Number 212 - October 2002

The stake of the Council: the evangelization of man to-day

Father FINET

I was very struck by the reading of an article of Bishop Honoré in the newspaper "La France Catholique", (which came out on the 24th September 1976) entitled: "The true stake of the Council". (Vatican Council II).

Here are some extracts:
..."One will understand nothing of the present situation of the Church with its shadows and its lights, its difficulties and its promises, if one has not first understood the stake of the Council: to put the Church into the orbit of the evangelization of man today".

..." It would be fitting to show how the missionary project of the Church has penetrated this like an active ferment, whose developments have not failed to gain, closer and closer, all that makes up the truth and the life of the Church".

... "From the day when it proposed missionary priorities... the Church appeared less as a society of believers than as a community of witnesses".

This sentence is extremely important. In the past when I learnt the catechism, the Church was imagined as a grouping of the faithful under the submission of legitimate pastors, that's to say the bishops and, more particularly the parish priests. There were parishes rather closed in on themselves: that's how the Church was seen. Today all the walls have tumbled down, all the limits have been broken, in such a way that, on the contrary, we are a society of the faithful, but animated by the missionary spirit for the evangelization of the whole world. That is the great mission of Vatican II: to open us up onto the whole world. It is a missionary vocation, which is addressed to all Christians.

The mission of Vatican II: to open us up onto the whole world

And Bishop Honoré continues: "Faced today with one of the strongest shakings of human history, is the Church not called more than ever to come back to its source and its reason for being? That is: to give witness of the Gospel to the world. Vatican II had only one aim, to call it back to this mission".

There is our vocation: to give witness of this Gospel to the world. And when I speak of the world, it's not only a question of the world from a geographic point of view, but also from a social point of view. It's as much a question of the working world as of the intellectual and the professional world etc... To give witness of the Gospel to the world. And we must recognize that before, we didn't give witness of the Gospel enough in the world in all its dimensions, notably the social ones, and we left huge numbers of our brothers without any witness, notably in the factories and elsewhere... that, I think, is very serious.

Remember that: what characterizes the Church of today is the witness of the Gospel given to the world. That is the great mission the Vatican Council wanted to recall.

Are we witnesses?

And; talking about this apostolate of the laity, here is what Pope John Paul II said in Ireland:
"Yes, the laity is a "chosen race", a holy priesthood"; the lay people also are called to be "the salt of the Earth" and "the light of the world". It is their specific vocation, and their mission to express the Gospel in their lives and, by that, to insert this Gospel, like yeast, into the reality of the world in which they live and work".

We want penetrate with the Gospel the world in which we are. How must we need to be woken up, we Christians of the West. How many of us have no dimension as apostles. "Christians are much too silent; they don't give witness". That was the reproach of a converted man. This is perhaps less true than 10 years ago but, in spite of everything, we must see where we are. Are we witnesses?

John Paul II reminds us of the urgency of this:
..."The Vatican Council II has made known how great are the fields of the apostolate always accessible to lay people... the Christian vocation is, by nature, a vocation to the apostolate". (27th November 1978).

Think what will happen soon, when a great big country like China opens up again to Christ. Will it be enough to have a few religious missionaries, men and women, to evangelize these billions of people? Won't it be necessary to have a huge torrent of lay people who will come as well to give witness to Christ? I believe we must prepare all these witnesses of Christ. And that when the Church comes to speak to these four billion people, it must show clearly to lay people that they have to take place in this apostolate and give witness throughout the whole world: a river of witnesses.

(Extracts from a conference - 1978)