MISSIONARY SPIRITUALITY A WAY OF LIFE AND WITNESS AND SERVICE IN COMMUNITY

MISSIONARY SPIRITUALITY: A WAY OF LIFE Mission spirituality is a way of life in Christ through the Spirit. It is supported by the community of faith and the spiritual disciplines that animates our whole life and our witness and service. It is not simply about praying for certain outreach or service projects. It is also about a prayer-filled life. Since it is a way of life in Christ – a cruciform life – it is not limited to some years of special missionary activity. The whole of life is to be in the service of Christ and needs to be animated by the sustaining Spirit.

MISSIONARY SPIRITUALITY IS MORE THAN HARD WORK AND SELF EFFORT Since a missionary spirituality is through the Spirit, it is more than hard work and self effort. Mission and service is not a solo effort. It is life and witness and service in community. It is joining hands with God and with others in the service of the neighbor. Missionary spirituality is a communal spirituality sustaining and fructifying acts of solidarity in the service of the poor.

MISSIONARY SPIRITUALITY EMBRACES A DISCIPLINED LIFE Missionary spirituality is a way of life and service that embraces a disciplined life and the practice of the spiritual disciplines such as prayer, meditation, fasting, contemplation and service. Prayer and fasting are not simply a means to service but a way to God. And service is also a way to grow in God and not simply the outworking one’s relationship with God. Both prayer and service are ways to deepen one’s relationship with God and ways to express love to the neighbor.

MISSIONARY SPIRITUALITY IS THE MOVEMENT OF TRANSCENDENCE AND IMMANENCE In the movement of transcendence we are invited to the contemplation of God face to face in the practices of biblical reflection, prayer, the practice of silence and the gift of revelation. In the movement of immanence we are invited to contemplate the hidden face of Christ in the faith community, the neighbor, the stranger, the enemy and the poor in the gift of service. In the movement of transcendence we meet with the God who nudges us to serve the neighbor. In serving the neighbor we are drawn to be with God in prayer and renewal.

PRAYER AND SERVICE BELONG INTIMATELY TOGETHER The spiritual disciplines and the work of justice are connected. Both are forms of worship and both are expressions of service. In the words of B.P. Holt this is “integrating one’s life in the world with one’s relationship to God” (Holt 1993, 3).

MODERN EXAMPLES OF MISSIONARY SPIRITUALITY: MOTHER TERESA & DOROTHY DAY Mother Theresa of Calcutta participated is an example of a Christian Spirituality that can claim authenticity. To touch the untouchables was, for her and her sisters, to touch the Body of Christ. To love in her utterly unselfish way was, for her, to pray. She did not stop praying to serve, nor did she stop serving to pray. Authentic Spirituality is all embracing. Dorothy Day’s “sacramental view of life,” her refusal to see merely a bum while looking at a bum, is the unifying principle of her thought: Incarnational Personalism. Cardinal O’Connor noted that, Dorothy Day, through her writing and work, is constantly saying to each of us, “Are you not aware that every single person is a temple of God, sacred, made in the image and likeness of God?” We are sharers in the life of God, the Community of the Trinity, insofar as we are members of the Body of Christ. Our one flesh union in Christ is contingent on our loving as God loves; a love that enables us to “see people as they really are, as God sees them.”

PRACTICAL MISSIONARY SPIRITUALITY: HOW I RELATE WITH GOD AND NEIGHBOR What is the difference between a personal spirituality and an engaged spirituality? How do I manifest my spirituality?