Originally published at National Catholic Register
COMMENTARY: This is a wasted opportunity to emphasize that evangelization is the product of a mandate from Christ and the very essence of the Church’s reason for existing.
The working document of the Synod on Synodality, meeting in Rome through Oct. 27, has repeated assertions that the Church is fundamentally missional and evangelizing and therefore, that this is one of the primary purposes behind the synod. And yet there is, in reality, both last year and so far this year, little focus on this topic at all.
This is a shame and, in my view, a wasted opportunity to emphasize once again that evangelization is not one task among many others but the product of a mandate from Christ and the very essence of the Church’s reason for existing.
After the Resurrection, Jesus appears to his disciples and gives them the great missionary commission:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).
And ever since then the Church has endeavored to follow this commandment and has indeed gone into the entire world in an effort to bring
