Mission Ad Gentes is the Church's missionary activity directed especially to peoples and social settings where Christ is not known and the Church has not yet taken root.[1]
A distinct and permanent work
The Latin expression ad gentes means to the nations or peoples. It names missionary activity proper: heralds of the Gospel are sent to those who do not yet believe in Christ, so that faith may arise and a mature local Church may be planted. Geography remains relevant, but migration, urbanization, secularization, and new cultural worlds mean that missionary situations can exist within traditionally Christian countries.
Mission ad gentes is distinct from ordinary pastoral care of established communities and from renewed evangelization among the baptized who no longer practice the faith. The forms overlap and assist one another, yet the distinction protects the continuing duty to proclaim Christ where neither the Gospel nor a stable Christian community is present.[2]
Planting a local Church
Missionaries do not establish foreign colonies centered permanently on themselves. They proclaim Christ, gather catechumens, celebrate the sacraments, form families and catechists, foster indigenous vocations, translate and teach the faith, and labor toward a particular Church with its own clergy, institutions, and mature participation in the communion of Churches.
Dialogue and inculturation are intrinsic to wise mission. Missionaries receive genuine gifts from the peoples they serve and distinguish those gifts from elements incompatible with the Gospel. Persecution, poverty, slow growth, and apparent failure do not nullify the mission, whose principal agent is the Holy Spirit and whose pattern is the crucified and risen Lord.
References
- 1.Ad gentes — Vatican II's decree on the Church's missionary nature and mission to peoples
- 2.Redemptoris missio — John Paul II on the permanent validity, forms, agents, and spirituality of mission