Critique on the Re-Visioning of Mission in Contemporary Times

There is a trend roaming in the world today, regarding the phenomenon of doing mission. It is missio inter gentes. It is a flight away from missio ad gentes of the past, together with the motivations of salus animarum and plantatio ecclesiae. This is a response to the changes and challenges we face today in the ever globalized world, brought about by post-modernity. It is an act involving transcendence of urges to dominate and control, to transcend inherited dualisms, and transcend the anthropocentric will-to-power.

Today, more than ever, the missionaries are confronted to recognize the God they proclaim to the world, to be already present in the world and in the contextual realities to which they are proclaiming Him, long before they arrived and have encounter with these realities. Thus, to do mission today is to dialogue with these contextual realities, to listen to them for they too has God’s words, and God’s message to proclaim. This is a total deconstruction of the notion that the missionaries have the monopoly of God’s message to the world. It had became a thing of the past that the missionaries arrive in a place with the thought of treating all that do not belong to them, did not come from them, as evil, thus, must be destroyed and be replaced by what they have brought into this place. Whatever one encounters in a mission territory deserves recognition and appreciation. These contextual realities too speak about God and His message, for God spoke too to the people of these realities. God is present too in these realities.

Today’s mission is dialogue and in dialogue. We cannot anymore do mission in a passion similar of that of the past. Development in Catholic theology and missiology, prove such attempt to relive the past to be an exercise in futility today. We recognize God and his message in other religions, para-religions, cultures and traditions. We go to place with the intent of meeting people, learning from them about God, and celebrating God’s given blessings with them.

Edgar Javier’s exposition of the re-visioning of mission in contemporary time is worthy of praise. However, I would like to assess the existential underpinnings that seem to be wanting in Javier’s presentation of mission as a dialogue.

Dialogue is two way process between the ‘I’ and the ‘other,’ as the very etymology of the word suggests. It is not all above the I (messenger) teaching the other (receiver), alone. Dialogue also takes place vice versa. The I learns also from the other, making the other a messenger and the I a receiver of a message from the other. In this way, a missionary goes to place, not only with the intention of learning and listening from the other. The missionary too ought to communicate to others the message he carries with him; the message of salvation that Christ had won for the human race. This may seem a thing of the past, but it is not. The latter, alone, is, but with the former, the two forms a new way of doing mission. That is the novelty of the present paradigm. Mission is teaching the others and listening to them in their own contextual realities.

Missionaries must not be drifting through the pad of listening and letting the others express their particularity and uniqueness, alone. After listening and understanding the others, they ought to speak and bring forth what they have brought with them; the Gospel of Christ. With their feet firmly standing on a solid ground of faith in Christ, knowledge of who they are and the very reason why they are there, the missionaries may be able to dialogue and bear witness in the post-modern world.