(ANS – Turin) – The protagonist of the third of the Salesian Family Spirituality Days 2025 was Cardinal Cristóbal López, Salesian of Don Bosco, archbishop of Rabat, who, after having presided over the morning Eucharist in the Basilica of Mary Helper, she gave the main conference of the afternoon. On this occasion, developing the theme of mission – due to the 150th anniversary of the First Missionary Sending – the cardinal illustrated with clear and vivid language the deep and current value of the mission, warning about possible and frequent errors.
In his third participation in the JEFS, Cardinal López briefly summarized the many areas of work and the various dimensions of fruitfulness of the missions of the Salesian Family – from the point of view of evangelization, education, social promotion, development agricultural, the dissemination of trades, health care, the dissemination of communications, the protection of cultural minorities… “In summary, we should rather ask ourselves what the Salesian missionaries have not done,” he commented.
However, as he added after having examined the numerous activities carried out: “Was this your mission? Was being a missionary about doing all these activities?” His analysis, lucid and concrete, thus distinguished the authentic meaning of the mission – ultimately, love – from the simple activities carried out to manifest it.
Throughout his speech, the cardinal carried out an effective analysis that separated the common, but erroneous, approaches to missions from the authentic value of the Salesian mission. Thus, he listed:
Confusing mission with apostolic activities. Card López stressed that “the mission is to love” and is not reduced to educating, building or healing, because it has to do, rather, with being “signs and bearers of God’s love for young people”;
Search for a reward in love. On the contrary, the missionary must not love to be loved, but rather offer an “unconditional, free and expansive” love, like that of God;
Thinking that the mission is for a few specialists. Instead, each Christian is called to be a missionary wherever he is, without having to go to distant lands;
Relate the mission to a geographic dimension. The mission is universal and must be lived in any context, not only in the traditional “mission countries”, since even the territories of ancient Christian tradition need missionaries;
Believing that being missionaries in other places does not make sense. With this point, apparently in contradiction with the previous ones, Cardinal López stressed that the missionary dimension of the Church is based on sharing the faith and that the presence of missionaries continues to be fundamental to awaken missionary consciousness in everyone;
Thinking that the mission is to establish the Church. In this sense, the cardinal emphasizes that the main mission is the announcement of the Kingdom of God, not the construction of ecclesial structures. In this regard, the cardinal also highlighted the commitment of good missionaries to cooperate with all believers and all people of good will;
Forget the role of the Holy Spirit. We must not put ourselves in the center and consider ourselves the main authors of the mission: the Holy Spirit is the first missionary and already acts in the hearts of people before the arrival of the missionaries. Cardinal López’s reflection was, therefore, a heartfelt call to return to what is essential. And in his final words, the cardinal gave a precise summary of his entire intervention, stating: “We are all missionary-disciples of Christ and his Kingdom (…) As a Church, we must live at the service of the mission always and everywhere, and the mission, which consists of announcing and promoting the Kingdom of God, is realized, for us in the Salesian Family, in loving and being signs and bearers of God’s love for young people.”
