For a robust account of mission to serve this argument, I turn to contemporary, official Roman Catholic documents on the church’s mission and liturgy.. I agree that mission should have a
Liturgy, Mission, and World in Relationality
The Context: Liturgy, Mission, and World
In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI added two new dismissal formulas into the revised Roman Missal of the Roman Catholic Church: (1) "Go and announce the gospel of the Lord," and (2)
“Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life” frames the dismissal as both an ending and a beginning—an invitation to mission beyond the liturgy The pope emphasizes that Christ’s mission is not static or a mere rest, but a dynamic peace meant to transform the world into a place of peace enlivened by the Creator and Redeemer’s presence To reinforce this link between worship and outreach, the Roman Catholic Missal’s official liturgical texts were revised, strengthening the connection between liturgy and mission.
By introducing two new dismissal rites, Pope Benedict sought to make the liturgical assembly more explicitly aware of how celebrating the liturgy should influence not only the life of the Church but also the society in which believers live outside the liturgy He tied the dismissal to the Church’s mission, arguing that these few words succinctly express the missionary nature of the Church and inviting the People of God to take the dismissal as a starting-point for understanding this essential dimension of Christian life A mission construed liturgically—as life lived to glorify the Lord—offers a hermeneutic for interpreting daily life as an act of worship Benedict’s modification thus reflects a relatively new emphasis in post-conciliar Roman Catholic theology on the link between liturgy and mission, with the pope purposefully adding liturgical words to reinforce this connection.
1 Benedict XVI, Address at the closing lunch of the 2005 Synod on the Eucharist, 22 October
2005 Vatican website, accessed 29 August 2015, https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict- xvi/en/speeches/2005/october/documents/hf_ben_xvi_spe_20051022_pranzo-sinodo.html
Benedict XVI's Sacramentum caritatis is a Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation from the Vatican (2007) that follows the 2005 Synod on the Eucharist and presents the Eucharist as the source and summit of the Christian life The document emphasizes liturgical worship as a living encounter with Christ, calls for renewed catechesis and pastoral renewal, and shows how Eucharistic faith should shape the Church’s charity and mission It highlights the priesthood’s role in celebrating the mysteries faithfully and invites bishops, priests, and the faithful to deepen Eucharistic devotion, formation, and unity The official text is available on the Vatican website (accessed 9 September 2015).
3 Recent works on liturgy and mission from a Post-conciliar Roman Catholic perspective include: Stephen B Bevans and Roger P Schroeder, “Liturgy, Prayer, and Contemplation as
Scholars argue that a liturgical theology of mission should ritualize the Church’s missionary dimension by rooting it in official Church teaching so that liturgy itself can express a deeper link between worship and mission This approach, reflected in Constants in Contexts: A Theology of Mission for Today and Joyce Anne Zimmerman’s Worship with Gladness, suggests that the pope’s efforts to articulate mission are anchored in ecclesiastical documents and aim to ritually intensify the relationship between liturgy and mission E Byron Anderson adds that reform, participation, and mission require deriving a ritual acknowledgement of the Church’s missionary dimension The central task is to examine the theology of mission within the Second Vatican Council and contemporary papal documents to construct a liturgical theology of mission, which would provide a theoretical framework for evaluating contemporary liturgical theologies of mission But has this task already been done?
1.1.1 Contemporary Liturgical Theologies of Mission
At the heart of current liturgical theologies of mission is the relationship between liturgy, mission, and the world In Chapter 3, I examine how these theologies frame mission through the church’s participation in liturgical ritual, a framing that can delineate a distinctive claim on mission and unnecessarily limit its reach beyond the gathered church Thus, the key is not only to discern the implied link between liturgy and mission but also to understand how mission relates to liturgy and to the world beyond the church This chapter provides the context and foundations for arguing that, in these liturgical theologies of mission, the relationship between liturgy and mission begins with liturgy as the pattern that communicates mission.
Liturgy is understood as the normative framework through which mission is experienced, while also embodying the vital True Christian Spirit (Worship 88, 2014, 218–239) This perspective foregrounds recent scholarship central to the thesis, which will be examined in greater depth in Chapter 3 to show how liturgical practice shapes mission and spiritual vitality.
Liturgical theology is a contested term, with scholars offering a range of definitions that reflect differing emphases in worship, doctrine, and practice To explore these definitions, see Dwight W Vogel’s “Liturgical Theology: A Conceptual Geography” in Primary Sources of Liturgical Theology: A Reader (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press/Pueblo, 2005), 1–15, and Kevin Irwin’s Liturgical Theology: A Primer in the American Essays in Liturgy Series (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press) These works, published by Liturgical Press, outline the varied landscape of liturgical theology and how scholars describe the connection between liturgy and theology.
This study uses liturgical theology in a broad sense, echoing Irwin's claim that liturgical theology can mean either a theology of liturgy or a theology drawn from liturgy (Context and Text: Methods in Liturgical Theology, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press/Pueblo, 1994, p 46) Liturgical theologies of mission can lie anywhere on a continuum between emphasizing the source(s) for theology, doctrine, and liturgical enactment, and its interpretation As Maxwell E Johnson notes, liturgical enactment and theology must and do function together in the development of doctrine, in theological reflection and discourse, and in the self-interpretation of the Catholic Church.
“Liturgy and Theology,” in Liturgy in Dialogue, eds Paul F Bradshaw and Bryan Spinks (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press/Pueblo, 1993), 227
By “world” I mean the social context of the local church as well as the larger cosmos in which both local and universal church life unfolds This usage does not suggest the church and its liturgy stand apart from the world; rather, it signals how the church lives beyond its ecclesial practices within the broader historical cosmos A necessary element of mission, to be addressed in Chapter 2, is the living out of Christ’s life for the good of the world The normative center of mission in these liturgical theologies is the church as expressed through its liturgy Should liturgy be the norm for mission, or should the world be normative for mission? My aim is to show that both world and liturgy norm mission, and that overemphasizing either dimension—as contemporary liturgical theologies often do—undermines the proper purpose of mission.
Three common assumptions anchor some contemporary liturgical theologies of mission: a claim to a distinctive ecclesiology for mission and liturgy; an overemphasis on liturgy as the sole site of mission; and a negative construal of society These theologies rest on a pessimistic view of society and a narrow prescription for what liturgy should do As Siobhán Garrigan notes, some introductory works on Christianity imply that worship is all you need, and liturgical theologies of mission can suggest the same, prompting the question whether subsuming mission under worship asks too much of liturgy The chapter asks whether worship alone can make mission fruitful and whether asking liturgy to bear the full weight of mission is a mistake Garrigan’s critique warns against a romanticized view of liturgy as the complete locus of mission, a pattern the chapter seeks to move beyond Instead, the argument here is that mission should be normative in two sites—liturgy and the world—so that missiological discipleship encompasses both active liturgical participation and living out the mission in everyday life.
Chapter 3 also engages the works of three prominent liturgical theologians who have linked liturgical theology with the church’s mission in the world By focusing on this second group, I aim to broaden not only the relationship between mission, liturgy, and the world but also to expand the definition of mission—a related project I argue in Chapter 2.
6 Siobhán Garrigan, “Ethics” in The Study of Liturgy and Worship: An Alcuin Guide, eds Juliette Day and Benjamin Gordon-Taylor (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press/Pueblo, 2013), 198
This thesis argues for decentering liturgy as the sole or normative site of mission, while affirming that liturgy remains meaningful and that mission can unfold within liturgical action It contends that mission should be central and that liturgy should actively support and enable that mission As Peter C Phan argues, the “new way of being church” requires a reconfigured ecclesiology that places the reign of God at the center of Christian life and worship rather than the church institution itself Phan develops this perspective through a theology of interreligious dialogue for Asia’s cultural contexts, and I bring that lens to bear on the global relationship between liturgy, mission, and the world.
