Aspects
of Missio ad Gentes
Pio Estepa, SVD
(April 2005)
He has an MA in philosophy, a diploma in social communication, and a
PhD in social sciences. He served as lecturer of sociology and missiology
in the Pontifical Gregorian University [Rome, 1993-1995], Christ the
King Seminary [Manila, 1992-1993], Centro de Reflexión Teológica and
Universidad Intercontinental [Mexico D.F., 1995-2000], Pacific Regional
Seminary [Fiji, 2000], and Yarra Theological Union [Melbourne 2001-2003].
Fr Estepa is a full member of the Anthropos International. Since September
2003 he is serving as Secretary General of the Society of the Divine
Word.
On the other hand, the added phrase ad
gentes implies the ‘variables’ – the changing settings in which
that perennial mission needs to be fulfilled in creative fidelity. So
what are such variables in today’s world? At this dawn of a new millennium,
a growing number of thinkers claim that we no longer live in an age
of rapid and radical changes. Rather, so they say, we are now living
through a rapid and radical change of ages. Economists, for example,
speak of the historic shift from industrial to ‘post-industrial’ society.
Experts in social communication prefer to label it as a transition from
literate to ‘post-literate’ culture. Finally, artists and social scientists
prefer to describe it as a counter cultural movement from modern to
‘post-modern’ ethos. If these claims are true, then perhaps the Catholic
Church needs to convene a Third Vatican Council to discern anew the
‘signs of the times’.
The topic I was asked to expound is ‘aspects
of missio ad gentes’. With what I have briefly said so far, surely
you will agree that this title bites off much more than it can chew
in a quarter hour. So I propose to limit the focus of this last reflection
on just one constant – that of kerygma … and to discuss it in
the light of a timely variable – that of post modernity. Given
these limits of theme and time, we can now precisely state our central
question as follows: in what meaningful way(s) can we hand down the
Gospel to an emerging generation of post-modern peoples?
LET ME start an answer by narrating a personal
experience. Ten years ago, I went to Taizé for spiritual retreat. As
I prepared to leave the village, a monk of the community requested me
to stay a day more and serve as translator. So there I was among an
assembly of some 30 youngsters from France, Germany, and USA. When asked
what Christian traditions they belonged to, they laughed. Some readily
admitted to be no longer churchgoers since their late teens; others
would not even want to identify with any religion.
After his talk, the monk started an open
discussion by saying: ‘By the way you presented yourselves to one another
a while ago, most of you seem to be post-Christians’. These youngsters
welcomed his quip with friendly applause and laughter. Then he went
on, ‘So please tell me.... What of Christianity still attracts you?
The first ones to talk were the American
youngsters for whom I was translating. Before coming to Taizé, they
sauntered through Rome as tourists without guides. They recalled their
visit to the Sistine Chapel... the awe they felt upon seeing with their
own eyes the Creation of Adam and the Last Judgment –
known paintings of Michelangelo. In turn their French and German peers
echoed on what was so far said, this time by way of auditory experiences.
How ‘religiously’ haunting, so they said, were Schubert’s Ave Maria
or Händel’s Messiah … or the plain chants of the monastic community
in Taizé.
In short, their varied stories were commonly
saying: an aesthetic aah! spurred them onwards to some meaningful
aha! That may sound like a gigantic leap of abstraction. So let
us retrace our steps back to the world of concrete experience. I invite
you now to ponder for yourselves what may have touched them as masterpieces
of both art and faith....
PowerPoint Presentation on Michelangelo’s
Giudizio Universale (with Händel’s Messiah
as background music) — Duration: 4 minutes 20 seconds.
FRANCOPHONE SOCIOLOGY is promoting a neologism
– that of médiatisation. It refers to the current expansion of
information technology. Walkmans and TVs, cell phones and computers,
digital diaries and cameras, etc. are fast spreading. At the same time,
the Internet is making these affordable gadgets converse among themselves
worldwide and instantly through cables or satellites. The information
passing through that technology is presented less and less in literate
discursive form, and more and more in narrative audiovisual mode. Thus,
médiatisation is raising up a new generation that is electronically
sophisticated and ‘post-literate’.
Médiatisation and the ‘E-Generation’
Memory plays a crucial role in our inner
life. For what truly shapes our present is not the past –but how
we recall our past. From countless events that we had gone through,
our memory forgets many and selects just a few. But it weaves these
chosen few into a life story. Depending then on whether we narrate our
lives as sad or glad, we dim or light our hope for a brighter tomorrow.
If we then ask: who am I? a meaningful response is that each
of us is a story in search of a plot.
On the other hand, what is the Gospel? Is
it some system of rites and doctrines … or perhaps ethics? No, first
and foremost the Gospel is ‘good news’ – a love story about a caring
God in search of fallen humanity. Faith can then be understood as a
process of interweaving our life stories with the Gospel. Such narrative
dialogue sooner or later turns our human tragedies into what Dante poetically
called a ‘divine comedy’.
THE THEME of this symposium feasting 50 fruitful
years of Regina Mundi as a ‘kerygmatic’ institution is: The Feminine
Face of the Church. As I bring this last reflection to a close,
you may still be asking: ‘…what has such face got to do with missio
ad gentes?’ One may see a close link if I you allow me to re-entitle
my talk retroactively as: Narrative Evangelisation in a Post-modern
Age. I hope that you react by retorting: ‘… but what has being narrative
got to do with being feminine?’.
Even before Carl Gustav Jung proposed his
theory of archetypes in the collective unconscious, many and diverse
cultures have long related the masculine with the mind (razón),
and the feminine with the heart (corazón). Through my years of
having taught men and women, young and old, I have gained this much
insight into human nature…. The way to lead the mind to serious reflection
is through logical discourse. But the way to stir the heart to active
compassion is through resonant story.