Mizaél Donizetti Poggioli, CM , on the feast of St. Francis Regis Clet, reflects on two key concepts of mission. As missionaries, we leave our own world in order to enter into the world of the poor, in order to be with the poor and defend their cause. The Missionary is the first one to be evangelized in the midst of those people whom he is to serve.
He writes…
The concept of an itinerant mission reminds us of Saint Francis Regis Clet whose feast we celebrate on February 18th. After having experienced the ravages of the French Revolution, Francis asked to be sent to the foreign missions. He was sent to China and arrived in Macao on October 15th, 1791.
He ministered in China for thirty years and was then strangled to death. He was beatified on May 27th, 1900 and canonized by John Paul II in 2001.
In his gospel Saint John refers to the mission of Jesus Christ and those words are fundamental to any understanding of our own mission. In the gospel Jesus states: I came from the Father and have come into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father (John 16:28). The word “came” implies movement, itinerancy … Jesus “came” from the Father and then, “returns” to the Father.
Jesus placed before his disciples this concept of “coming” and “going”. In the conclusion of Saint Matthew’s gospel, we find Jesus telling his disciples: Go and make disciples of all nation (Matthew 28:19). With those words Jesus gave his disciples an itinerant mission and this characteristic of itinerancy is the source of every mission. As Jesus engaged in an itinerant mission, so then he invites his followers to do the same: Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature (Mark 15:15). Like Jesus, his followers are to do the same.
Vincent de Paul was very clear about this concept of Jesus. He told the Missionaries: Our vocation is to go, not just to one parish, not just to one diocese, but all over the world; and to do what? To set people’s hearts on fire, to do what the Son of God did. He came to set the world on fire in order to inflame it with his love. What do we have to desire but that it may bum and consume everything. My dear confreres, let us reflect on that, please. It is true then, that I am sent not only to love God but to make him loved. It is not enough for me to love God, if my neighbor doesn’t love him. I have to love my neighbor as the image of God and the object of his love, and to act in such a way that people, in their turn, love their Creator, who knows them and acknowledges them as his brothers, whom he has saved, and that by mutual charity they love one another for love of God, who has loved them so much as to hand over his own Son to death for them.[1]
All of this has great significance for our Vincentian mission. In the first place, this concept means that we are to leave our own world in order to enter into the world of the poor, in order to be with the poor and defend their cause. It means that we are to go to the peripheries of the world where we will encounter the poor and the marginalized. Secondly, our spirituality is to be one of renunciation or that which is called a kenotic spirituality. We are to have an attitude of renunciation like that of Jesus … this renunciation is necessary in order to understand the ways of the Spirit, the spirit who is alive in the various areas of our mininstry. The Spirit walks before the missionary and points out the way. Thus the Missionary is the first one to be evangelized in the midst of those people whom he is to serve (CLAPVI, year XXXV, page 72).
Translated: Charles T. Plock, CM
[1] CCD:XII:215; CCD refers to Vincent de Paul, Correspondence, Conference, Documents, translators: Helen Marie Law, DC (Vol. 1), Marie Poole, DC (Vol. 1-13b), James King, CM (Vol. 1-2), Francis Germovnik, CM (Vol. 1-8, 13a-13b [Latin]), Esther Cavanagh, DC (Vol. 2), Ann Mary Dougherty, DC (Vol. 12); Evelyne Franc, DC (Vol. 13a-13b), Thomas Davitt, CM (Vol. 13a-13b [Latin]), Glennon E. Figge, CM (Vol. 13a-13b [Latin]), John G. Nugent, CM (Vol. 13a-13b [Latin]), Andrew Spellman, CM (Vol. 13a-13b [Latin]); edited: Jacqueline Kilar, DC (Vol. 1-2), Marie Poole, DC (Vol. 2-13b), Julia Denton, DC [editor-in-chief] (Vol. 3-10, 13a-13b), Paule Freeburg, DC (Vol. 3), Mirian Hamway, DC (Vol. 3), Elinor Hartman, DC (Vol. 4-10, 13a-13b), Ellen Van Zandt, DC (Vol. 9-13b), Ann Mary Dougherty (Vol. 11-12); annotated: John W. Carven, CM (Vol. 1-13b); New City Press, Brooklyn and Hyde Park, 1985-2009. Future references to this work will be inserted into the text using the initials [CCD] followed by the volume number, followed by the page number, for example, CCD:XII:215.