I propose to bridge worship and Christian living in the world by framing mission in terms of sacramentality, arguing that mission should have a liturgical interpretation but also that it is rooted in a sacramental way of life that links liturgy with everyday society This sacramental frame dissolves the wall between “liturgy as missionary” and “mission in society,” making the site of mission fluid and context-dependent rather than fixed to a single liturgical or geographical location The advantage is that mission can emerge wherever Christians discern how to live out their faith—in liturgical settings or in ordinary life—within a given context As Peter C Phan notes, new boundaries have become invisible and porous, so mission may occur in varied situations, not just across predefined sites or geographical borders.
To present a robust account of the church’s mission, I turn to contemporary official Roman Catholic documents on the church’s mission These documents do more than define mission theologically; they provide a solid theological framework for understanding the relationship between liturgy, mission, and the world Because some liturgical theologies of mission tend to reduce the theological account of mission to liturgy, they can be read as positing a competitive dialectic between mission and liturgy, a tension that shapes how the church envisions its outreach to the world.
8 Peter C Phan, “Christian Mission in Asia: A New Way of Being Church,” in In Our Own Tongues: Perspectives from Asia on Mission and Inculturation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003), 14
9 Peter C Phan, “Crossing Borders: A Spirituality for Mission in Our Times,” in In Our Own Tongues: Perspectives from Asia on Mission and Inculturation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2003), 131
This position mirrors Melanie Ross’s view that the ordo in liturgical theology is rooted in the fundamental binary relations at the heart of Structuralism Ross argues that these relations function as binaries of opposing poles, producing liturgical order through the tension between paired elements within a larger system of meaning.
Contemporary Roman Catholic Documents on the Church’s Mission: A Definition
To answer that question, the definition of mission being employed becomes vital, because how mission is construed determines where and how it becomes manifest Chapter 2 will explore a definition of mission from a Second Vatican Council 12 and Post-Vatican II perspective Why now also turn to contemporary, official Roman Catholic documents on mission? For a distinction that will prove important to how my thesis is pursued later on Stephen B Bevans’ offers two ways Catholic missiology is distinctive First, as he states,
“Catholic missiology and mission practice relies on the wealth of the Catholic Magisterium, the church’s official teaching office, whether papal or episcopal [or conciliar].” 13 In particular, in the last fifty years, Catholic missiology has been “deeply rooted in the documents…of the Second Vatican Council.” 14 Bevans’ phrase “rooted in the documents” is important because it means that whilst these official Roman Catholic documents are significant, they do not close the discussion on the meaning of mission for today Instead, they form the foundation of mission theology This will become essential to my argument that liturgy and world are not simply isolated in two distinct, unrelated contexts, but that mission happens temporally when Christian disciples participate in Christ-like ways
Bevan’s perspective, as becomes evident, argues that the church as a whole and its disciples in particular should engage with the society in which they live as a form of mission By contrast, liturgical theologies of mission examine how liturgy itself constitutes a form of mission.
11 The adjective of mission can be denoted either “missionary”, “missiological”, and/or
Missional is closely linked to the Missional Church perspective, so we default to "missionary" as the adjective, though "missiological" is also used at times When "missiological" is employed, it is not meant to mirror the Continental university concept of missiology—a theological pursuit heavily developed through empirical methods in anthropology, cultural studies, and sociology.
12 I will employ “Post-conciliar” as a shorthand for the official Roman Catholic mission documents that were promulgated after the Second Vatican Council So “Post-conciliar” refers to Post- Vatican II
13 Stephen B Bevans, “Introduction”, in A Century of Catholic Mission: Roman Catholic Missiology 1910 to the Present, Regnum Edinburgh Centenary Series, Vol 15, ed Stephen B
Building on Vatican II and post‑conciliar mission documents, the discussion in A Century of Catholic Mission shows that mission must be read through two complementary Christologies On one side, a low Christology emphasizes imitation of Christ’s life as witnessed in Scripture; on the other, a high Christology sees Christ as Spirit‑empowered, enabling believers to participate in divine life and become more Christlike Embracing this twofold Christological dynamic disposes a person to engage in the mission of God, since imitation is enabled by Spirit‑empowered grace In this view, acting in mission is not merely moral imitation but participation in Christ through the Spirit, which also heals sin A robust theology of mission rooted in Conciliar and Post‑Conciliar documents maintains both Christologies in productive tension and explains why Christology matters when mission is understood from a sacramental perspective.
Mission and Sacramentality
Chapter 4 clarifies how Christology and mission intertwine by examining sacramentality in Rowan D Williams’ theology, building on Vatican II–inspired liturgical theologies of mission to propose a mission formed through Williams’ sacramental framework rather than a competitive dialectic In this view, grace is embedded in history: the act of God takes root in human lives to transform people into the image of Christ Sacrament, for Williams, concerns God’s presence taking shape in human beings—sacramental beings who respond to the divine act and, in doing so, reveal God’s mission within the cosmos Consequently, sacramental theology sits within a broader theology of transformation in which the Incarnation is the end goal of discipleship, guiding humanity toward transformation by the act of God This essential relationship between liturgy, mission, and world will be explored more fully in Chapter 4.
Mission-construed sacramentality means that mission is not limited to the liturgy, but that sacrament is the dispossession of the self toward the other, grounding the good of the other in the church’s self-understanding and the disciples’ identity The dialectic at work in Williams’s sacramental theology is not a competitive tension between liturgy/church and society, but a necessary relation of church and liturgy with society Williams even suggests that for the church to be authentic to its vocation, it must remain open to and shaped by the social world in which it lives.
15 I will use sacramental as an adjective for sacramentality “Sacramental” is not here used formally for liturgical rituals of Sacraments
God’s purposes may prompt society to challenge the church to live its mission more robustly, with the margins of society often offering the sharpest critique of how the church is living out God’s mission Rather than viewing mission as a wholesale rejection of society, the church should turn toward society, remain deeply engaged, and help people see their true calling to serve the needs of others and the world At the same time, the church needs society to critique how its mission is being lived out, ensuring accountability The church’s prophetic mission can stand in contrast to mainstream society, but this does not require a total rejection of society.
Mission Decentred
Theology gains a critical edge when it includes voices from the margins to challenge the church’s mission, and to decentre liturgy from mission while anchoring mission in a Christological imitation, this view turns to Delores S Williams’ two-fold approach to Christological mission, which broadens holiness from humanisation to include survival as well as resistance to dehumanisation Building on Susan Ross’s feminist reading of sacramental theology, three areas emerge: first, the experiences of women must be addressed; second, sacramental theology remains deeply tied to the Incarnation; and third, the experience of women will shape the church’s understanding of women’s roles The implication is that a sacral, mission-oriented theology must attend to the mission of the marginalised both within the church and in society, and it should cultivate a life rooted in Christ-like living.
Thirdly, sacramental theology must take social praxis seriously: liturgy is not only central to ritual life but should contribute to the common good of humanity and the cosmos A sacramental theology of mission therefore includes the importance of justice—living in and from the liturgy for the good of the cosmos Delores S Williams provides a critical voice to help construct this mission-focused sacramental theology, addressing the experience of the marginalised, the Incarnation, and the role of justice in mission Rowan D Williams also offers a sacramental theology that seeks to integrate liturgical life with mission.
16 Susan Ross, “God’s Embodiment and Women: Sacramental Theology,” in Freeing
Theology: The Essential of Theology in Feminist Perspective, ed Catherine Mowry LaCugna (New York: HarperCollins, 1993): 185-210
Justice is a shorthand for living out Christ’s life in the world, and by extending the definition of mission as outlined in Chapter 2, we shift toward survival and resistance to dehumanization—a framework articulated by Delores S Williams that ties faith practice to social transformation.
This thesis advances a liturgical theology of mission by arguing that authentic mission emerges when liturgy and justice are held together within a sacramental framework It moves beyond viewing liturgy and mission as isolated ecclesial identities, reframing their ties to the world in terms of relationality that binds church and world in mutual enrichment Consequently, liturgy and mission should be oriented toward society, which actively voices how the church participates in or falls short of living out God’s mission as revealed in Christ Jesus.
