Quite a while back, I spoke about contextual approaches to mission. I stressed the importance of being open to what I can learn about the context within which I live out the call to mission, and I learn fundamentally through listening to the marginalised, the poor and the oppressed.
Now, after doing a course at the INODEP institute in Paris back in 1981, I spent a considerable part of my missionary life conducting social analysis seminars and workshops. It brought me into close contact with the painful realities of poverty and oppression.
As I work through Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, I cannot help but take particular interest in his study of the contexts of mission. This he does in chapter two, which is entitled “Amid the crisis of communal commitment”. There he begins by saying that, rather than applying a “purely sociological analysis”, he “proposed something much more in the line of an evangelical discernment”. (n. 50)
Moreover, he says that it is not his job as Pope to offer a thorough study of “contemporary reality”. Still, he calls upon all of us to engage in an “ever watchful scrutiny of the signs of the times”. Here he is citing that often-quoted text from Pope Paul VI (Ecclesiam Suam August 6, 1964). But what Francis wants to do is focus on “certain factors which can restrain or weaken the impulse of missionary renewal in the church”. (n. 51)
Now here I sense a person who has gone down into the slums of his own country, Argentina, and come into personal contact with the poor. This is evident when he writes that when we consider the commandment “Thou shalt not kill”, this applies very much “to an economy of exclusion and inequality.” He goes on to write “How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless.” (n. 53)
In this context, he goes on to challenge the claims of “trickle-down theories” because he notes the consequences of such theories, “Almost being unaware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own”! (n. 54)
Evangelical discernment doesn’t take away the need for social analysis. What it basically does is say we are not just simply analysing the extent of poverty, looking at figures that come out of government records or academic research. What we need to do is talk about what we see day-to-day when we live among the poor. The pain we feel or share when we see people struggling to make ends meet will prompt us to do the analysis and come to a deeper knowledge of the present “signs of the times”
Columban Fr Tom Rouse is the Regional Councillor for New Zealand.
Mission Intention - Pope Leo XVI
September - For the care of water: Let us pray for a just and sustainable management of water, a vital resource, so that everyone may have equal access to it.
October - For mental health ministry: Let us pray that the mental health ministry be established throughout the Church, helping to overcome the stigma and discrimination of persons with mental illnesses.
Listen to "Mission World - Evangelical discernment in analysing contexts of mission"
Related links
- Read more from The Far East - September/October 2026
