December 8th, 2016 marks the 160th anniversary of the founding of the Society of African Missions. On that day Mgr Melchior de Marion Bresillac, with his companions, went to the Shrine of Our Lady at Fourviere, Lyon to ask the protection of Mother Mary for

his new Society. We do well to remember that our Society continues under the protection of Our Lady. We do well, too, to continue on a daily basis to pray through the intercession of Our Lady that our Society remains faithful to the Mission entrusted to it by God.

It seems needless to remark that the world has experienced enormous and profound change in these intervening 160 years. Every part of our world has experienced change and Africa is no exception. Our Society, too, has been marked by profound change. The early years of solid and then rapid growth in Europe, followed by extension into the Americas, has given way to diminishment and ageing in these parts. Few if any vocations are now coming from the older Units of our Society. This is in contrast to the rapid growth in membership in Africa, Asia and Poland in these last thirty years. The active participation in our mission by lay associates from different Units is a welcome development. Reflection continues on how we might best develop a broad charismatic famil for the African mission.

Our recent Assemblies have pondered the question, does the SMA charism remain valid in this very changed environment? The best we can say is that the Assemblies have answered with a tentative yes. GA13 noted, There is a lack of clarity and common understanding of mission and charism in the SMA, and requested the Superior General and Council to continue promoting reflection and building consensus on SMA mission across all Units/Regions. To this end the General Council has planned that the year 2017 will be marked in a special way by a Society-wide reflection on this theme. This reflection should take impetus from the SMA/OLA colloque at Nocetta in November 2016, where we teased out the common spiritual patrimony of our two congregations during the first fifty years of our existence. The year of reflection will conclude with a seminar in which members in different centres throughout the world will react interactively on this theme. [More information on this reflection process will come in the coming weeks].

Towards this year of reflection and concluding seminar we do well to recall again the words of Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium.

222. A constant tension exists between fullness and limitation. Fullness evokes the desire for complete possession, while limitation is a wall set before us. Broadly speaking, “time” has to do with fullness as an expression of the horizon which constantly opens before us, while each individual moment has to do with limitation as an expression of enclosure. People live poised between each individual moment and the greater, brighter horizon of the utopian future as the final cause which draws us to itself. Here we see a first principle for progress in building a people: time is greater than space.

223. This principle enables us to work slowly but surely, without being obsessed with immediate results. It helps us patiently to endure difficult and adverse situations, or inevitable changes in our plans. It invites us to accept the tension between fullness and limitation, and to give a priority to time. One of the faults which we occasionally observe in sociopolitical activity is that spaces and power are preferred to time and processes. Giving priority to space means madly attempting to keep everything together in the present, trying to possess all the spaces of power and of self-assertion; it is to crystallize processes and presume to hold them back. Giving priority to time means being concerned about initiating processes rather than possessing spaces. Time governs spaces, illumines them and makes them links in a constantly expanding chain, with no possibility of return. What we need, then, is to give priority to actions which generate new processes in society and engage other persons and groups who can develop them to the point where they bear fruit in significant historical events. Without anxiety, but with clear convictions and tenacity.

Our task, then, is, over the course of the year of reflection, to avoid the temptation to focus only on immediate problem solving. To open our minds and imaginations to new horizons and new possibilities. In this vein, too, the General Council is studying a different approach to General Assembly 2019. The approach is called affirmative discernment. Broadly speaking, this methodology focuses on the positives, the abilities, the gifts available and the dreams rather than on problem solving. Once the General Council has studied it some more it will be in a position to make a proposition to Plenary Council 2017 for ratification or rejection.

A recent visit to our missions in Benin and Niger convinces me that our charism remains valid. I had the blessing of visiting all our missions in Benin. There I witnessed our missionaries struggling to evangelise the most abandoned, often in contexts of extreme poverty and heightened insecurity in an increasingly more hostile Islam environment. I met also thirty five young men at Centre Bresillac who wish to dedicate their lives to mission ad extra. Why would the Holy Spirit call such young men to this vocation if the charism of SMA were no longer valid?

Plenary Council 2016 made the following statement:

At the heart of our missionary activity, we find Africa and the people of African origin. As mission in Africa is far from over, the continent remains at the heart of our mission, with still vast areas of primary evangelisation

. In order to sustain our mission in areas of primary evangelisation the PC agreed to establish a new Mission Fund. This Fund will become operational in 2018, and Provinces and Districts are invited to contribute to it.

PC16 also noted that we also have mission commitments in Units outside Africa. We want to ensure continuity of the SMA presence in these Units and do mission with a style that is particular to us. We now have missionaries from the younger Units working in all older Units. Shortly we will open a new mission in Maastricht, Netherlands, with one member from Benin/Niger DF and one member from India DF. The challenge is to ensure that the mission style in all these newer mission is in line with the charism of SMA. The opening chapter of our Constitutions & Laws, quoting from the Founder, states, [we] use methods nearest to the simple Gospel preaching of the Apostles while not abandoning the folly of the Cross.

De Bresillac faced many daunting challenges in 1856. His Society today faces different but no less daunting challenges. We need to sustain the growth of the younger Units while also doing our utmost to sustain the SMA in our older Units. This is not an easy task – balancing the needs of one against the other, prioritising mission while also ensuring resources are adequate to train new members and to support Units who experience increasing fragility. Bresillac was a man of tremendous faith. We, the inheritors of his dream, are called to approximate this level of faith in our own lives and in our missionary vocation.

May this 160th anniversary of our foundation be the spur that pushes us to ever greater levels of commitment to being missionaries from the bottom of our hearts.

Fachtna O’Driscoll

General Superior
Rome, November 2016