The Sources
This study draws on contemporary official Roman Catholic Church documents on mission and liturgy, alongside significant works by leading scholars of liturgical theology who engage with mission The principal scholars include Alexander Schmemann, Ruth A Meyers, Thomas Schattauer, Bruce T Morrill, David N Power, and Louis-Marie Chauvet, and the primary sources also include the published work of Rowan.
D Williams which focus on sacramentality, and the theological works dealing with the Cross, survival, and resistance from the published work of Delores S Williams The literature serves as a vital contribution to the discussion by framing the research question and in order to extend mission as holiness within contemporary liturgical theology vis-à-vis the relationship between liturgy, mission, and world The official Roman Catholic mission and liturgy (primary) sources are broad and encompass a Roman Catholic definition of mission, though extended with the help of two Protestant theologians Their theologies, in dialogue with Chapter 2’s definition of mission, will be engaged with a Roman Catholic definition of mission and will contribute to that definition of mission This relates to the second distinctive method of Roman Catholic missiology over the last fifty years, its ecumenical nature
This is where Bevans’ second distinction proves essential to the conception of this thesis: he states,
Catholic scholars rely on the rich heritage of scholarship from many Christians, using ecumenical insights to deepen Catholic understanding and scholarship Catholic missiology remains unabashedly Catholic, expressed within the framework of Roman Catholic doctrine and, in the broader sense, by drawing on any truth that can advance the church’s mission and deepen the church’s understanding of its worldwide role.
Whilst my thesis seeks to contribute to a Roman Catholic liturgical theology of mission, it depends on the “wealth” of ecumenical theologians, and, in its constructive piece, on two
Protestant theologians in particular, 19 in order to propose significant additions to our theological construal of mission.
Method
This multi-disciplinary thesis integrates liturgical theology, missiology, and ecclesiology to articulate a coherent theology of mission anchored in a Catholic root definition and examined through an ecumenical liturgical perspective It does not seek to provide an exhaustive history of missiology or Roman Catholic ecclesiology; instead, its aim is to propose an adequate, ecumenically informed theology of mission derived from liturgical practice rather than the historical development of Catholic missiology.
Rowan D Williams and Delores S Williams develop their theologies within distinct Protestant streams—Anglican and African American liberal theology—while engaging the longstanding debate over human cooperation with Divine grace, a topic on which Catholics, Lutherans, and Anglicans have found common ground on justification by faith but remain divided about the role of human agency; this thesis does not solve that debate but instead re-contextualizes these theologies through a Catholic theological anthropology, which offers a more optimistic view of human agency in mission to the cosmos, with sacramentality foregrounded to reveal how the unity of nature and grace allows human cooperation with grace to witness to and participate in Christ’s mission, expanding the scope of mission beyond liturgy into the wider world.
While Roman Catholic official documents continue to articulate the advancement of mission, three World Council of Churches documents on the relationship between mission and liturgy likewise push mission forward from an ecumenical perspective This analysis limits itself to the foundational documents that shape Roman Catholic theology of mission as expressed in official Catholic writings over the past fifty years The ecumenical dimension of the study is scoped to engagements with the theologies of Rowan D Williams and Delores S Williams, chosen for their relevance to developing a coherent liturgical theology of mission.
The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, published in 1999 by the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation, presents a shared understanding of how justification by grace operates in a believer’s life It states that salvation comes through grace and faith in Jesus Christ, and that justification is received, not earned, by faith; while genuine faith is seen and completed in love and good works The declaration notes that both churches affirm central gospel elements—grace, faith, and Christ’s saving work—yet different expressions remain on certain details, encouraging humility and continued dialogue Its overarching aim is to promote visible unity, mutual respect, and ongoing study to deepen reconciliation.
Within the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission's Salvation and the Church: An Agreed Statement, Sec 3–8, the discussion presents the response of human agency to the Divine offer of grace By examining the sacramentality in Rowan D Williams and the womanist theology of Delores S Williams, the analysis highlights a 'new light' sacramentality and resistance that informs a liturgical theology of mission Consequently, a broader theological framework for approaching Williams and Williams emerges from the Catholic sacramental principle, which holds that grace dwells in creation yet is not reduced to nature.
Viewing kenosis through a feminist lens—highlighted in Chapter 5 by a womanist critique of the Cross and kenosis—expands the scope of mission and liturgy to include liberation Soteriologically, liberation frames salvation as transformation of personal, social, and ecclesial relations, and this approach makes mission and sacramentality intelligible within the world’s historicity As a result, mission and sacramentality become integral to both sacred and secular dimensions of life, and liturgy and the world are situated in relation to mission so that mission encompasses both liturgical practice and worldly reality.
This study unfolds in five chapters: Chapter 2 construes mission from official Catholic documents, beginning with Vatican II and continuing through papal writings, and it investigates the interrelations of liturgy, mission, and world while introducing Christological mimesis and Christological participation; it also analyzes how the definition of mission appears within Vatican II and papal documents on liturgy and mission Chapter 3 critically evaluates contemporary liturgical theologies of mission in light of the Chapter 2 definition of mission as holiness, examining two approaches to the relationship between liturgy, church, mission, and world to situate the study’s definition within liturgical theology The second section of the study forms the constructive portion Chapter 4 extends the notion of mission as holiness through sacramentality, especially in relation to Rowan D Williams' sacramental theology and in light of the defined mission as holiness Chapter 5 further develops mission as holiness by engaging Delores S Williams' liberationist and womanist concepts of resistance and survival.
22 Eboni Marshall Turman, Toward a Womanist Ethic of Incarnation: Black Bodies, the Black Church, and the Council of Chalcedon (New York: Palgrave, 2013), 150-151
Daniel G Groody argues that liberation encompasses the personal, social, and religious dimensions of history To foreground the church’s own mission, I replace Groody’s “religious liberation” with “ecclesial liberation,” showing that liberation is intrinsic to the church rather than merely a religious concern This interpretation is discussed in Globalization, Spirituality, and Justice: Navigating the Path to Peace (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007), 185–186.
Chapter Two Mission as Holiness:
Mission in Contemporary Official Roman Catholic Mission and
Contemporary Catholic mission theology anchors the notion of mission in Vatican II and in the subsequent official Roman Catholic documents, whether ecclesiological or missiological in scope This chapter presents mission as a network of subthemes—holiness, justice, the conversion of the self, Divine love for creatures, and the Reign of God—and analyzes them through Vatican II and post‑Vatican II mission documents to provide a theoretical framework for engaging with contemporary liturgical theologies and for interpreting sacramental theology from a missiological perspective It asks what the fundamental and comprehensive theological notion of mission is in contemporary official Roman Catholic documents.
To articulate a comprehensive Vatican II and post-conciliar conception of Roman Catholic mission, this study concentrates on two guiding heuristic concepts—the Paschal Mystery and the Reign of God—as the dominant theological emphases in contemporary Catholic thought The Paschal Mystery anchors liturgical and sacramental theology, while the Reign of God informs contemporary understandings of the church’s mission By bringing these two areas into closer dialogue, the chapter structures its analysis of mission around how the Church enters into the Paschal mystery and proclaims the coming reign of God, thereby integrating liturgical, sacramental, and missiological perspectives within a unified theological framework.
This article begins by examining how the mission of the Church is articulated in the key Vatican II documents—Ad Gentes, Lumen Gentium, and Gaudium et Spes—and then contrasts these with the three major post‑conciliar papal texts on mission: Evangelii Nuntiandi by Paul VI, Redemptoris Missio by John Paul II, and Evangelii Gaudium by Francis It then shifts to notable liturgical documents to distill the embedded mission theology they contain and to argue that, while liturgy texts illuminate aspects of mission, they do not address mission as fully or comprehensively as the council and post‑conciliar documents.
