Mary Completing of the Missionary Message of Jesus
Mary Completing of the Missionary Message of Jesus

Summary/Abstract: The Holy Spirit gives the whole Church a missionary character. The Second Vatican Council reminds us that all Christians at their Baptism receive the dignity of God’s children, as well as the vocation obliging them to participate in the missionary apostolate of the Church (RM 71). Pope John Paul II introduces proclaiming of the Gospel as the message of hope and refers to the first proclaiming and the new proclaiming. He emphasizes that the revelation gives history its meaning as it proclaims Christ’s mystery. Evangelization is the proclaiming of Jesus Christ and his Gospel to the world, to achieve the goal of redemption of man and to obtain eternal bliss on which we can already participate by a holy life. A good starting point and example of an effective understanding and realizing of evangelization the Pope sees in Mary, to whom one can turn with confidence and ask her for help in the understanding and realizing of this existential vocation. The ever changing history of the Church is accompanied with signs. Among them the Book of Revelations interposes a great sign, which took place in heaven and talks about a battle between a woman and a dragon. A woman, adorned with the sun and crying aloud in the pangs of childbirth (cf. Rv 12:1-2) symbolizes also the Church, the people of the New Covenant who are exposed to persecution, but always protected by God. The true winner is the child born of the woman. In this battle is the certainty that the dragon will be defeated (Rv 12:9). Christ-God who became man has prevailed over it – by his death and resurrection – and martyrs have also prevailed “by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, even until the death” (Rv 12:11). The John Paul’s theological reflection upon these serious events often culminates in prayer to Mary, the Mother of Hope. The Gospel of hope, entrusted to the Church and accepted by it, demands daily proclamation and daily witness. That is the vocation owning to the Church at all times and in all places. It is her inmost identity. She is here to evangelize which means to proclaim and teach and to mediate the grace, to reconciliate sinners with God, to commemorate Christ’s sacrifi ce in Holy Mass, which is the celebration of the memory of his death and glorious resurrection for the salvation of each person and all of humanity.

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