I

I.1 Today

Neither the consecrated life nor mission can be found in the abstract, but in history, which is ever changing and therefore makes new demands.

Missionary activity is nothing else, and nothing less, than the manifestation of God’s plan, its epiphany and realisation of the divine plan (of salvation) in the world and in history (AG9).

As missionaries and as consecrated persons we are not removed from history, or from the vicissitudes experienced by the human race today. Missionary activity is intimately related to the people of today.

At all times the Church carries the responsibility of reading the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel (GS4).

Consecrated persons try to "discern" in the events and aspirations, in which they take part with all other men and women of our time, the true signs of God’s presence and plan (GS 11). Our age presents new challenges ("mondanisation", uniformity, emigration, and post-modernism...). This is why the secular institutes have a relevant role to play in the Church’s mission in a world that risks becoming post-ecclesial, post-Christian and post-human.

Theologically we must be convinced that God is guiding history and that Christ is the centre today as well, because he is the centre and goal of history. That Christ whom we all follow and proclaim. A vision of the history of the past reveals to us all that the missionary Church has done over the centuries. Not only in the line of cultural values and changing or giving new life to history itself, but in the depth of consciences (cf. J. Maritain). Here a question arises: does the Christianity brought by the missionary Church today have that capacity to change, to give new life to history itself and to the consciences of men and women?

Perhaps missionary activity develops in too close a parallel to each "today" of history, without becoming thoroughly involved in it. In the early periods the proclamation of Christ gave rise to ideological crises, but at the end the great patristic tradition, which was missionary, brought about a rethinking in the light of Christ of all the Greco-Roman culture’s understanding of the world and the human person (J. Danielou, Cantalamessa). Today the Reign of God must be proclaimed and brought about in today’s history. The salvation that the Church brings is not only eschatological but reaches the concrete man or woman of today in the intimacy of his or her problems.