24 By heuristic, I mean concepts I employ to get at the significance of mission for our purposes, liturgically, missiologically, and ecclesiologically By doing so, I hope to describe a comprehensive theology of mission
Gaudium et spes, Evangelii nuntiandi, and Evangelii gaudium illustrate how the Catholic understanding of mission has evolved, with each document highlighting or downplaying specific themes according to the pope's emphasis Structuring the two overarching themes across these texts reveals that mission is not fixed; different papal emphases reshape its understanding, and together these works present a spectrum of mission notions rather than a single model.
After examining the two theological concepts tied to the church’s mission, I suggest that mission as holiness—the living in and through Christ’s life—emerges as the overarching notion of mission across these ecclesial documents.
The Paschal Mystery: Christ’s Love for Others
1.1.1 Lumen Gentium: The Call to Holiness
Among the 25 themes highlighted in Lumen Gentium, the call to holiness is a central and pervasive element of the Second Vatican Council's vision for Christian discipleship Holiness begins with the work of the Triune God, who is the sole agent of sanctification in human life The Holy Spirit, bearer of divine love and the immanent power of God among people, sanctifies both the church as a whole and individual believers This sanctifying power guides, strengthens, and empowers the church and the lay faithful, and also unites them into the communal ecclesia, deepening the bond of love between God and God's people For Lumen Gentium, the Spirit enacts three interconnected characteristics of holiness in persons: charity, humility, and self-sacrifice.
Charity, or love, as Lumen Gentium (LG) describes it, flows from God who is Love Himself, and through the Spirit this love becomes tangible in the church’s life—expressed in the liturgy, in prayer, in helping the poor, and in efforts to promote peace If love comes from God—the Divine Love—then it is directed outward in two ways: first, back to God through liturgy, and second, toward others in concrete acts of mercy and peacemaking.
25 John O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
28 LG, 5, 39 Feminist critiques of humility and self-sacrifice will be discussed more fully in Chapter 3
In liturgical life, the church glorifies God and gives thanks for the gifts of love and holiness Love is not only a gift for the church or the individual to receive; it is directed outward through justice—such as helping the poor and promoting peace—and it carries socio-economic and political implications By fostering unity, love generates a peace that overcomes war, hatred, and all fragments that divide people This understanding of love is framed christologically, grounding its meaning in Christ.
LG presents divine love as God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, who is both Teacher and model of holiness Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection—the Paschal Mystery—are inseparable from holiness, and his healing, preaching, and table fellowship show how love brings unity out of discord and life out of sin Because of his love for people living under sin, death, and oppression, Christ came to lead humanity toward greater holiness Holiness, therefore, is Paschal in shape: in LG, Christ Jesus as teacher and model of holiness embodies a love that makes life arise from sin and directs human life to be formed by the Paschal Mystery to reflect more fully who Christ Jesus is.
When the Spirit empowers people to enact Divine Love—loving God and loving neighbor—the epistemology of love incarnated can be framed as mimesis, or imitation, of Christ While Lumen Gentium (LG) does not use that term, it invokes “testimonium et exemplum” to indicate Christ’s role for disciples; this Christ-centered imitation is developed in Chapter 3 and understood as an example to be imitated Popes John Paul II and Francis extend this Christological mimesis, offering a more robust interpretation of holiness, while Vatican II anchors the Church’s mission in the theology of Divine Love Yet mere imitation without divine empowerment falls short; focusing only on Christ’s Scriptural actions can overemphasize human effort without acknowledging God’s initiative Therefore, a genuine imitation must be accompanied by participation in Divine Love—the grace of the Holy Spirit—so that the fruits of love are empowered in both loving God and loving others, aligning human activity with God’s justice and Christ’s mission rather than distorting it or opposing God’s purposes.
Note 32 cites Ibid., with the translation “witness and example” for the Latin edition of Lumen Gentium, which is available on the Vatican website at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_lt.html and was accessed on 27 July 2017; the discussion later references Gaudium et Spes (Sec.).
22) employs imitation, thus imitation is not foreign to the documents of Vatican II
LG argues that the Church participates in God's holiness through ecclesial prayer (including liturgy) and justice, not merely by imitating Christ but by sharing in the divine life in an imperfect way; this holiness is rooted in the image of the People of God—a community that journeys through history, with the Spirit enabling it to overcome sin and evil to grow in charity and justice LG cautions against reducing holiness to external acts of justice, lest imitation eclipse the gift of divine love that energizes the Church’s holy action Instead, holiness is both an interior disposition and an outward manifestation of love enacted through liturgy, prayer, and justice that flow from God as the source of Divine Love given to human beings As Howland Sanks notes, following Christ entails consequences, including outwardly expressing the inner participation in Divine Love, so Christological imitation arises from participation in Divine Love Thus, holiness is not merely multiplying external acts but deepening our love for self, others, and God, expressed through liturgy and justice directed to God as the source of Divine Love Ultimately, imitation is rooted in participation, making love explicitly ecclesiological.
The church is presented as the people of God and as a sacrament—a visible expression of God’s holiness that, through the Spirit, reveals God’s love while remaining in solidarity with sinful humanity; both the church and society need greater solidarity with God and with one another, and God’s love helps the church overcome sin to become an instrument of love in the world As a sacrament, the church mediates divine love and invites all people to imitate and participate in it, turning the human situation shaped by sin toward the fundamental calling to holiness In this light, the church’s mission, through the life of Christ, is to witness to and enact the holiness of Divine Love for all humanity.
34 T Howland Sanks, “The Social Mission of the Church: Its Changing Context,” in The Gift of the Church, ed Peter Phan (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier/Liturgical Press, 2000), 271
Jesus himself The mission of the church and disciples is to grow in Divine Love (love of God) and to live out of this Divine Love in the world
Gaudium et Spes 38 reinforces the idea that the call to holiness is the Church’s principal mission, while LG (Lumen Gentium) concentrates on the Church’s interior life (the church ad intra) and GS (Gaudium et Spes) on the Church’s relationship to the world (the church ad extra); because both documents are ecclesiological at heart, they should be read together to yield a complete understanding of the Church’s mission that covers both inward reform and outward witness The theological anthropology here begins with the problems of the world GS presents holiness as the original image of humanity before the Fall, created in God’s image—not as a mere pictorial likeness but as an eschatological image of final holiness, aligning with LG in seeing humanity’s ultimate destiny as participation in God’s holiness Thus, the call to holiness is not merely a future goal but the original condition of humanity prior to the Fall, making eschatology a form of protology—the human destiny oriented toward a return to the original garden.
An image of holiness in the human person is a sacrament of Divine Love that both effects and mediates holiness, so that the broken state of sin meets perfect holiness and our bodies become temples where Divine Love dwells, making visible an echo of that love Humans are endowed with intellect and wisdom, prompting us to seek truth and goodness not only through the heart but also through the mind, with the entire person—body, heart, and mind—ordered from creation toward Divine Love Divine Love is a truth to be thought about rationally as the existential destiny of every person, a claim that holds not only for Christians but for all people of goodwill, in whom grace works in an unseen way, for Christ died for all, and the ultimate vocation of humanity is one.
39 Richard R Gaillardetz, The Church in the Making: Lumen Gentium, Christus Dominus, Orientalium Ecclesiarum, Rediscovering Vatican II Series (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2006), 14
Gilles Routhier argues in "Vatican II: Relevance and Future" that Gaudium et Spes is a pastoral constitution precisely because it begins with the Church’s concrete pastoral problems in the modern world, not with doctrine or propositional theology By foregrounding how the Church actually exists and operates today, GS emphasizes pastoral response over abstract theological systems, aligning Vatican II with lived experience in the contemporary world.
While the divine mystery remains beyond full human comprehension, we believe that the Holy Spirit, in a way known only to God, offers every person the possibility of being united with the paschal mystery This universal invitation highlights the Spirit's role in drawing all toward participation in Christ's passion, death, and resurrection.
