The mystery of birth expresses the essence of mission well. It was the same for Christ. The Father sent His beloved Son, having Him be born of Mary through the action of the Holy Spirit. It could not have been otherwise. The Father, who eternally generated and generates His Son, cannot give Him to us if not by allowing that He be born of the Virgin Mary. For the Son, being sent is being born in time, like all of us, and living His eternal generation in time. The mission of Christ, thanks to Mary and with her, means living His eternal sonship within history. During all of the days of His earthly life, Jesus received everything from the Father in every moment and joyfully affirmed in every instant the goodness and the unlimited mercy of the Father. During His passion, both His internal passion on the Mount of Olives as well as His external passion on Golgotha, Jesus lived, with a singular suffering, His eternal generation: He let Himself be loved by the Father drinking the chalice and, dying on the cross, affirmed the merciful goodness of the Father. It is His lived Sonship that saves us.
Being a missionary means participating in the mission of Christ. In Him as well as for us, being called to mission means being born. Or, more precisely, being reborn. Living mission is accepting to be reborn wherever one is sent and living the ineffable grace to be children of God with those to whom Christ entrusts us. Being reborn is being one with them without losing the richness that we carry within us.
Being reborn doesn’t only mean living in a different country-or perhaps in one’s own country but no longer as one’s own-, learning a new language, a different way of relating to the world, to persons, to things and to God. It is not only working. It is letting oneself be loved in every moment wherever Christ places us and letting His love give form -that is unity, light and direction- to what we are given to live. For the glory of the Father.
Living mission is accepting to be reborn wherever one is sent
But the one who is reborn does not only communicate the life that constitutes him. In the first place, he receives. Jesus received from Mary our human nature: body, soul and spirit. He received Mary and Joseph who, by grace, became “His own.” Then the apostles, those further away and those who were close to Him. He welcomed all those who denied Him uniting them to Himself in His luminous forgiveness. Even more. He even brought His pierced and glorious body into heaven. And He doesn’t stop there. He sends His spirit, the Spirit of the Father, to allow us to enter into His glorious flesh and to contribute to the ever-new fecundity of His life. Both now and in eternity.
Contemplating this second dimension, I became more deeply aware of the gift that has been given to me. Thirty years ago, in June of 1994, I was sent with Micahel Carvill and Vincent Nagle to the United States. Just before leaving, during a typical Roman day of resplendent light, Fr. Massimo came to pick me up at the Gregorian University. We walked back to the house (the seminary at that time was in front of St. Mary Major, close to the university). I already knew my destination and we wanted to spend a little time together before the departure. Walking down Via Panisperna, aware of the enormity and the diversity of the country where I was about to go, I asked him: “How can I come to know America?”. After some moments of silence, he responded to me simply: “Through Americans. Listen to them. Become their friend.” I took his response to heart and awaited with desire what God would then make happen.
Our task is to educate people to think radically and to live radically
In these years, God has given me many friends, beginning with those of my house. With them, I have lived and live a beautiful life, full of discoveries, joys, fruits and even crosses. Another friend who has been particularly dear was David L. Schindler. With him, I lived and worked for more than twenty years at the John Paul II Institute in Washington, D.C., until November of 2022 when he passed away after a brief but difficult illness. He communicated a gaze of faith on this people, its history and its place in the world. He helped me to live it. “Knowing (connaitre) means to be born together,” he would often say. From dinners, to the judgment on liberal and technocratic anthropology, to sports, singing together and the beauty of contemplation. We talked about everything. Always. Few things are as pleasurable as the free and open conversation among friends to go to the depth of everything. In this abstract world, fragmented and fascinated by technocratic power, where quantity is mistaken for quality, where doing has eliminated knowing and violence masks itself as love, David always affirmed with simplicity and helped others to see that life is a gift and that God is at the center of everything in every moment. We do not belong to ourselves, he loved to repeat. Our task at the Institute, he would often say to me, is to educate people to think radically and to live radically, seeking to sustain the faith of everyone. One aspect that amazes me about this friendship–which has truly brought so much good to be and to the whole Fraternity of St. Charles–is that it is also the unmerited and overabundant response that God offers to the question that I had. Even better: what moves me is that this friendship is a discrete, powerful and luminous sign of the unbounded gratuity of God, of His concrete and personal love. God is gratuity. In Himself and for us. He makes Himself be seen and loved also through the ever new and ineffable beauty that conceals itself and calls to us in relationships such as these. What one receives and brings with himself, as part of himself, is, at its core, God, infinite gratuity, who gives Himself in an ever new way in the transfigured flesh of the one who lets himself be loved. The one who is reborn receives this twofold gift of friendship with Jesus and with other men.
