”. The Holy Spirit includes congregations,
communities, the church, in a mega-project of global transformation, the Kingdom of
God. The Holy Spirit is calling us to an amazing shared mission, in which are included
people of good will among all the peoples, races, cultures, young and old, women
and men; but not only that: the processes of nature, of the earth, of the cosmos are
also included!
Can you imagine the profile of a Congregation shaped by this vision of mission?
Right, we are very small and perhaps insignificant in this whole; we can exclaim with
the Psalmist: “When I look up at the heavens, which your fingers made, and see the
moon and the stars, which you set in place, of what importance is my congregation
and am I, that you should notice them?” (Psal 8:3-4). The Spirit looks at our humble
and limited condition. However, He calls us –as religious- to put our imprint in this
collective performance of the Kingdom of God.

45
Lineamenta, n.9).
46
A. TORRES QUEIRUGA, o.c., p. 350.
 18

Where is the Spirit sending us? The Lineamenta of the next Synod remind us of
new situations:
“The foregoing activity gives the specific character and force to the new evangeli-
zation, which must consider these sectors of life, observe what is happening and,
knowing how to overcome an initial reaction of defence and fear, objectively
gather the signs of what might be new along with inherent challenges and weak
points. A "new evangelization" means, then, to work in our local Churches to de-
vise a plan for evaluating the previously mentioned phenomena in such a manner
as to transmit the Gospel of hope in a practical way. In the process, the Church
builds herself up by accepting these challenges and becoming more and more the
artisan of the civilization of love.” 47
The new situations are: the cultural situation in the background (a world in pro-
cess of evermore greater secularisation), the great phenomenon of migration and
the phenomenon of globalisation48, the situation of the social media, the economic
situation, the situation of scientific and technological investigation and the political
situation49.
These are situations that speak to us of the need of a serious change of system
and of our evangelical, risky and audacious presence in them. Although as religious,
our preferred situations are those in which are debated the cause of the least and of
the poorest. To the question of John the Baptist, -who would he be today- we ought
to respond with Jesus, look, see! The poor are evangelised. This is the dream of our
Founders and Foundresses for this time. And we will also say: “the poor evangelise
us”. The Spirit carries out this admirable transformation of roles. Evangelisers evan-
gelised, evangelised evangelisers.

3. The beat of the bridal and maternal church

The New Testament testifies how close Jesus and the Spirit are. Jesus said to his
disciples in the last Supper:
“But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I am going away. For if I do
not go away, the advocate will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you”
(Jonh 16:7).
At the end of the book of Revelation the Spirit and the Church long and claim for
the coming of Jesus:
“the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say: “Come!”
(Rev 22:17).

47
Lineamenta, n.7.
48
“In such a situation, the new evangelization can provide the opportunity no longer to perceive the
Church's mission as a north-south or west-east dynamic but one which transcends the geographic
confines of past missionary activity. Today, all five continents are fields of missionary activity.” Lin-
eamenta, n.6.
49
Cf. Lineamenta, n. 6.
 19