From a Christological perspective, the call to holiness begins with Christ’s humanity rather than mere imitation of Jesus Christ is not only the image of God but also fully human, and because he remains free from sin, he incarnates God’s Divine Love—holiness—in a unique, perfect way The GS emphasizes that through the incarnation the Son of God unites with every person, entering human history by using the hands, mind, and heart of humanity—working with human hands, thinking with a human mind, acting by a human choice, and loving with a human heart In this sense, Christ’s life makes use of every aspect of human nature to reveal God’s holiness, and his life stands as a perfect sacrament of God’s love and a sign of humanity’s destiny to participate in the mystery of love.
How does the call to holiness connect to the Paschal Mystery? GS connects the above Incarnational theology to the cross:
Jesus, the innocent Lamb, earned life for humanity through the free shedding of His blood In Him, God reconciles us to Himself and to one another, delivering us from bondage to sin and the devil Each believer can declare with the Apostle Paul, "The Son of God loved me and gave Himself up for me" (Gal 2:20), underscoring the personal power of the gospel Jesus' suffering not only provides a model for imitation but also paves a trail that makes life and death holy and gives them new meaning Following this path leads to transformed living, where holiness shapes daily life and purpose is renewed in His love.
Participants in divine love interpret the world through the Paschal Mystery, viewing the cross as a dialogue between holiness and sin, between love and self-centeredness, between life and death, and between glory and suffering This perspective shapes human life into a Paschal path that mirrors Christ’s holiness, where obedience to God’s love becomes a struggle between human pain and a transformative love that offers renewed meaning Christ’s self-giving life reveals the universal call to holiness, showing a God willing to suffer and die so that humanity may share in resurrected life, a participation in the mystery of Divine Love When this theology is linked to Lumen Gentium, the Paschal Mystery emerges as an inner encounter between God’s call to holiness and the imperfect, sinful existence of humanity.
Post-Vatican II Documents on Mission
Ten years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI issued the apostolic exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi, re-centering the council’s mission theme from the perspective of evangelisation The document takes up Vatican II’s call to holiness but frames the church’s mission around proclamation and witness in the modern world Evangelii nuntiandi emphasizes that evangelisation is the concrete expression of the gospel in history, guiding both clergy and laity in renewed zeal for mission In this way, Paul VI connects the council’s vision of holiness with a renewed imperative to announce the gospel to all people.
VI treats this point as implied and only addresses it in the conclusion, where he ties Vatican II’s emphasis on holiness to his broader interest in evangelisation as integral aspects of the church’s single mission He states that the church is called to holiness, and it is to this holiness that the universal church bears witness By "universal church," he means both the lay faithful and the ordained, all sharing in the divine vocation to holiness.
Holiness of life, though not explicitly defined by Paul VI, is best understood through its defining attributes: simplicity of life, a spirit of prayer, charity toward all—especially toward the poor—obedience and humility, detachment, and sacrifice Taken together, these qualities constitute the mark of holiness, revealing its inner quality rather than merely listing separate virtues Thus holiness is not simply praying or charity or humility in isolation; it is the totality and interdependence of these traits expressed in mission and thus in holiness itself By expanding on Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes, Paul VI shows that these elements are not merely various ways to participate in holiness, but interdependent dimensions of its fullness Holiness, therefore, is rooted not only in a Vatican II notion of charity and justice but in a holistic approach that integrates spiritual, personal, and social dimensions into a coherent life of mission.
Evangelisation is the core of the Church’s mission, as Paul VI reframes it: the proclamation of the Gospel to every person, in word and action, so that people come to faith, enter the life of the Church, and join in Christ’s mission to transform the world In this view, preaching and witness are inseparable, guiding how the Church evangelises through catechesis, charity, and social engagement, ensuring that the Gospel reaches all corners of society.
According to Alberigo (58, 449), the discussion does not even emphasize the highly hierarchical nature of the mission in AG So who conducts the mission? In AG, priests carry it out, but the ultimate responsibility rests with bishops to oversee and instruct mission activity within their diocese.
59 Evangelii nuntiandi (8 December 1975), 69; Hereafter EN
Good News of Jesus Christ – the Good News proclaimed in two fundamental commands:
Being a messenger of the Gospel means being an evangeliser, but genuine evangelisation is not about persuading people of other faiths to join the Catholic Church, nor is it primarily about church growth The two fundamental commands target the disciple who is already in the Church—baptised into Christ, having received the new self and a new identity in the Gospel, and called to be reconciled to God Nothing in this call suggests proselytism or an emphasis on increasing the number of Catholics.
Paul VI discusses the connection between evangelisation and the mission of Jesus, by acknowledging that to preach the gospel “sums up the mission of Jesus.” 62 In fact, EN links God’s mission to evangelisation quite closely: Christ “Jesus Himself, the Good News of God, was the very first and the greatest evangelizer; he was so through and through: to perfection and to the point of the sacrifice of His earthly life." 63 In other words, if God’s mission is evangelisation, and Jesus himself is the incarnation of God’s Good News, then Jesus is himself the embodiment of God’s mission What LG, GS, and AG alluded to, EN explicitly states: Christ incarnates the Divine Mission His perfect nature meant that he could perfectly fulfil God’s mission because sin did not limit living God’s mission
Mission, understood as proclaiming the gospel, centers on the Paschal Mystery as the definitive accomplishment of salvation In particular, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ constitute the kernel and center of the Good News, the great gift of God that liberates human beings from sin and death and makes salvation real for all who believe.
The Paschal Mystery is the central kernel of salvation, embodying liberation from sin and the Evil One as its core purpose This liberation unfolds when disciples live God’s holiness, which EN now envisions as freeing the human destiny from the barriers imposed by sin Yet the questions remain: how does this liberation come about, and what exactly does it mean within EN? Answering these questions ties together salvation, holiness, and the transformative destiny of persons in a framework where freedom is inseparable from living God’s call.
Liberation is conversion—a total interior renewal that changes the destiny of humanity by turning us toward the gospel This interior transformation means a change of the heart rooted in the Paschal Mystery The Cross represents Jesus giving his life completely to God out of love for humanity and for God, and it can be understood as the ultimate summation of this redemptive message: renewal through surrender to God in Christ.
As the love of God, the new commandment calls believers to love God and neighbor, and Christ’s crucifixion reveals God’s deepest love for humanity and the complete well-being of all people This view presents the Church’s mission as intrinsic to its nature, for the Church participates in God’s own essence—love—and love is understood as self-giving that flows from the depths of the human person, a gift first of God’s self to humanity To reject or withhold liberation means remaining under the natural inclinations of the human heart, which are not made whole by human effort but are purified and elevated by God’s purifying love This love does not generate life from nothing but purifies and elevates natural life.
Paul VI’s image of the human heart shows that the human person, as an anthropological and existential reality, is already graced with holiness—the seeds of the Word—so the gospel, Jesus Christ, is at work within the heart, inviting a reinterpretation of the world not without God but through a self‑giving, self‑sacrificing love Mission, then, is to purify people and render them more truly human The phrase “inclination of the human heart” points to a predisposition toward sin rather than toward holiness or mission; yet the heart is not utterly opposed to God’s love, but retains the potential to respond to divine love, to seek and encounter it He also notes that the very heart of the contemporary world is secularism, defined as doing without God.
He does not disparage the world, nor does he imagine the church retreating from it Instead, he suggests the world already has a “heart” that needs to be purified and elevated An implicit holiness already exists, awaiting its true destiny: communion with and participation in the Divine Mystery, with the God of love, as well as deeper bonds with other human beings.
Authentic Christian witness reveals Divine Love’s true destiny, and the world will come to know it primarily through the Church’s conduct rather than through words alone The Church evangelizes by a living testimony of fidelity to the Lord Jesus—a witness of poverty and detachment, freedom in the face of worldly powers, and the sanctity that marks true discipleship Therefore, Gospel proclamation is not merely preaching to non-Christians; it centers on the vulnerability of the human person who becomes a witness—a sacrament—that lives out and embodies God’s love, not as an abstract image or concept, but as the embodied Gospel seen in the person of Christ.
