The Mission of the Church
There are too many people, of our generation, who do not know Christ or do not know him well enough (Pope St John Paul II).
These words of St John Paul II, addressed to the young people at World Youth Day (1989) in Santiago de Compostela, are just as true today.
We have been challenged by Archbishop John Wilson to be an evangelising and missionary archdiocese and there are hundreds of activities across our parishes that offer a beautiful response to that challenge. That said, there remain too many people who do not know Christ or do not know him well enough.
Much of our parochial activity, the usual patterns, programmes and events, is good. The encouragement, as part of Some Definite Service, is to develop and sustain parish plans which appreciate current activity and celebrate the good. We must recognise, however, that there are often groups less well served than others, there are people who feel under-equipped to respond to the Gospel imperative of mission, and that our programmes, good as they are, sometimes fail to bear the fruit we hope that they will.
The world has changed. Pope Francis said that we live less in ‘an age of change, but [rather in] a change of age.’ We are no longer in a place where religious practice is normative or even deemed desirable by most of the population. The ‘Christendom’ model of sustaining long-held patterns of parish activity, focussed on maintenance, is almost impossible to defend. A deliberate and faithful emphasis on mission and outreach is necessary today.
Jesus instructed his apostles to go, to make disciples, to baptise and to teach. This remains his commission. ‘No believer, no institution of the Church can avoid the supreme duty to proclaim Christ to all peoples.’ (Redemptoris Missio 3). There are clear implications for the interconnected areas of Evangelisation, Catechesis and Formation, and for parish life in general. The goal of Some Definite Service is to encourage parishes to plan their intentional and active response the Lord’s commission (Mt 28:19-20) with a network of volunteers who have an understanding of their mission to call people to Christ.
