Discovering God’s Mission Agenda

The mystery of God’s love lies at the heart of mission. The contemplative missionary is one whose goal is to help people get closer to God. Indeed, the essence of contemplative mission is to discern the presence and action of God in the world and among people. The quest for God is the priority amid responses to the created universe and the human situation.

Mission is generally presented as a church project. However, the contemplative quest is to encounter the broader purposes and activities of God the Creator of the universe. It is also to encounter and appreciate Jesus, the missionary face of God. God’s saving strategy stretches through history and points to the kingdom as the goal.

A contemplative attitude delights in mission as an event or project of God. The primary focus stretches to intimacy with the living God who sets the missionary agenda. It is a vision that extends from the heart of created reality to the very heart of God.

The mission of God has its origin in the heart of God. The deepest source of mission is in the nature and purpose of a God who sets the missionary agenda, known from the Latin as “missio Dei”. God is the fountain of sending love. There is mission because God loves creation and people.

“When we move into the cave of our heart”, writes Kathleen Coyle, a Columban Missionary Sister, “we switch off the inner stream of our thoughts and feelings, soak in the divine presence, and experience, like Jesus, the same outpouring of divine life into our hearts… We perceive every human being through divinity and we treat each one with divine respect. We reach out to others with a great sense of urgency, to bring them the fruit of our contemplation and of our deep mystical experience.”

Fr Michael Gormly is presently at St Columban’s, Lower Hutt, New Zealand.

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