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At the beginning of his message for World Mission Sunday 2019 Pope Francis wrote:
For the month of October 2019, I have asked that the whole Church revive her missionary awareness and commitment as we commemorate the centenary of the Apostolic Letter Maximum Illud of Pope Benedict XV (30 November 1919). Its farsighted and prophetic vision of the apostolate has made me realize once again the importance of renewing the Churchs missionary commitment and giving fresh evangelical impulse to her work of preaching and bringing to the world the salvation of Jesus Christ, who died and rose again.1
The President of the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS), Archbishop Giampietro Dal Toso, has invited continental assemblies of the PMS to undertake a thorough theological reflection on the missio ad gentes ... with the aim of giving a theological foundation ... to the activities of missionary animation carried out by our Mission Societies.2
The theological foundations that are proposed as relevant in His Excellencys letter were identified to include:
* the universal mediation of Christ
* the church as a sacrament
* the role of the sacraments in the missio ad gentes
* the sense of interreligious dialogue
* the process of inculturation.
A theological reflection on the mission ad gentes is a reflection on the praxis of that mission, in the light of the scriptural foundations, ecclesial tradition and contemporary experience.
A developing theology of mission must take account of the changing understanding of mission and evangelisation in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, with an openness to the action of the Spirit in the world, in cultures and religions, and in other worldviews, undertaken with all people of goodwill, with the church being sign and sacrament of God in the world.
The Context
From the beginning, Christians have always reached out to the world. It was not just Paul who felt compelled to proclaim the Gospel to the Gentiles. Ordinary Christian merchants and traders told the story of Jesus wherever they went. Luke in Acts 11:19-29 credits not the apostles but unknown Christians from Cyprus and Greece with taking Christianity to Antioch, where the believers were first called Christians, and from which the church spread throughout the Mediterranean.
Mission, as overseas mission, got a strong...