EN understands the witness of the individual Christian disciple as “an ecclesial act.”
Even when someone preaches the Gospel alone, that act is an ecclesial act that ties the preacher to the Church’s evangelizing mission through institutional relationships and through deep, invisible bonds of grace It presupposes that the preaching is not based on a self-imposed mission or personal inspiration, but on unity with the Church’s mission and in her name.
The Reign of God
This article interrogates the role of the Reign of God in the church’s mission, asking how mission—whether conceived as mimesis and participation in holiness or as the explicit proclamation of Christ to non-Christians rooted in the Paschal Mystery—relates to God’s reign within the ecclesial act It confirms that contemporary theologies locate the church’s mission in Jesus’ proclamation of the Reign of God, shaping both evangelization and witness It further analyzes Vatican II and post‑Vatican II mission documents to understand how they articulate the Reign of God, and it investigates how the Paschal Mystery and the Reign of God function together in ecclesial mission to energize proclamation, discipleship, and social transformation.
Since the Second Vatican Council, there has been growing nuance and emphasis on the Reign of God and how it relates to the Church’s mission In Lumen Gentium, the Reign of God—often described as the “kingdom of Christ”—is identified with the Church itself: “the kingdom of Christ now present in mystery, grows visible through the power of God in the world.” The Church thus appears as a mysterious presence of Christ’s Reign, but the text leaves unresolved questions: does the Reign of Christ imply a distinction between the Church and a broader Reign of God, or is this a carryover from an older understanding that the Church is the Reign of God? Is there a real difference between the Reign of God and the Reign of Christ? This ambiguity persists in LG, especially in article 5, which speaks of the Church spreading the Reign of Christ throughout the world and raises further questions about whether the Reign of Christ grows through the Church’s visible expansion.
Scholars such as Donald Senior and Carrol Stuhlmueller, with Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, argue that the church’s central mission is the basileia (the reign of God), a vision that cannot be adequately proclaimed or realized in a patriarchal church; true realization requires spaces where women enjoy full spiritual autonomy, power, self-determination, and liberation, so Christian feminists must first reclaim the ecclesia as our own community, heritage, theology, and spirituality before we can name the divine differently, with the aim that once gender equality is achieved within the church, the basileia becomes the foundational mission for the church as a whole Supporting this trajectory, Gaillardetz and Clifford's Keys to the Council, Sobrino’s writings on the Reign of God in liberation theology, and Dupuis's Who Do You Say That I Am? underscore the central role of the reign of God in liberation theology and ecclesial renewal.
95 See John Fuellenbach, Church: Community for the Kingdom (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,
2002) and Idem., The Kingdom of God: The Message of Jesus Today (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,
1995) Fuellenbach has been the most in-depth in terms of relating the theological concept of the Kingdom of God to the Church’s mission
(hierarchical) structures of the church into a new geographical area? Consequently, there is a paucity of detail in order to fully understand what exactly LG means by the Reign of Christ
One year after LG, GS is promulgated, yet the Reign of God receives only scant attention, appearing in a few articles Still, GS treats the Kingdom of God as both an eschatological fulfillment and a present mystery: on earth the Kingdom is already present in mystery, and when the Lord returns it will bear full fruit GS does not lay out an explicit relation among the Reign of God, the church, and the world, though the connection is clearly implied The Reign of God is the eschatological culmination of God’s purposes at the end of time, yet its tangible expression is seen in either the ecclesial or the worldly order Consequently, the future, eschatological dimension of the Reign is something in which the church already participates, while the church itself is not identified with the Reign since it remains sinful and on pilgrimage toward its future fullness The inherent eschatology suggests the church does not fully participate in the final Reign, but Christ’s return will deepen the Reign’s realization This theological theme is developed more fully in Post-Vatican II ecclesial documents.
The Reign of God is understood as a broad destiny that extends beyond the church to include the entire world United in Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit, people journey toward the Kingdom of their Father and welcome the salvation proclaimed for every person The church, therefore, is not the Reign of God itself but a mysterious presencing or sacrament of the Reign within the present time In this view, the Reign of God transcends the church, representing the ultimate destiny of all human beings.
AG, by far, treats the Reign of God concept deeper than either LG or GS In a bold statement
AG states that healing itself is a sign of the kingdom, a claim found in a passage that links God’s deep love for humanity to the charity people show toward one another and toward God True charity extends to all, without distinction, and because this love is universal, the church’s mission cannot be considered foreign anywhere or to anyone.
Mission is not simply the expansion of the church; it is the embodiment and practice of God's deep love for the cosmos By following the two great commandments—loving God and loving our neighbor—we are renewed in our createdness and thereby reveal God's love Mission is a sacrament of who God is and what God does, with God deeply present in human history, lives, and actions to heal what opposes the Gospel Thus, mission represents a form of salvation (salvus) made tangible in history and a transfiguring process for people and events as they are drawn deeper into God's mysterious love The telos of mission is the Reign or Kingdom of God, glimpsed in moments of action, with the church called and commissioned to be a sacrament of holiness in the world, so that holiness enacted now offers a present glimpse of God's final eschatological reign.
AG identifies three core components of the church's mission: preaching the gospel, planting churches, and proclaiming and establishing the Kingdom of God The discussion briefly mentions the healing aspect of the Reign of God but emphasizes holiness as foundational and inseparable from charity and justice, even if the link to those three tasks isn’t always explicit A strong emphasis is placed on the church's external mission to reach parts of the world where the church is not yet planted, with the idea that outsiders can encounter the Gospel and be incorporated through the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist AG also stresses the importance of liturgy in mission, linking liturgical life to the church's evangelizing outreach.
Through this activity, the Mystical Body of Christ continually gathers its members and directs its mission toward growth, as described in Ephesians 4:11–16 Church members are urged to carry on this missionary effort out of the love they bear for God and their desire to share with all people the spiritual riches of the Church’s present life and the life to come.
From this perspective, the Church is essential for salvation, and when a person learns about the Christian faith, they may seek initiation into the Church This process is tightly connected to personal conversion within the Church, presenting the faith as the rightful path to grace and truth In this framework, knowledge of Christianity is linked with the belief that salvation and enlightenment come through affiliation with the Church, while those outside are described as living in darkness and prone to sin and error.
Through the sacraments of Christian initiation, believers are freed from the power of darkness and, having died with Christ, buried with Him and risen with Him, enter new life They receive the Spirit of adoption as sons and join in the remembrance of the Lord's death and resurrection together with the whole People of God.
AG presents the Paschal Mystery as liberation from sin and incorporation into Christ’s death and Resurrection, but it places this hope within a world that is sinful and in need of salvation, aiming to awaken a person to the fact that he has been snatched from sin and led into the mystery of God’s love, who called him to enter into a personal relationship with Christ; the renewal and reform of the Catechumenate are noted to acknowledge conversion within the Paschal Mystery, yet the overall sense in AG emphasizes saving people from personal (original) sin and the darkness of society, at times at the expense of humanization.
The church’s threefold missionary task—proclaiming the Reign of God, planting the church, and preaching the Gospel—often treats church planting and preaching as dominant while the Reign of God remains under-emphasized This lacuna is explored more thoroughly in the Post-Vatican II document Evangelii Nuntiandi (EN), which calls for a broader understanding of mission In its discussion of the Paschal Mystery, EN envisions a deeper, richer sense of mission that centers on holiness as the primary goal, rather than merely establishing churches or simply proclaiming the Gospel.
