In Christ, one comes to encounter God, who is love and from that encounter of love, man finds the path of his vocation and his destiny. At the outset of the encyclical, he mentioned about 1 John 4:16 which says that “God is love and whoever abides in love, abides in God,” for Benedict XVI, it would “express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith: the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny.” Mission would be understood then as the activity of the Church that springs from the nature of love of God in Christ. If Christ is at the heart of mission, then, charity would be at the heart of Christian missionary activity in the Church because we can never separate the true identity of Christ from the love of God. The Christocentric shift of his mission theology leads us to view mission from the very nature of God. Encountering Christ becomes the springboard of encountering his mission. Let us have some 7 thoughts on the value of the Christological encounter which Benedict XVI emphasized to understand mission from its ultimate foundation.

1. Mission as Encountering God as Love- The Christocentric faith as a foundation of mission for Benedict XVI values encounter with Christ as the primordial element of understanding the vocation and mission of every Christian and the Church. Encountering Christ is encountering the deepest nature of God, who is love. The Church has to encounter charity in its profound and deepest sense if it has to understand its very nature, its mission, and its destiny.  For Benedict XVI, it is charity that builds the Church and makes it universal. On October 22, 2006, he spoke to the Church during World Mission Sunday saying: charity is the soul of mission. He said: “unless mission is oriented by charity, that is, unless it springs from a profound act of divine love, it risks being reduced to mere philanthropic and social activity.” Benedict XVI places encounter with Christ as the most indispensable criterion for mission. In fact, in his Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, he quoted St. Augustine saying: “If you see charity, you see the Trinity.” Therefore, being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but an encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. (Deus Caritas Est 1)

2. Mission as Encountering the Word- The Christocentric shift of Benedict XVI brings us to understand the mission of the Church as founded in an encounter with a God who speaks. If mission is to proclaim the Word of God, then the Church and every baptized person has to be a listener of the Word of God. Christ makes the Church encounter Him through the proclamation of the Word “to renew their personal and communal encounter with Him, the word of life made visible, and to become his heralds, so that the gift of divine life – communion – can spread ever more fully throughout the world.” (Verbum Domini 2) For Benedict XVI, mission has to be rooted in an encounter with the mystery of God in the Word that became flesh and lived among us except in sin. As Christians, we “find ourselves before the mystery of God, who has made himself known through the gift of his word.” The Word of God is expressed through human words and therefore it is capable of being encountered, proclaimed, and lived. For us Christians, our mission is centered on Christ as a Person, who is the Word, who is alive and dynamic. Thus, mission is creating that path of encounter between God and his people. God speaks to his people and the people responds through faith. Benedict XVI clarifies: “the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book”: Christianity is the “religion of the word of God”, not of “a written and mute word, but of the incarnate and living Word.” (Verbum Domini 7)

3. Mission as Encountering Hope- Benedict XVI understands hope as a gift that gives redemption to the world and this is only possible if there is a fundamental encounter with Christ who is the hope of the world. Quoting the letter of Paul to the Ephesians, he explains the gift of hope as inseparable from Christ’s gift of salvation. He said: “Paul reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). This Christocentric view of salvation was indeed the whole theme of Paul’s letters. Mission is giving hope. The eschatological communities that Paul were establishing, were indeed Christocentric communities waiting for their redemption in Christ. Yet these communities during his time were not devoid of their pagan religious practices, it was only salvific hope that was not wholistically present in them. Benedict XVI likewise commented that the early Christians had to adhere to Christ who is their hope and their salvation. We were told in the First Letter of Peter that Christians were exhorted to be always ready to give an answer concerning the logos—the meaning and the reason—of their hope (cf. 3:15). It is in this that we understand “hope” as equivalent to “faith.” (cf. Spe Salvi 2)

4. Mission as Encountering the Sacrament of Charity- The Christocentric shift of the theology of mission of Benedict XVI would not fail the make us understand that our encounter with the Lord in the Eucharistic celebration is the source of our mission. In the Eucharist, the Church in mission encounters Christ. Embarking from the Second Vatican Council’s theology of the Eucharist, he said: “in every age of the Church’s history the Eucharistic celebration, as the source and summit of her life and mission, shines forth in the liturgical rite in all its richness and variety” (Sacramentum Caritatis 3). The encounter we have in Jesus in the Holy Eucharist moves us to a Christocentric mission. In that encounter, each Christian will believe that “an authentically Eucharistic Church is a missionary Church.” The reason Benedict XVI gives us is: “we too must be able to tell our brothers and sisters with conviction: “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us” (1 Jn 1:3). Truly, nothing is more beautiful than to know Christ and to make him known to others.” We cannot approach the eucharistic table without being drawn into the mission which, beginning in the very heart of God, is meant to reach all people. (cf. Sacramentum Caritatis 84)

5. Mission as Encountering Charity in Truth- Benedict XVI understands mission as encountering charity in truth because without charity every action of the Church will be understood as mere social action. Mission has to find its force from charity if it has to be redemptive because “it is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth.” Besides, love is inseparable from truth. St. Paul exhorted the Corinthians; “Charity rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor 13:6). Encountering Christ as the source of mission is encountering the love of God as the content of mission. Benedict XVI said: “everything has its origin in God’s love, everything is shaped by it, everything is directed towards it. Love is God’s greatest gift to humanity; it is his promise and our hope” (Caritas in Veritate 2). The mystery of love and at the same time its tangibility makes mission more concrete and achievable because in Christ, salvation is all about the personal love of God. Benedict XVI said that “in Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of his Person, a vocation for us to love our brothers and sisters in the truth of his plan” (Caritas in Veritate 1).

6. Mission as Encountering Divine Life- An encounter with Christ is an encounter of divine life and that gift of life moves man to respond generously to divine love. Man is endowed with a divine life that draws himself to nurture his faith in Christ. Benedict XVI said: “Man is not a lost atom in a random universe: he is God’s creature, whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul and whom he has always loved.” (Caritas in Veritate 29). Likewise, in his message during the 40th World Communications Day, Benedict XVI asserts that through “Christ we have access in one spirit to the Father.” In Christ, we become sharers of divine life. This Christocentric source of life characterizes also the Christocentric nature of mission. Divine life is not a gift just to be kept but a gift to be shared. God’s whole life encounters us and is sacramentally shared with us; that we have become sharers of God’s inmost life. Jesus Christ, who “through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God” (Heb 9:14), makes us, in the gift of the Eucharist, sharers in God’s own life” (cf Sacramentum Caritatis 8).

7. Mission as Encountering Witness- Mission flows from the power and the grace of witness. The Gospel of Luke records Jesus’ words to His disciples saying: “You are witnesses of these things” (Lk 24:48). Thus, reflecting on these words of Jesus and what they entail would make us understand that the disciples had to be His witnesses and to proclaim all the things taught to them (cf Mt 28:19) and to live out what they witnessed in Him. As Jesus was the witness of the Father, so shall His disciples be to the world. Jesus becomes the great missionary of the Father because he reveals to his disciples what he saw and heard from the Father (cf. Jn 8:38). And St. John wrote us that they in turn proclaimed what they witnessed in Christ when he said: “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed jour fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (1 John 1:3). For Benedict XVI, Jesus Christ is not a lofty, intangible Platonic idea, but in a unique sense is, as Son, the expression of God’s fatherhood. Christ is the “image of God” (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15) whom the disciples witnessed and proclaimed. For Benedict XVI, the scripture is not revelation itself but a witness of revelation because there is only one true and fullness of revelation and it is Jesus Christ.