Concluding Statement
The Year 2025 marks the 150th founding anniversary of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD). As part of the celebrations to mark this milestone, the SVD organized an International Conference on Mission with the theme, “Missio Dei in Today’s World: Healing Wounds, Challenged by Postmodernity, Learning from Cultures, Inspired by Religions.” The conference was held on March 27-29, 2025 at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Both the speakers and the 250 participants came from the Catholic, as well as other Christian churches, representing a broad cross section of the laity, clergy, and consecrated persons from various religious missionary congregations, making the conference a truly ecclesial and ecumenical event. It was heart-warming for the members of the SVD to feel that the entire church was celebrating with us.
After a word of welcome from the SVD Superior General, Fr. Anselmo Ribeiro, his Eminence Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for the Evangelization of Peoples, opened the conference with an address which highlighted its significance for the emerging synodal church precisely as the church celebrates a Jubilee Year in 2025. Indeed, the conference was an auspicious
opportunity for the participants to reflect on the contributions and challenges to the mission of the church today and be renewed in their commitment to proclaim and share the joy of the Gospel. Grateful for the blessings of the conference, we wish to share with our SVD confreres and other missionaries of the wider church the following reflection as the fruit of this event.
Principal Themes of the Conference
The conference was framed within the perspective of the Missio Dei—the mission of the Triune God. This perspective expresses Christians’ belief that God has been present and active, through the “dance” of the Spirit and Word, at every moment of creation’s 13.8 billion-year history. God’s creative activity endows every particle with freedom, yet calls creation to conform to the divine dream of harmony and kinship, works for healing, and offers mercy when creation goes awry and, especially humans, misuse their freedom for their own selfish purposes.
The Triune God thus reveals Godself as a God of dialogue, vulnerability, love, and mercy. There is no time, situation, reality, people, or culture in which the Triune God is not active and present. But especially in the history of the people of Israel and particularly in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Word made flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit, God calls all creation to relationship and friendship. The risen Christ shares his Spirit with his followers and thus shares his mission with them. Therefore, the mission of God has a church. This mission of the church is to be lived out with the same sense of dialogue, vulnerability, love, and mercy with which Christ lived out his own mission.
God’s mission is, of course, active beyond the boundaries of the church, and all creation and all peoples are called to share in that mission as they work with God in their own way, contributing to the fulfillment of God’s dream of a creation of harmony and kinship. The church, however, is God’s particular “sacrament of salvation,” the “sign and instrument” (LG 1) of God’s vulnerable, dialogical, loving, and merciful dealing with every particle of creation and every member of humankind.
God’s mission, shared by the church, is multifaceted—a “single but complex reality”—in the words of St. John Paul II (RM 41). The conference focused on four of these facets, each of which reveals in a singular way the mission of the Triune God that the church, by God’s grace, shares and makes palpable and visible.
Healing Wounds. The church makes palpable and visible God’s concern for the healing of creation’s wounds. Through Jesus’ incarnation, God knows the world’s and humanity’s wounds. By caring for the vulnerable, the sick, the victims of injustice, the earth’s wounds due to human neglect and selfishness, the women and men of the church touch “the suffering flesh of Christ” (EG 24). Through recognizing and embracing their own woundedness, Christians become themselves wounded healers, offering consolation, reconciliation, and wholeness to a wounded world.
Challenged by Postmodernity. The church is challenged by postmodernity, a challenge not only limited to the “global north” but also present throughout the world. It boldly yet humbly offers a narrative that does not suppress diversity and identity but cultivates it with a trust in the Spirit of unity-in-diversity. It acknowledges the fact of past and continuing colonial, patriarchal, and racist abuse of power by rich and greedy nations, and acknowledges that it has itself participated in that abuse, even in some of its missionary work. It recognizes the hunger and thirst for spirituality that exists among contemporary women and men and offers its help to deepen their experience of transcendence in their lives. It recognizes the good will and actions of many women and men who are committed to art, social justice, and education, and gladly cooperates with them in their efforts. It strongly opposes any movements that obstruct the flourishing of creation, and any fundamentalisms that build walls that shut out differing opinions or beliefs. It offers a gospel that tears down such walls (See Eph 2:14). In a time in which we are witnessing increased polarization in both the church and the world at large, the church community can offer a space of dialogue and encounter, where people can meet each other to share their ideas, their life stories, and their journeys of and struggles with faith.
Learning from Cultures. The church learns from the world’s cultures. It recognizes in them the great treasures that a generous God, through the Spirit, has bestowed in great variety among the world’s nations and peoples. It commits itself to that “honest and patient dialogue” (AG 11) that can reveal those treasures, purify them by the light of the gospel, and see them as resources for challenging and relevant ways of embodying and proclaiming the message and way of Christ. Working for the inculturation of the gospel by faithful attention to the context in which Christians live, and promoting interculturality as a mutual recognition and enrichment, are natural responses to the “logic of the incarnation” (EG 117).
