Chapter II

Mission as a Christian Imperative

Introduction
An integral part of the definition of Christianity is its being missionary. This has to be seen
always as rooted in God's love for humanity and creation which, at one point in history, became very
clear and nuanced in the person and life of Jesus.
Lesson 1. The Church is missionary by nature
Context
- An activity on the common undderstanding that the function of something is determined by
its nature.
Inspired Word
- Paul’s image of the Church as People of God.
Church Teaching
1. Mission is the fundamental reality of the Christian life (Castro)
a. Life has purpose only to the extent that it has a missionary dimension (Kirk)
b. By virtue of baptism, mission is a Christian responsibility
c. In Christian anthropology, to be human is to be other-directed (missionary)
- Paul’s “nobody lives for him/herself” (Rom. 14)
- Schillebeeckx's anthropological constants: relating with others,
with society, with culture and history
- We are always kapwa to another (De Mesa, J.; Enriquez, V.)
2. The Church's link to Jesus obligates the Church to do mission
a. The vine and the branches (Jn. 15:1-17)
b. The Church as Body of Christ (Rom. 12; 1 Cor. 12; eph. 1:23; 5:30; Col.
1:18)
c. The great commission (Mt 28:19-20)
d. Jesus sends his disciples (Jn. 20:21)
d. Preaching Jesus from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth (Act 1:8)
Missionary Response
We cannot escape the fact that we are missionaries. As such, we have to cultivate the following
attitudes and their corresponding behaviors which are as follows: (incomplete)

The fundamental option is to live a life of mission

By: Fr. Tito Caluag Philippine Daily Inquirer / 04:30 AM February 16, 2020

Feb. 16—6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sirach 15:15-20; Psalm 119, R. Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!; 1 Corinthians 2:6-10;
Gospel—Matthew 5: 20-22A, 27-28, 33-34A, 37

One of the greatest gifts our faith has given us is freedom of choice. As we were often told,
God’s love is so perfect that he will never ask us to surrender this freedom, which lies at the heart of our
conscience and ability to love.

The first reading from Sirach says: “Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he
chooses shall be given him.” (5: 17)
 This echoes the beautiful lines from Deuteronomy: “I have set before you life and death, the
blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord,
your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him.” (Deuteronomy 30: 19-20)

This adds to our wondering about Jesus’ opening statement in today’s Gospel: “I have come not
to abolish but to fulfill [the law]” (Matthew 5: 17), since he, time and again, condemned the legalistic
hypocrisy of the Scribes as well as the Pharisees.

It is important to note that what scripture gives us are the principles of the law—the Ten
Commandments, the first five books of the Old Testament. This is the law known to the Jews then. The
philosophical underpinning of the law in scripture is knowing God’s will to which we are invited to
dedicate our self in loving obedience.

This particular Gospel passage is part of the Sermon on the Mount and comes after the moving
Beatitudes in Matthew, and the inspiring exhortation to be “salt of the earth and light of the world.”

Thus, Jesus declaring that he came to fulfill the law is the perfection of his loving obedience to
his Father’s will. “I came to do my Father’s will,” was a constant message of Jesus, and this was
expressed definitively in his loving obedience all the way to the Cross.

The freedom to choose is also what lies at the heart of this Sunday’s Gospel. Jesus sets before us
a greater love to choose when he raises the standards of the law to “fulfillment” in his loving obedience
as the Beloved Son.Greatest commandment

Jesus, toward the end of his ministry and life on earth, on the eve of fulfilling his mission, gives
us the greatest commandment, the synthesis of all commandments, of all the laws. “This is my
commandment: Love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life
for one’s friends.” (John 15: 12-13)

For us to love this way requires freedom to choose. What then are the conditions necessary to
develop and to allow this freedom of choice? What is the incentive or the inspiration to exercise this
freedom?

We develop the freedom to choose on two levels. First is the freedom from all that hinder us to
make a free choice: anxieties, traumas, fear, addiction, self-centeredness, greed and the like.

Second is the freedom to choose or dedicate our self to someone or something greater than our
self; a sense of purpose and meaning, a sense of mission that is an expression of God’s will, what he
wants us to do.

The freedom from and freedom to are developed through self-awareness and self-acceptance.
There is no freedom without a realistic self-knowledge and—after the knowledge—a realistic self-
acceptance.I add “realistic” because it is the totality of who we are, our truth, that we must be aware of
and accept; our blessings, talents and virtues, as well as our woundedness, brokenness, shortcomings,
vices and sinfulness.
SENSE OF BALANCE
To be aware of these is half the battle won, and to accept is the beginning of healing that leads
to regaining our wholeness or our reintegrating. This gives us equanimity, a sense of balance.

This equanimity becomes our platform to exercise this freedom of choice. With equanimity we
gain perspective, and with it we are able to have a realistic knowledge of our world, around us and in
the larger context.

What allows us to exercise the freedom to choose—now that we have a realistic knowledge of
our personal context and the context of the world within which we will exercise the freedom to choose
—are the virtues of hard work and discipline, to work on it in the day to day; step by step, slowly but
surely progressing to make the fruits of the choice a reality.

It is the daily discipline of living out this freedom to choose that makes it a reality. This is where
most of us “fail.” As Eric Ries (of “Lean Start Up” fame) points out, very few great ideas or visions for a
great product or business become a reality because of the lack of discipline to do the step by step, day
to day things that people often find “boring.”

This is very much the same as the annual “New Year’s Resolution” that soon—maybe in a few
months, a few weeks, a few days—falls by the wayside because the grand plan fails to have the resolve
to do the day-to-day hard work and discipline.

The final element in living out this freedom to choose is actually the element that made us
pursue this freedom in the first place. Begin with the end in mind, the dream, the vision that inspired us
at the outset to desire this freedom to choose.

The most basic choice, the fundamental option, is to live a life of mission, following what God
wants us to do in order to love and to serve him and others. I like to call it the original or founding
inspiration, the dreams of our youth infused with a sense of purpose, meaning and nobility.

At certain stages of our life, our journey, we revisit this original inspiration and each time the
inspiration becomes clearer, more realistic, yes, but not less noble or sublime. In fact, it becomes
somewhat heroic because as we grow older—hopefully, wiser and more full of grace—the choices
become clearer and more concrete.

It is at this stage of the journey that our freedom to choose becomes the freedom to dedicate
and to devote our life to God’s mission now more clearly expressed in following Jesus in his mission. This
is the heart of the freedom to choose as a Christian, to follow Christ more nearly.

When we faithfully live out this choice, loving and serving God in all things, we too become part
of Jesus’ fulfillment of the law: “Love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay
down one’s life for one’s friends.”—CONTRIBUTED
Chapter II
Lesson 2. The Church's relationship to the world is missionary in character

Inspired words and Church Teachings

Gospel
Who is the greatest?
Mark 9:33-37/Luke 22:24-30
Servant Leadership:
Mark 10:42-45/Matthew 20:25-28/John 13:12-17/Luke 22:26

Church teaching
a. The Church as servant (Gaudium et Spes)
- The Church is to serve and not to be served (GS 3)
- Christians must not shirk from their earthly responsibilities (GS 23)
- Doing the Father’s will is “taking a strong grip of the work at hand” (GS, 93)
b. The Church as leaven for society
- Church must read the “signs of the times” (GS 40)
- The world is the arena of God’s saving actions (GS, 23)
c. Church must learn from society
- The Church can and ought to be enriched by the development
of human social life (GS, 44)
- The Church is not only a teacher but also a learner (GS, 40)
d. Examples of societal transformations where the Church played an
important role
- politics, economic, social
As Christians, we must be missionaries by being servants to one another.