A community shaped by the mission of the Spirit is inserted in the ecclesial body
of Jesus, brings about the mission of Jesus from a peculiar and charismatic perspec-
tive. It is a community blessed with the presence of the Spirit but also longing for the
coming of the Lord. And because of this, that Congregation –shaped by the Spirit-
wants to fly and reach the ends of the earth, to make known to everybody this won-
derful revelation.
In this way the bride of Jesus –the Church- becomes by the power of the Spirit,
mother. The seed of the Gospel and of Faith is planted and arise in new peoples with
new faces, new possibilities. A religious life mission-shaped will be granted by the fe-
cundity of motherhood. Evangelization and sacramental celebrations have to be con-
templated from the perspective of Missio Spiritus and expression of the maternity of
the Church. In this sense, baptism is fundamentally a missional act, in which a be-
liever in Jesus is assumed in the missio Dei, as a son or a daughter of God and steps
out with Jesus for a life for others. Similarly, every celebration of the Eucharist is an
missional act in which we share the self-pouring of the body and blood by Jesus on
the cross; as the word "Mass" implies, the Eucharist is also and act of mission, a
sending of the mission-shaped church so that it is broken for the life of the world in
remembrance of Christ.
A mission-shaped religious life knows and is ready to sit at the margins of society.
Therefore, it is not afraid of being a "minority" group; nor is it afraid that due to its
prophetic witness it will be hated by others, both within and without the church. Tri-
umphalism and head-counting has no place within a mission-shaped religious life.
When the Spirit comes upon us, we follow, stepping behind the Spirit who always
goes ahead. Surely, the Spirit will move us afresh in changing contexts: there is al-
ways room for surprises and little room for fixed order and traditional strategies50. A
congregation mission-shaped tries to be in a permanent openness to God and in God
to the other, and to the world. An unmissionary religious life does not belong to the
church. The body not broken for the life of the world is not the body of Christ.
French theologians and pastoralists speak to us today of the ‘pastoral of engen-
dering’. I would call it “mission of engendering”. This would seem to me very appro-
priate for our form of life. In the background is the image of a Mother Church that
acquires identity in Her children and is teacher and educator (Mater et Magistra). It
is the Church, moved by the Spirit, that makes it possible that people “are born

50
Philip, the evangelist who was preaching successfully to a large crowd in the midst of a city, is sud-
denly led away along a desert road to meet a lonely individual (Acts 8). A reluctant Peter is sent to
a God-fearing gentile. Peter learns, to his surprise, that the Spirit acts in totally unheard of ways for
which Peter and the Jewish Christians were in no way prepared. Without a radical insistence upon
the priority of attuned discerning of God s already up-and-running presence and work in the world,
there can be no transformation from a church-shaped mission to a mission-shaped church.
 20

again” or rather begotten again51. It is not engendered when one wishes, but rather
when one is able:
“everything has its own time, to be born to die. (Eccl. 3, 1-2).
And so the question is if Europe finds itself in a “favourable time” for this. The
Church believes that it is. The consecrated life believes that it is. This is the moment
that this European religious life is converted into the spiritual father and mother for
many of those who are wandering without direction, who are in need of compas-
sion, somebody who will listen to them, to receive them, to receive them into the
family. Fathers and mothers of the elderly, of the young, of children, of the home-
less, divorced and the socially marginalised, etc. The religious life has to recover its
maternal character, its Marian dimension: “let it be done to me according to your
Word”, “do what He tells you”. Everything can be reborn through the Word because
the Christian scriptures have the capacity to engender faith. Paul spoke that the
Church was founded “like a mother”, like a father (1 Thes. 2,7.11.13). The Word of
God is not to be shackled. It is to be scattered through sound, images, internet, hu-
man conversations, books, etc.
In our time the missionary ministry is tied to, above all, encounters that can hap-
pen in very different places and situations. It deals with encounters in which the
Gospel is presented through the biblical text being read in public, in groups or in pri-
vate, directed to others. The mission achieves it objective in the moment in which
the Gospel is born in those who receive it. The Holy Spirit works in the heart of peo-
ple before the explicit announcement of the Gospel reaches them. It also acts in
people who do not decide to form part of the Christian community. Some people
who crossed paths with Jesus granted his humanity without making themselves His
disciples. Not everybody that was cured by Jesus, like the women with a haemor-
rhage or the Canean woman became his disciples. Nor did Jesus attribute to Himself
the fact that the Centurion or the Canean believed in him: rather he admired them
for their great faith. The Holy Spirit acts where we least expect it. Not always in the
explicit confines of the Church.
Those who are born into the faith or who are born again, know that everything
has to be attributed to the one Father, Abba: “let no one call you father…one alone
is your Father” and to the Spirit that cries out within us “Abba!”. He who could make
“children of Abraham from stones” is able to achieve multiple, unexpected births in
the faith. Because of this we are in the favourable time to collaborate in the “missio
Spiritus”.

