Lome, 23 October, 2019 / 12:46 am (ACI Africa).
As Catholics across the world continue to live the Extraordinary Missionary Month of October 2019 (EMMOCT2019) by taking the gospel to the periphery, an African missionary priest is reflecting about the gospel and proposing a shift from “denouncing” to “announcing”, the latter taking the form of proclaiming the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“We live in an African society plagued by so many evils that denouncing has become a normal act. The fact of not denouncing is a rather abnormal,” Fr. Donald Zagore of the Society of African Missions (SMA) has stated in a reflection shared with ACI Africa.
The culture of perennially denouncing, Fr. Zagore thinks, turns the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is essentially good news, into some drama of sorts that seems to border more on destructive than constructive evangelization.
“The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a social satire,” the Ivorian missionary in the West African nation of Togo has stated in his reflection and called for a shift from what seems a negative missionary approach to positive strategies of spreading the word of God.
“An awareness of this drama is fundamental to a renewal of missionary activity to make it more productive,” Fr. Zagore has reflected and clarified, “Even before beginning to denounce faults, to denounce errors, we must first announce and proclaim Jesus Christ and his gospel of love.”
