The reflection on the great theme of the mission will never end. It attracts specialists and missionaries alike, those who study and those who concretize it. It couldn’t be otherwise, especially for us who, thanks to the specific vocation we received, dedicate ourselves, soul and body, to the mission. We cannot but keep on rethinking the mission because it addresses itself to our concrete times and places, to contexts that are in continual change and which continuously challenge us. We believe that we must have our "ways of doing mission" stand on ample and solid visions that give sense and orientation to our life.
In this issue of Documentation IMC, we offer to you the reflection of a very well-known theologian, Bruno Forte. Very kindly, he allowed us to publish his contribution to the world mission congress held at Castelgandolfo in October last year. No doubt, the words of Bruno Forte are for us missionaries a rich and valuable source of meditation. On its content we can reflect, we can confront ourselves, and we can make our examination of conscience on how we are missionaries.
As Consolata missionaries, we have another reason to reflect on the mission: Our Centennial year of existence. As we look back through our 100-years history, a history that had its bright aspects and its shadows, we search for its heart, for its soul... What is it that sustained our Founder and our Institute during these 100 years? What madeihem vibrate, what gave impetus to their efforts, their feelings, to each fragment of their energy? How did our Institute know how to adapt to contexts that were changing in time and in space? And all these things, what do they teach to our missionary life today and in the future? Fr. Albert Trevisiol helps us discover these parameters in his reexamination of our history which he has done on the occasion of our Centennial Year.
Finally, each missionary who finds himself living in the thick of the mission has to confront the challenges brought up by the environment and by other circumstances. It might be a questioning about the challenges of pastoral activities among the Indians of America, or about the interreligious dialogue with Buddhism in Korea. Two of our missionaries, Frs. Anthony Domenech del Rio and Gaetano Mazzoleni, who have studied and researched these challenges, share their conclusions with us. In their sharing they give us good example, and we invite other missionaries to do the same...