Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - Missionary activity consists essentially in evangelisation, in the light of the principle of inculturation among people and groups who do not yet believe in Christ. Paul VI underlined the priority of evangelisation and its transcendent and eschatological character: “ Evangelisation will also always contain - as the foundation, centre, and at the same time, summit of its dynamism - a clear proclamation that, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, who died and rose from the dead, salvation is offered to all men, as a gift of God's grace and mercy.[57] And not an immanent salvation, meeting material or even spiritual needs, restricted to the framework of temporal existence and completely identified with temporal desires, hopes, affairs and struggles, but a salvation which exceeds all these limits in order to reach fulfilment in a communion with the one and only divine Absolute: a transcendent and eschatological salvation, which indeed has its beginning in this life but which is fulfilled in eternity.” (Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 27).
For his part John Paul II, convinced upholder of the necessity of new evangelisation affirms: “Proclamation is the permanent priority of mission. The Church cannot elude Christ's explicit mandate, nor deprive men and women of the "Good News" about their being loved and saved by God.."(” (Redemptoris missio, n. 44). Therefore evangelisation is part of the Church's nature. To evangelise is the grace and the vocation proper to the Church, its most profound identity is the revealing of God's plan in the world and in history. The final goal of evangelisation is to further the glory of God, to bring His plan for salvation in Christ to fulfilment. Evangelisation is the proclamation of the contents of the Gospel and the contents of the faith. It is necessary to distinguish between the encounter of cultures and the encounter of cultures with the Gospel. The term inculturation indicates a process of inserting the Gospel message into a certain socio-cultural environment, respecting those values which are in keeping with the Gospel.
Inculturation is the incarnation of the Gospel in the different cultures: in the light of the incarnation of the Word, the Church is communion, concern for all peoples and cultures and for the whole human family. The Gospel penetrates cultures, becoming incarnate in them, going beyond their cultural elements and elevating their values to the mystery of salvation which comes from Christ. The significance of the relation between Gospel and culture is set once and for all in the Lord Jesus, who became incarnate and assumed a culture and a language, and became part of the life of a people and announced the Gospel of the kingdom starting from that people's traditions and religious institutions. Inculturation is necessary for the Gospel to continue to penetrate the history of every ecclesial reality, valorising valid aspects in the light of which to incarnate the message of Christ.
These are no easy times for announcing the Gospel. Our world is violent and unjust: it needs morals, it needs firm points of reference, it pursues possession and power, it needs to return to being. Before this fragmented world the Church is fragile and missionary, there is no relation of identity between the Church and the world. We can say that modern culture is marked by two important elements: secularisation and modernity. On the one hand secularisation has meant a loss of religiosity, on the other modernity can be identified with a time of detachment, distancing and break. (7 - continua) (Agenzia Fides 11/12/2007; righe 40, parole 577)
