At the end of the Gospel of Mark, before ascending to heaven, Jesus leaves one last important message to the apostles, which in its literal translation from Greek sounds like this: “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation (Mk 16:15).”
There is no reason to be discouraged if we too sometimes struggle to embrace our role as "missionaries". In fact, every Christian is a missionary. Mission is not an option, but it is an integral part of being followers of Christ, and to be truly so we must assume its cosmic dimension: a dimension in which there are no boundaries, barriers, distinctions, in which a leap towards an integral vision that embraces "all of creation" is required.
To achieve this, it is necessary to free ourselves, as Saint Francis did: to strip ourselves of everything that is not needed, not only of superfluous material goods, but also of our certainties, of our intellectual and cultural scaffolding, of empty practices, of structures created only to give us security, which become barriers, trenches within which we close ourselves and from which we struggle to get out.
How to do it?
First, we must recover the sense of creation in its unity. Then, become aware that we are immersed in a suffering creation, and this suffering must also be seen in a unified sense: if one part of the body is sick, the whole body suffers. Bringing good news to a suffering creation in its entirety therefore becomes a difficult task: the good news that we can bring is hope, the trust that there is still the possibility of saving the world from the socio-environmental crisis in which we are all immersed, in which each of us has his or her share of responsibility and specific task. The best proclamation is facts: St Francis inspires us when he says that the Gospel must be proclaimed with life, and then, if necessary, also with words.
This proclamation must be brought to the poor first of all, since they are in fact the privileged target of Jesus. To be close to them, to really help them, we will not be able to avoid facing the environmental crisis. Confronting the climate crisis means looking in the mirror, looking deeply.
In this spirit, the Salesian Congregation began its journey in Integral Ecology, following the path opened by Pope Francis with Laudato Si'. We would like to invite you to reflect on these issues and, through all the contributions that follow, to ask you about the meaning of the mission in this particular historical period. Happy reading and good integral mission!
The full article is available in the GMS 2023 booklet, in Italian, English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese.
