Mission was for our Father Founder, a dream and a vocation, which he realized following God's plans, always ready to search for His Will and to realize it. Giuseppe Allamano was born, in fact, in an era of strong missionary fervour. As a young man, he had the opportunity to meet Guglielmo Massaia, Capuchin friar, who became famous for his outstanding evangelizing activity in the Region of Kaffa (Ethiopia): that’s why Ethiopia as well as the missionary thrust will remain forever in the heart of the Founder.
The profound reason for his love for mission comes from his deep relationship with God: for him, mission endeavour entails sharing faith and salvation with those who do not yet know Jesus Christ. Our Father Founder was always very grateful for having received the gift of faith from a family with solid Christian background. He deemed a great gift the grace received from Baptism and knowing the day and hour of it, he celebrated that anniversary every year, and he also invited his sons and daughters to do the same: “I was born many years ago... (71), on the evening of the 21st and, so to speak, as if it were this morning (January 22nd) around half past ten, I was baptized. The next day I was baptized, this is the point”. He was happy that not even 24 hours had passed by without enjoying the grace of Baptism!
The Founder's missionary passion was rooted in the desire, coming right from the heart of God himself: "God wants all people to be saved" (1 Tim 2:4). Faith - lived in a profound and authentic way in his life - had to be shared to bring non-Christians to salvation: "animated by this burning faith of his, which he considered as the greatest gift that can be granted to a person, he fervently desired it to be known by the greatest possible number of souls".
From the testimonies of the first Missionaries, we know that by his example and his words he was able to pass on to others such a spirit of faith and the passion for proclaiming the Gospel to those who did not yet know Jesus "because they were deprived of the immense gift of God". This was the profound and authentic motivation that brought him to found two missionary Congregations and to give up everything, even materially, for missionary work of first Evangelization.
It is worth reading once again the farewell speech for his sons who were about to leave for missionary work abroad. In 1902 he thus addresses the first group of missionaries who were to leave for Kenya:
Jesus came from heaven to save souls. This was the only reason for all his actions, words and thoughts; “I thirst” he said while dying [...] there is no need to rush to work for the health of souls, we must first of all sanctify ourselves and once we have achieved that, we will be able to carry out our missionary work among the people in a short time and with great fruit.
And in 1913, to the first group of Sisters leaving for Kenya, he wrote:
Dearest Daughters in Our Lord Jesus Christ, in bestowing on you our paternal Blessing, I give some recommendations [...]. Receive them as inspired by God and try to put them constantly into practice. Above all, always keep at the forefront of your thoughts the purpose for which you have become Missionary Sisters, which is only to become saints and to save you as well as many other souls. By doing this you will have lived up to your sublime vocation, and thus you will receive a great reward in Heaven.
There is a recurring motif in these short speeches: two words that constantly recall each other making the binomial holiness/mission from which has come the famous expression “First saints, then missionaries” as a means of bringing salvation for people who do not yet know Jesus Christ, as well as of conveying the core of our Founder's spiritual experience: faith received as a gift has to be shared with those who do not yet have it.
In the last century mission has undergone profound changes as well as the theological reflection on the mystery of Salvation; however, it continues to be the heart of the mission of first evangelization:
The expression: “salvation” or “care of souls”, compelling and understandable at the time of the Founder, today rightly sounds reductive and we prefer to speak of “salvation of people”, or of “integral salvation” (Cfr. K. JACIÓW)
In fact, until the Second Vatican Council, the rule “Extra ecclesia nulla salus” (outside the Church there is no Salvation) took shape concretely into the administration of Baptism8, today the reflection focuses on the processes of enculturating the proclamation of the Gospel, on interreligious dialogue, on the relationship between dialogue and proclamation, which seriously question us on our different missionary situations:
We believe that the concept of salvation or care of the soul can even today provoke our reflection in a very enriching way. We could ask ourselves, for example, if and to what extent our way of being in mission reaches the "soul", the deepest core of the person and of the people’s worldview. (cfr. G. MINA)
What structures, initiatives and activities foster a deep dialogue with people, for a real process of evangelization? What style of mission, presence, relationship allow us to be, even today, missionaries who bring Consolation and Salvation?
May our Father Founder continue to bless our mission, enlighten our steps on the roads of mission ad gentes and encourage us to always go “a little further ahead”. To be just where there is a brother and a sister who still do not know Christ, true Consolation, and his Salvation.
MC - IMC General Councils
August 2024
August 2024