4. The beat of the restructuring for the new evangelisation

It must become evident in our theological reflection that the identity of religious
life is intrinsically "missional; not only for active and apostolic religious life, but even

51
Cf. PH. BACQ – CH. THEOBALD (eds), Una nueva para el Evangelio. Hacia una pastoral de engendram-
iento, Desclée de Brouwer, Bilbao, 2011
 21

for the monastic and contemplative religious life. If they are not missionary, they do
not belong to the Christian Church. Our very nature is rooted in the identity of the
triune God as the "sending God."52 Mission does not come from religious life; it is

from mission and in the light of mission that religious life has to be understood"53.

Emil Brunner stated: “The Church exists by mission as fire exist by burning”. Likely
we can say: “Religious life exists by mission as fire exists by burning”. Mission is not a
function of religious life, but rather, religious life is a function in the already up-and-
running mission of God in the world. The challenge now is how our Institutes, Com-
munities and persons may become transformed into missional congregations, com-
munities and persons, or how to move from religious institutes shaping missions to
being a mission-shaped religious institutes.
Mission pulls religious life to overcome boundaries and to enter into the cross-
cultural dialogue. This cross-cultural mission of Religious Life has been for many in-
stitutes their life-blood and well-being. In mission religious life breaths fresh cultural
life, it is inspired by new thought-forms, and enriched by new practices.54 Mission is

the keynote of the religious life existence, activity, and flourishing in the world.
Community problems have not to be the main concern: the common passion for
mission is the occasion for the divided communities to enter into a shared reflection
that may produce deeper unity: unity in mission through common goals, shared
practices, new dreams55.

Many religious Congregations in Europe are in a process of “restructuration”. The

goal of this process is not our survival, neither the solution to internal problems, but
rather to offer a better service in our charismatic mission. It is the mission that is the
cause of the restructuring and its fundamental priority. Because of this, our main
concern is a missionary service in Europe, in the new areopagi, in new places, in new
ways of being Church. In order to carry out this mission the Spirit counts on every

52
As a key example, see DARRELL L GUDER (ed ), Missional Church. A Vision for the Sending of the Church
in North America, William Β Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids 1998.
53
See JÜRGEN MOLTMANN, The Church in the Power of the Spirit. A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiolo-
gy, Harper & Row, New York, 1977, p. 10.
54
This theme runs throughout many of the essays included in ANDREWS F WALLS, The Missionary
3

Movement in Christian History, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 1996, pp. 1-25. On the role of mission in
the New Testament church, see Ν Τ WRIGHT, The New Testament and the People of God, Fortress
Press, Minneapolis, 1992, pp. 360-361.
55
The last World Council of Churches' Faith and Order study document, The Nature and Mission of the
Church, puts it as follows: "Mission thus belongs to the very being of the Church. This is a central
implication of affirming the apostolicity of the Church, which is inseparable from the other three
attributes of the Church—unity, holiness and catholicity" WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES, The Nature
and Mission of the Church A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement, Faith and Order Paper 198
(Geneva World Council of Churches, 2005), §35 (hereafter, Nature and Mission) In addition to Na-
ture and Mission, other significant initiatives that can be noted as examples of this trend are the
2010 world mission conference held at Edinburgh (at the centennial of the ground-breaking 1910
Edinburgh conference).
 22

person and grants them different charisms; in the same way “restructuring” means
imagine a new missionary organisation in Europe.
In the past and perhaps in the present, our religious provinces have missionary
projects in countries of other continents. We should ask ourselves: and what do we
do with our European continent and how do we care for the migration of thousands
upon thousands of displaced people who come to us and wish to establish them-
selves here?
Another preoccupation of mission in the process of restructuring is how to come
closer to those Christians of identity and not belonging, those affected by the new
atheism, to those men and women of other established religions in Europe with all
the subsequent poverty and discrimination which comes with it: the discourse about
God is very urgent and necessary.
I believe that not a few of our institutes must open themselves more to the whole
of Europe, to spread themselves in different countries, in small communities, but
passionate for the proclamation of Jesus Christ, for the spread of the Gospel. People
are being burnt out in institutions that impose on us on all sides, when we are being
called to ‘set alight’.
This end is responded to when the objective is not to maintain our projects, even
though reduced, but rather that the Church makes available new evangelisers. So
that we place ourselves intelligently and wisely in these new situations so that we
make available the emergence of new ways of being church.

