Cathal BarryUltimately, the Church’s mission stimulates efforts towards Christian unity, writes Cathal Barry
Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations means the Church has been divinely sent as “the universal sacrament of salvation” and must preach the Gospel to everyone.
“Having been divinely sent to the nations that she might be ‘the universal sacrament of salvation’, the Church, in obedience to the command of her founder and because it is demanded by her own essential universality, strives to preach the Gospel to all men” (Second Vatican Council).
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising 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; and Lo, I am with you always, until the close of the age” (Mt 28:19-20).
Missionary
The Church is missionary because, according to God’s plan, she has her origin in the mission of Son and Spirit. The Second Vatican Council taught that the Church exists to bring all men into the communion of the Holy Trinity.
The Catechism teaches that it is from God’s love for all men that the Church in every age receives both the obligation and the vigour of her missionary dynamism.
God “desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). Therefore, the Church must go out to those who are seeking God and bring them the Gospel. Because she believes in God’s universal plan of salvation, the Church must be missionary, the Catechism states.
The Church teaches that the Holy Spirit is the “protagonist”, the principal agent of the whole of the Church’s mission, who guides the Church on her missionary paths, leading her to follow Christ’s path of service and self-sacrifice.
On her pilgrimage, according to the Catechism, the Church has also experienced the “discrepancy between her message and her human weaknesses. Only by taking the “narrow way of the cross”, can the People of God extend Christ’s reign. For “just as Christ carried out the work of redemption in poverty and oppression, so the Church is called to follow the same path if she is to communicate the fruits of salvation to men” (Second Vatican Council).
By her very mission, according to Ad Gentes (a key document on mission), the Church “travels the same journey as all humanity and shares the same earthly lot with the world: she is to be a leaven and, as it were, the soul of human society in its renewal by Christ and transformation into the family of God.”
Missionary endeavour requires patience, the Catechism points out. It begins with the proclamation of the Gospel to peoples and groups who do not yet believe in Christ, continues with the establishment of Christian communities and leads to the foundation of local churches. It must involve a process of inculturation, the Catechism teaches, “if the Gospel is to take flesh in each people’s culture”.
Ultimately, according to the Catechism, the Church’s mission stimulates efforts “towards Christian unity”.