Post-Vatican II Documents and the Mission of the Church
Vatican II emphasizes the Reign of God more than any prior or subsequent ecclesiastical document, with Paul VI building on Ad Gentes from a Gaudium et Spes perspective Vatican II historians note that although AG and GS were both promulgated in the final session of Vatican II, they are remarkably different GS, as discussed, emphasizes the relationship of the church in dialogue with the world, in the hopes that charity and justice will become more widespread as part of God’s purposes for the world AG presents two contrasting models of mission: an older model where the task of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is to save souls by incorporating non-Christians (or even Christians outside the Catholic Church, so-called “heathens”) into the church as the Reign of God; this older model understood salvation exclusively as admission to the Church.
107 Alberigo, The History of Vatican II, Vol 5, 386-390
Within this framework, the Catholic Church—especially the Roman Catholic Church—explicitly adheres to Christ, viewing the Church as salvation within the Kingdom of God, a perfect society set against a world of sin and evil Liturgy functions as a symbol and manifestation of that perfect society, since it embodies the fully redeemed life Baptism serves as the entry into the Church, and thus into the symbol of saved life Holiness, in this view, means representing perfection and an idealized notion of mission and life.
During Vatican II, bishops from mission lands such as India, Asia, and parts of Africa urged a new understanding of mission that aligned with the council's documents and their experiences living among people of other faiths They emphasized inner conversion and humanisation over proselytising the “other.” These two visions of mission appear in Ad Gentes (AG), sometimes in tension with Vatican II's ecclesiology, which links holiness to inner transformation through participation in liturgy and prayer as well as outward acts of justice and peace Ultimately, the older model of mission dominated the substance of AG.
Evangelii Nuntiandi marks a shift in mission theology by moving beyond a purely Paschal Mystery-focused view to situate mission in the Reign of God, a move that resonates with soteriology while broadening its scope Its importance lies not only in the rich theology of the Reign of God but also in giving greater weight to a newer model of mission that aligns with both Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes, and reduces the tension between these two approaches As a result, Robert Schreiter contends that Evangelii Nuntiandi is the document Ad Gentes had intended to become.
EN places the Reign of God at the heart of Jesus’ mission, teaching that Christ first proclaims the kingdom of God, a priority so defining that everything else becomes “the rest.” This does not render anything not linked to the Reign of God superfluous, but it presents the Reign as the hermeneutical key for understanding the Gospel and the mission of Christ The text argues that EN links the Paschal Mystery with the Reign of God by identifying the Paschal Mystery with the Cross while the Reign of God comprises the remaining, historical work Jesus carried out on earth In this view, Jesus’s earthly mission prior to the Crucifixion focuses on preaching and teaching about the Kingdom.
Dom Gregory Dix's The Shape of the Liturgy (Bloomsbury, 1945/2005) and Robert J Schreiter's "Changes in Roman Catholic Attitudes toward Proselytism and Mission," in New Directions in Mission and Evangelization, Vol 2, edited by James A Scherer and Stephen, shed light on how liturgical form shapes worship and how Catholic attitudes toward proselytism and mission have evolved.
Living the Reign of God reveals what the final eschatological Reign will be like The Paschal Mystery is a central part of Jesus’s earthly mission, and these two realities are inextricably linked, particularly when viewed through the lenses of Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes In this framework, holiness means participation in Christ through liturgy and prayer, making the mission a lived experience of divine grace for believers.
The Paschal Mystery and the Reign of God are understood as an existential, interconnected reality: adherence to the Kingdom means embracing a transformed world, a new way of being, and a new manner of loving and living in community, initiated by the Gospel This adherence can be read as clinging to the transformation or believing in it, but in either case it signals a shift in allegiance toward God’s reign and mission The phrase that the Gospel “inaugurates us” indicates that our very identity is oriented toward the Reign’s content, embodied in Christ’s earthly life as he makes the reign visible through his words and deeds—from the Incarnation to the Resurrection.
Centered on the image of the heart, the Kingdom of God involves both an interior transformation and a living, heart-led life of love for God and neighbor Liberation is not only the Cross but begins in the life of Christ and is definitively accomplished by his death and resurrection; the Reign of God unfolds through Jesus' earthly life as acts of liberation that foreshadow the redemptive Cross Since liberation is an inner conversion, the Reign of God results from personal holiness, a transformation within the person, and the church's mission is for believers to seek, build, and live the kingdom together This is the call to holiness—the Church's essential mission and deepest identity The Church is called to holiness not for self but for self-giving love to the entire cosmos While Christ's Cross reveals the Father's love, living a Paschal love in the world does not require a literal death on the cross; rather, it means interiorizing God's salvific love and living it through the imitation of Christ's life—manifesting the Reign of God today.
EN provides the following concrete ways the Reign of God is lived out: people are loved; they are momentarily freed from the shackles of oppression When Christian disciples
When people live out the gift of holiness, the Reign of God becomes visible as an ecclesial act, and they themselves become a sign—a new presence of Jesus—a sacrament of Christ at work in the world The Reign of God arises from hearts infused with Divine Love and, acting in this Spirit-filled love, reshapes humanity from within and makes it new EN thus envisions a renewal of hearts that leads to loving action: just as Jesus’s Reign serves as an image for disciples, the world is transformed as people’s hearts are changed, not only by receiving ecclesial love, but by acting out of the love they encounter in Christians.
Acting out of Divine Love mirrors Christ’s mission entrusted by God, and the world calls for a simple life, a spirit of prayer, and charity toward all—especially the lowly and the poor—along with obedience, humility, detachment, and sacrifice Without this mark of holiness, our proclamation of the Reign of God will struggle to touch the hearts of modern people Because EN presents an anthropology that humanity’s destiny lies in union with God’s love, the Church’s witness to Divine Love is essential for people to discern their true vocation and to be renewed in their capacity to love others The world depends on a credible witness to God’s mission by the Church Therefore, the Reign of God is not merely the mimesis of Christ’s historical life but an eschatological participation in the cosmos’ ultimate direction toward the fullness of Divine Love In this light, holiness and the Reign of God are inseparably linked to living now toward the telos of the cosmos: Divine Love that liberates and humanizes persons.
EN signifies a deeper ecclesial mission toward holiness rooted in inner conversion to God's profound love, lived from the heart and expressed through acts of justice that witness to the Reign of God It extends and deepens Vatican II while foregrounding how Christ embodied God’s mission—proclaiming and bringing about the Reign of God in his earthly life By participating in the ecclesial mission, Christian disciples are transformed and called to transform the world in accord with God's love Ultimately, EN locates the call to holiness in the heart, where Divine Love and human love meet and human love begins to be transformed toward the Divine.
These lines critique EN's theology of the church's mission rooted in the Reign of God, noting that while EN offers a rich framework, it portrays an overly idealistic path of transformation toward that Reign It fails to acknowledge the deep, existential losses people often endure as they are transformed, and it seems to assume that fallen humanity will readily embrace Christ’s message, neglecting resistance rooted in sin The analysis also highlights how transformation involves a simultaneous loss and gain, as a deep sense of identity is gradually shed even as a new orientation toward God’s purposes begins to take shape Ultimately, being reoriented toward the Reign of God entails bearing both the cross and the resurrection: the loss of the old self alongside the gradual adoption of a new one.
A deeper problem arises: many documents foreground the Paschal shape of mission as holiness, while EN’s modest expansion of mimesis—Christ’s ministerial life—remains underdeveloped Consequently, participation in Divine Love is overemphasized at the expense of a fully formed ministerial life expressed in acts of justice, and these elements are often presented as sequential rather than integrated The core question is whether this pattern can be reversed so that imitation of Jesus’s ministerial life and participation in Divine Love are experienced as a single ecclesial act rather than as separate stages In other words, can the imitation of Jesus’s ministerial life function as a simultaneous participation in Divine Love? Unifying the ecclesial act would bridge the bifurcation between participation and mimesis This issue will be revisited, particularly in discussions about decentring mission from the church’s liturgy toward a broader construal of mission.
Earlier analysis shows that RM marks a distinct shift in theological emphasis and in the primary method of ecclesial mission, coupled with a narrower view of conversion Some may argue that a dichotomy between the Paschal Mystery and the Reign of God could lead RM to neglect the Reign of God In reality, RM engages deeply with the Reign of God as a central theological concept and demonstrates its essential connection to the church’s mission.
