Evangelization and Pastoral Ministry

Sharing in Christ’s Mission made disciples of Christ through baptism and in a special manner by our religious consecration, we participate in the mission of Christ from the Father to make all people share in His sonship. The charism of the Spirit enables us to proclaim God’s Word to our fellow human beings with confidence and zeal, confirm it with the witness of our life and follow it up through our dedicated service to them. As a religious congregation originating from and situated in a context in which millions have not received the Good News of Christ’ salvation, we consider evangelization as one of our most important tasks. The charism for evangelization was an essential factor of the Christ-experience and Church-experience of our founding fathers who understood that the Church as the concrete symbol and expression of the mission of the Son from the Father in the incarnation and of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, is by nature both evangelized and evangelizing. The Spirit of God already present in our brethren positively invites us to proclaim to them Jesus Christ, the Word-made-flesh, who became the Lord and focal point of human history.

We realize with deep humility and sincere gratitude that we are called by Christ to proclaim the Word in our land with its millennia-long search for God and the “impressive patrimony of deeply religious texts impregnated with innumerable seeds of the Word” (EN 53). This demands that first we ourselves be formed by His Word so that we may proclaim the Good News with confidence and courage to the multitudes who have a right to know the riches of the mystery of Christ (ibid). Following the example of Christ who assumed human nature and became like us in every respect (Heb. 2:17) except sin (Heb 4:15), our missionary task is to become the leaven in the mass, evangelize cultures by inspiring with gospel values, the traditions, customs and way of life of peoples, and build up Christian communities which by the very witness of their life will communicate the hope and message of salvation from community to community. The ministry of the Gospel demands that we become all things to all people according to the example of the Apostle, identifying ourselves with the concerns and aspirations of the people, applying the Gospel to their actual needs and problems, sharing their life and working with them for the all-round betterment of their life.