Inspired by Religions. Christians are inspired by other religions, whether religions like Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, or the traditional and folk religions of indigenous peoples the world over. It recognizes that while the world’s religions might be incommensurable, there are nevertheless elements in them all that can be catalysts for deeper understanding of Christians’ own and the other’s faith. There are in every one of the world’s religions “rays of that light that enlighten all women and men” (NA 2), due to the pervading presence of the Spirit. Friendship and collaboration among peoples of other religions is certainly possible, and, in fact, urgently necessary. Therefore, open, mutual interaction and dialogue with other religions constitute an essential part of mission, indeed, a theological imperative in the contemporary world.
Implications for Mission
The implications for mission that we recognize in the following paragraphs are first of all recommended for our SVD confreres throughout the world. We recognize, however, that they could also have significance for the missionary work of other religious congregations, and indeed for Christians in general.
Building on the Missio Dei perspective of our life, as communities of missionary disciples, our conference has called us to renew our missionary commitment. That commitment can be continuously deepened by reflection and action in our missionary journey in the spirit of synodality and with the method of prophetic dialogue.
On the one hand, our conference has made us aware that, in the past 150 years, we have achieved a great deal in our SVD tradition of engaging in mission. On the other hand, it has also made us realize that more study and research are required if we are to continue to be faithful to that tradition in the light of what our contemporary world calls us to be. We need both discernment and courage in order to have both the vision and the resources to continue our mission as faithful and creative missionary disciples. Because of this, we recommend that we recommit ourselves to serious education, research, reflection, and ongoing formation in missiology, theology, the social sciences, and the study of God’s Word.
In our personal encounters with individuals of good will, and guided by the Spirit’s promptings, we will contribute to the healing of the wounds from which the poor and creation are suffering, and with whom we are in deep solidarity. We are called, therefore, to renew our commitment to one another in community, with our sisters and brothers on the peripheries, and with all of God’s creatures on Earth.
Our conference has called us to deepen our understanding of the working of the Spirit in all of creation and follow the lead of the God whom we encounter in the wide variety of cosmic and historical processes. Even though God has taken on flesh in Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:14), the implications of “deep incarnation” are far from fully recognized in all the cultures and religions we encounter in our missionary outreach. We are called to participate in the continuing creational and redeeming work of God. Therefore, we seek to discover the Divine Word’s continuing incarnation wherever we go and live. Such an attitude and commitment call us as SVDs in every context to creative and transformative ways of participating in God’s vision for creation.
We are grateful for the long-standing Anthropos Tradition of research into cultures, languages, and religions. We must, nevertheless, engage in further work on the concepts and art of inculturation, and the condition of postmodernity. This implies a readiness to question even fundamental assumptions in our theologies regarding revelation and our understanding of the Triune God. “Our name is our mission.” Inculturating the gospel must be a high priority for us who are dedicated to the incarnate Word of God. Therefore, SVDs in every country need to find a methodology to seriously engage in inculturation in their particular context.
As SVDs, “interculturality is our DNA.” Our respect for peoples of all cultures commits us as well to working for a robust interculturality among those with whom we live in our SVD communities, as well as those among whom we minister. We acknowledge that such interculturality is not simply about being challenged and enriched by others’ cultures, but also by a diversity of gender, generations, and other conditions that can marginalize individuals in contemporary society. Therefore, we commit ourselves to promoting and living interculturality in our communities, parishes, and in our other ministries.
Recognizing the presence of the Spirit everywhere, and in the light of contemporary efforts of developing a synodal church, we are committed to taking on synodal attitudes of listening in dialogue and discernment in the context of any culture and religion we encounter. We are also committed to collaborating with any persons who participate in God’s mission regardless of religious status, gender, or faith.
Looking Forward…
In his message to the participants of the 19th General Chapter of our Society in 2024, Pope Francis affirmed that “creative missionary activities are born of love for the Word of God; and creativity is born of contemplation and discernment.” In the same way, as a result of this conference, we reaffirm our openness to the Word of God, to the signs of the time, and to the inspiration of the Spirit present in our history and in the developments of the world. Through encounter, attentive listening, discernment, and prophetic dialogue, we seek to discover and follow the pathways of God’s mission today. With appreciation and gratefulness, we look at our past and venture into the future, committing ourselves to the continuing task of becoming faithful and creative missionary disciples as we witness to the Light from everywhere for everyone.
(Ref: SVD International Conference on Mission, Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome).
