Mission Sunday will fall on Sunday 19 October.  It is a day important enough for the Holy Father to send us a Message.  It is a call for each one of us to ask ourselves: What shall we do with Mission Sunday in our parish and pastoral life?  Of course, we all are sent on a mission and to some extent we are all with a certain missionary spirit.

But do we have a real “missionary drive” which means a specific concern for those who, up to now, still ignore the Good News of Jesus Christ?  What  “missionary drive” shall we try to impart to our parish community and various Lay Associations?

OUR “MISSIONARY DRIVE” AT TWO LEVELS

For the last 20 years, our Church in Zambia and in the AMECEA countries has had a variety of pastoral plans.  It could be worthwhile to look back at them and try to see what type of “missionary drive” they had.  For instance, when we base everything on the setting up of Basic Christian Communities, are we concerned with the people at large or rather with the strengthening of the Church structures?

Or we may be promoting the three “selves” of the life of the Church: self-ministering, self-supporting, self-propagating.  In such efforts, where is our heart?  On the lives of the people at large or do we restrict ourselves to the life of the Church’s communities?  Still recently in Tanzania, the AMECEA countries reflected on the “deeper evangelisation”. Whom do we have in mind when we go through such reflections, the people at large or only the baptized people? 

All these pastoral plans are not exempt of missionary spirit.  But we may say that the “missionary drive” is not in the forefront of their preoccupations.  The main concern of our Churches does not seem to be the out-reach to the non-Christian, but rather the building up of strong Christian communities with people deeply rooted in their faith.  And rightly so, of course.

Nevertheless, the Mission Sunday and its subsequent Papal Message are here to remind us that even if we need to pay attention to ourselves and our needs as a community, we have also to be concerned with the needs of all the people at large, those who do not know the Good News of Jesus Christ.

THE “MISSIONARY DRIVE” AT LOCAL LEVEL.

At parish level it does not seem that Mission Sunday has a great impact.  First of all, the time is not very appropriate as very often we are busy concluding our main pastoral activities, just before the farming season starts again.  On top of it, we have already so much to do with our catechumens and the ongoing formation of our Christians.  As a consequence, for many of us, Mission Sunday remains mostly a financial issue with the offerings for the Propagation of the Faith and the Missionary Childhood.

Therefore, like at national level, we have a missionary spirit in most of our activities, yet the “missionary drive” is not in the forefront of our preoccupations.  We are aware of people of other faiths in our midst, like the Muslims.  But we have no time to be worried about them.  Let them join us, God’s willing, when they are ready!  And that is all.  This is a rather sketchy description of what may  happen in many places around us.  Hundred years ago, there were also many needs in Western Christianity.  But because Christians of the time had this “missionary drive”, they had sent to Africa thousands of missionaries with a lot of money in order that the Good News may also reach the people of Africa.  I believe that the Church in Africa and in Zambia has matured in many ways.  It has now to come one step further in taking its share in the “missionary drive” of the Church.

Such a move has begun positively with the 1999 letter of the Zambian Bishops entitled: The Missionary Family.  Yet, this good letter is more concerned with Family issues than missionary life of the Church.  Only its number 23 deals with missionary vocation.  May be, time has now come to go further for a real missionary out-reach.

ALL CALLED TO THE SAME FOLD

How to put in place a concrete missionary drive for today, here in Zambia?  We have to stop to look at ourselves and to our own needs.  We have to look beyond and feel the pain of those people, near or far away, who do not share the same faith with us.  While not forgetting the many things which are still to be done within the Church, we have to pay attention to the Words of Jesus: “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold.  These also I must lead  And they will hear my voice.” (John 10:16)

If there is a wound in the heart of Jesus because of those sheep who do not belong to his fold, then what about us?  Could we launch some activities at parish or diocesan level showing that we are concerned with those people and that we shall not accept to rest until all the sheep have reached the fold?

MORE POSITIVE LOOK AT THE NON-CHRISTIANS

For this year 2003, the Holy Father wants to guide us in such missionary drive.  In this yearly message, we may find many suggestions.  I have paid more attention to these words: “The ecclesial community contemplates the merciful faces of Jesus.  In those far from the faith and the Gospel.” (n.5).

In Chipata diocese, there is no doubt that we are facing a growing number of Muslims.  No doubt also that they would qualify as people “far from the faith and the Gospel”.  They do not belong to the fold of the Good Shepherd.  Nevertheless, they are his Sheep because they are his creatures like each one of us.  Because they are human beings and our fellow citizens, we have to live with them, work with them, respect them and, why not, love them.

The Holy Father is even calling us to one step further when asking “to contemplate in them the  merciful  face of  Jesus.”  And that will not be easy for many of us.  Because we have still in mind the recent events throughout the world, made by some in the name of the God of Islam.  Truly enough.  Nevertheless, we should be concerned much more by the Muslims of today, living here in Zambia, than by Islam in general or in other parts of the world.

Moreover, if Islam is one Faith in God the Merciful, yet it is divided in many families as much if not more than we Christians.  Before judging Islam following what we hear in our newspapers, we may be called upon to discover the Zambian Muslims, as they are now, without any prejudices.

To discover and “contemplate the merciful face of Jesus”, such is the great challenge brought about by the Holy Father.  Difficult, yes.  However, I doubt that it would be quite impossible.  Here, in Zambia, we have been quite eager to give back to the African Traditional Religion (ATR) its dignity and to see in it God’s hands.  If therefore we can see the “face of Jesus” in ATR, why not also in Islam?  It may be a long way to go, but it seems that it is the direction in which we are called to move.

TO BECOME CLOSER TO ONE ANOTHER

In any case, on a purely ethical point of view, we still ought to look at these people, our Muslim neighbours, in a more positive way, in a friendly or fraternal manner.  And how would we be able to do so without trying, just to meet them, to encounter them.  That would allow us to know them better, deeper.

There is somewhere in East Africa a Swahili proverb which says: “When minds are one, what is far comes near.”  Such proverb is commented as follows: whenever people care to know about others, even far away people come close in understanding, appreciation, love and cooperation.  Therefore, if Christians and Muslims we try to put our minds together, really we shall become closer to one another.

The time for real dialogue, on a partnership basis, may not be ripe, nevertheless there is nothing to prevent us from friendly and fraternal encounters, a sharing with our local neighbours who among others happen to be Muslims.  Could we not try to be closer to them and become with them “fellow-believers”?  Time may have come to stop talking about the “threat of Islam” (as I read it recently) and begin to be concerned with the people who are or have joined Islam?  Let the “experts” of all kind look at Islam for us while we put our hearts on our Muslims neighbours.  I am sure that we shall discover that many of them are neither a “threat” nor do they intend to be so.

CONCLUSION

Africa has drawn great profits from the Missionary Drive of Western Christianity.  Surely, it has to consolidate its Church as there will be no Missionary Drive without strong and genuine faith.  Mission Sunday is here to remind us to look beyond us and to be, right now, part of the Missionary Church through a genuine Missionary drive.  It is for the good of the whole Church at large, as much as for the Church in Zambia.  

The time of sheer proselytism is certainly over.  Here in Zambia, we have to start with humble and friendly encounters between believers during which we may find the opportunities for this “serene boldness which enables believers to pass on to others their experience of Jesus and the hope that motivates them” (Holy Father Message n.3).  May this prayer of the Roman Missal guide us in our efforts:

Almighty God, ever loving Father, your care extends beyond the boundaries of race and nation to the hearts of all who live.  May the walls which prejudice raises between us crumble beneath the shadow of your outstretched arms. (29th Sunday)

Gilles Mathorel, M.Afr.
Chipata Diocese
Chipata