How is the church’s mission linked to the Reign of God in RM? RM states:
Mission and Official Roman Catholic Documents on the Liturgy
Exploring the Paschal Mystery and the Reign of God through the lens of the Second Vatican Council and post-conciliar mission documents, I define mission as holiness—a dynamic shaped by the imitation of Christ and the contemplation of Christ In this chapter, these theological insights illuminate how worship and prayer translate into lived mission within the church, linking liturgical life to the call to holiness In the following section, I turn to representative liturgical expressions that demonstrate how these concepts of mission and holiness are embodied in contemporary Catholic practice.
Building on Ibid., 278, this section reviews documents to ascertain how this definition of mission relates to Conciliar (Vatican II) and Post-Conciliar liturgy documents As before, the discussion is organized heuristically and proceeds to examine the Paschal Mystery and the Reign of God in separate, focused analyses.
The first chapter of Sacrosanctum concilium highlights the importance of the Paschal Mystery to the liturgical participation of the church in redemption: Christ’s redemption of humankind was “achieved…principally by the paschal mystery of His blessed passion, resurrection from the dead, and the glorious ascension, whereby ‘dying, he destroyed our death and, rising, he restored our life’.” 130 Entrance into the Paschal Mystery begins in baptism because one is immersed into Christ’s death and rises with Christ, and continual participation and proclamation of this mystery by disciples occurs in the Eucharist 131 In SC the mystery of redemption is inexorably tied to Christ’s presence, not only in terms of participation in that mystery, but also in how the mystery is itself present
The “full, active, and conscious participation” 132 of all the faithful is a major value of liturgical reform, and “[n]o value is voiced with greater frequency” 133 than this participation Mark Searle notes three types of levels of participation at work generally within liturgy: (1) at the level of liturgical ritual, (2) at the level of church “as the work of Christ”, and (3) in “the life of God.” 134 Whilst participation in the ritual itself is important, Searle notes that for liturgy “to become the prayer of Christ” 135 the other two levels of participation are required Searle himself discusses participation in liturgy more generally but all three levels of participation are found within SC itself At the ritual level is the reform of the liturgy itself in order to make the church’s liturgy more comprehensible to the faithful: Both “texts and rites should be drawn up so that they express more clearly the holy things which they signify; the Christian
Second Vatican Council's Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (SC), is available on the Vatican website The document, accessed September 3, 2017, can be read at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html, and in Section 5 SC cites the Easter Preface of the Roman Missal.
133 Rita Ferrone, Liturgy: Sacrosanctum Concilium, Rediscovering Vatican II Series
(Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2007), 29 Ferrone notes that this phrase is mentioned at least fourteen times explicitly, and even more times implicitly
134 For a fuller discussion of these levels of participation see Mark Searle, Called to
Participate: Theological, Ritual, and Social Perspectives, eds Barbara Searle and Anne Y Koester (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2006), 15-45
Liturgical participation should enable people to understand the rites with ease and to participate fully, actively, and as members of a community Disciples participate outwardly in the ritual—singing and hearing readings in the vernacular—while also engaging inwardly to be sanctified by Christ’s redeeming mystery Therefore, liturgical participation engages the whole person—body, mind, and spirit—in a transformation through the mystery of Christ The purpose of ritual is to join Christ’s mission of Redemption by sanctifying believers, a goal that aligns with Lumen Gentium.
GS regarding the principal role of mission as holiness How this relates to imitation and contemplation of Christ leads to Searle’s other two levels of participation
Searle’s second level of participation describes how the church participates in Christ’s works by means of liturgy, with Christ’s power making Him present in the sacraments, His Word, and the symbols of worship In this view, baptism is really Christ himself baptizing, and Scripture is Christ speaking when read in the Church, because the liturgical rite is done in Christ Jesus and through the power of the Holy Spirit This participation enables disciples to dwell in Christ’s presence not merely as individuals but corporately, potentially sanctifying and uniting them as Christ’s church; they are filled with the paschal sacraments to be one in holiness Thus the contemplative dimension of liturgy appears as part of mission defined as holiness, with holiness being what Christ does, empowered by the Spirit and gifted to those gathered in liturgy.
Holiness encompasses both contemplation of Christ and active participation in liturgy; it is an imitation of Christ: by standing in His place, hearing His voice, internalizing His Word, and receiving His Body and Blood, believers enact what He did and what He continues to do, for the liturgy is empowered by the Spirit of Christ In Sacrosanctum Concilium, liturgy unites contemplation and imitation of Christ.
SC defines full and active participation as both internal and external in the liturgical life It urges pastors to exercise zeal and patience in teaching the faithful liturgical instruction and to cultivate their active participation in the liturgy, inwardly in faith and outwardly in worship.
A reference to the Post-communion Prayer from Easter Sunday in the Roman Missal anchors the argument in liturgical ritual, showing how mission is conceived as holiness This mission aligns with the teachings of Lumen Gentium (LG) and Gaudium et Spes (GS), and the discussion below will explore the role of humanisation within this framework in greater depth.
Before turning to the concern of justice, it is worth noting that while Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC) treats the Paschal Mystery at length—especially in Chapter 1—it does not develop a comprehensive theology of the Paschal Mystery as deeply as LG, GS, and AG, which examine how participation in Christ's Paschal Mystery is internalised and enacted kenotically Nevertheless, later papal documents on liturgy, discussed below, draw on a theology of the Paschal Mystery, though each document emphasizes different aspects of that mystery.
Evangelium Vitae isn’t a liturgy-specific encyclical, yet it links liturgy to the church’s mission by showing how worship underpins witness John Paul II highlights the deep interconnectedness of liturgy and contemplation, arguing that true disciples are formed through sacramental prayer and participatory worship He calls on believers to develop a contemplative heart that draws strength from liturgical life, enables discernment in mission, and translates worship into faithful action in the world.
Adopting a contemplative outlook, we recognize that others are not only created by God but are wonders—expressions of His beauty The liturgy, as the pope argues, becomes a setting where the evocative gestures, symbols, and rites hand on the beauty and grandeur of the Gospel In Evangelii Vitae, the pope’s meditation on the Eucharistic species brings this beauty to the fore: by contemplating the precious Blood of Christ, the sign of his self-giving love, believers come to recognize the almost divine dignity of every human being Rather than centering on the Body alone, the focus on Christ’s Blood underscores its connection to the Paschal Mystery and the meaning of self-sacrifice Christ’s sacrificial death, the sprinkling of blood, saves humanity and brings life; by giving his life as a sincere gift for others, He establishes a communion between humanity and the Divine, so that drinking His Blood in the Eucharist is not only participation in Christ but a draw into the dynamism of His love and the gift of life.
141 John Paul II, Evangelium vitae, Encyclical Letter, Vatican website, Accessed 21 July
2017, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp- ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html, Sec 83; hereafter, EV
Joy must accompany the response to Christ’s gift on the Cross and its sharing with the disciples in the liturgy, since God’s life through self-sacrifice transcends sorrow Every person reflects God’s creative activity, and the liturgy offers the spiritual strength needed to experience life, suffering, and death in their fullest meaning For the pope, Christic Blood brings life from death and ties the beauty and wonder of Christ’s sacrifice to the mission of the Church.
Contemplating and participating in liturgy binds disciples to mission by shaping them in the image of Christ—the crucified Christ on the Cross—whose example invites them to give their own blood for others in imitation of the Paschal Mystery The pope’s reading can be read as suggesting that mission includes not only self-sacrifice but an aesthetic valuing of death and blood, which risks an uneven Christology that foregrounds kenosis at the expense of the Incarnation-based likeness between Christ and humanity This raises the question of whether mission must always be defined by sorrow and suffering, or whether it can be envisioned in a way that values life and still enacts God’s mission without making suffering an indispensable condition.