5. The beat of leadership for mission

Finally and in conclusion I would like to highlight the importance of a leadership
with a vision for mission within the consecrated life. We cannot allow ourselves at
this time of great change and of a new evangelisation a leadership which is superfi-
cial, activist, improvised and arbitrary.
The leaders of our communities need vision. And for this it is necessary that in
their formation they participate in educative processes that make them aware of the
moment in which we find ourselves. It is true that the people called to lead our
communities are limited and do not have at their disposal “the seven eyes of the
Spirit”. But today more than ever, they have to “see” with the eyes of others. For the
good of all, they should dedicate time to discover new possibilities of mission, to ask
of the Spirit vision and docility.
If I could resume in a few words the characteristics of missionary leadership I
would highlight the following points: that they be persons:
With a profound sense of “missio Dei” capable of bringing to light the pres-
ence of the Holy Spirit – the presence of the Divine – into situations of human
existence here in Europe. Persons who – like the prophet Ezequiel – feel what
 23

the people feel and cry and suffer with them56, or just as Jesus suffered and
cried for Jerusalem.
Disposed to learn – during their years in office – how to collaborate in the
mega-project of the Spirit –that goes before us-, obedient to the collective
charism and to the individual charisms; and being in this sense more “spon-
sors” or facilitators rather than mere imposing “directors”.
Becoming progressively more understanding of the cultural, religious, racial,
gender, sexual orientation differences and that they exercise the necessary
skills to manage the differences, to welcome them and to take on the histo-
ries of the people, especially the marginalised, those who have been silenced
and displaced, of the victims; the theologian Miroslav Volf says that a leader
in the Church ought to be a catholic person capable of being enriched by oth-
ers.

CONCLUSION

I began my conference referring to Katharine Jefferts Schori who said “we find
ourselves in a church in cardiac crisis”
We also saw that the cardiac crisis affects the consecrated life. The awareness
and the experience of our participation in the missio Dei, the missio Spiritus is the
pacemaker that will stimulate the rhythm of our heart.
The mission is not to be confused with the work, with the things that we have to
do. We have to free ourselves from the anxiety of agendas. The Holy Spirit is always
at work including when we are asleep or distracted. The mega-project of the King-
dom of God moves ahead despite our faults and limitations. In changing times we
are granted a new vision: the seven eyes of the Spirit. We are granted a new energy.
The Spirit actualises our charisms. The Spirit of the new Covenant gives us hearts of
flesh in place of hearts of stone. And surely then we will hear the strong beat of the
heart that cries Mission!, Mission!, Mission!.

56
Like the prophet Ezechiel (Ez 3:15).
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“MISSIO DEI”: HOW TO UNDERSTAND OUR MISSION

IN EUROPE IN THIS EPOCHAL CHANGE
WHEN MISSION SHAPES RELIGIOUS LIFE

JOSÉ CRISTO REY GARCÍA PAREDES, CMF

CONFERENCE ON CONSACRATED LIFE
HAYES, 29TH OF MAI, 2012

OUTLINE 1

I. THE SITUATION: CARDIAC CRISIS? 2

1. Disheartened by the cultural situation of the West 3

2. A Christianity of identity but not belonging. 5

3. We are the problem! 6

II. THE KEYS: THE PACEMAKER 6

1. The ‘missio Dei’ - ‘missio Spiritus’ 6

a) Dei-centric perspective of Mission 6
b) The Mission of the Son 8
c) The Mission of the Spirit and its Dimensions 9
d) The Mission of the “Creator Spirit” 11

2. Consequences of this understanding of mission 12

3. Mission as “new evangelisation” 14

III. EXPECTATIONS - THE NEW BEATS OF THE HEART 16

1. The beat of a new experience of God in our time 16

2. The beat of the mission in new situations. 17

3. The beat of the bridal and maternal church 18

4. The beat of the restructuring for the new evangelisation 20

5. The beat of leadership for mission 22

CONCLUSION 23