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"Mission is revealing to others their fundamental beauty, value and importance in the universe, their capacity to love, to grow and to do beautiful things and to meet God. Mission is transmitting to people a new inner freedom and hope; it is unlocking the doors of their being so that new energies can flow; it is taking away their shoulders the terrible yoke of fear and guilt. To give life to people is to reveal to them that they are loved just as they are by God, with the mixture of good and evil, light and darkness that is in them: that the stone in front of their tomb in which all dirt of their lives has been hidden, can be rolled away. They are forgiven; they can live in freedom."
Jean Vanier, Community and Growth
More gems connected to to deification and restoration:
"When I discover that I am accepted and loved as a person, with my strengths and weaknesses, when I discover that I carry within myself a secret, the secret of my uniqueness, then I can begin to open up to others and respect their secret. Each human being, however small or weak, has something to bring to humanity. As we start to really get to know others, as we begin to listen to each other's stories, things begin to change. We begin the movement from exclusion to inclusion, from fear to trust, from closedness to openness, from judgment and prejudice to forgiveness and understanding. It is a movement of the heart.
It is not just a question of performing good deeds for those who are excluded but of being open and vulnerable to them in order to receive the life that they can offer; it is to become their friends. If we start to include the 'disadvantaged' in our lives and enter into heartfelt relationships with them, they will change things in us. They will call us to be people of mutual trust, to take time to listen and be with each other. They will call us out from our individualism and need for power into belonging to each other and being open to others. They will break down the prejudices and protective walls that gave rise to exclusion in the first place. They will then start to affect our human organizations, revealing new ways of being and walking together.
So, the one-way street, where those on top tell those at the bottom what to do, what to think, and how to be, becomes a two-way street, where we listen to what they, the 'outsiders,' 'the stranger,' have to say and we accept what they have to give, that is, a simpler and more profound understanding of what it means to be truly human.
If we start to see people 'at the bottom' as friends, as people with gifts to bring to others, then the social pyramid, with the powerful, the knowledgeable, and the wealthy on top, becomes a place of belonging where each person finds their place and where we live in mutual trust. It this a Utopian vision? If it is lived at the grassroots level, in families, communities, and other places of belonging, this vision can gradually permeate our societies and humanize them. I'm not suggesting for a moment that each one of us must welcome into our homes all those who are marginalized. I am suggesting that if each one of us, with our gifts and weaknesses, our capacities and our needs, opens our heart to a few people who are different and become their friends, receive life from them, our societies would change. This is the way of the heart."
Jean Vanier, community and Growth
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Lastly this following passage expresses the truthfulness of Orthodoxy in regards to mission. Mission is not about converting people and checking of a list of things you have done to please God. Orthodoxy is lived out and if Orthodoxy is lived out then your mission is not something you do for a short time period by going to Africa, Asia or South America to help people rather your mission is constantly being lived out through the beauty and sweetness of what Orthodoxy is. Everything we do is liturgy and if we are constantly living our liturgy then we are in a constant mindset of mission.
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We do not try to win people to Orthodoxy, but we are a missionary Church in the same that we believe with all our hearts that Orthodoxy is infinitely precious, is capable of bringing joy and vision to people both if things divine and of human relationships and out our total attitude to the created world, and we want to share it-whether people become Orthodox technically or not is something which is secondary to us. What matters to us is that they should become partakers of this exulting joy and wonder which Orthodox is. So what we should do is to be a presence that is convincing; that is, looking at us people should see our faces, in our eyes, in our behaviour, a dimension of wonder, joy and also of a sincere and sober desire to serve; and a disciplined mind and heart capable if serving faithfully whomever is in need if being served. And I think that if we became even a small light-if we became nothing but a handful if salt that prevents corruption-if we could bring a little hope to the hearts of people who lost all hope, a little faith in the sense of trust and faithfulness and knowledge of God, a little love, we would be fulfilling our vocation. This is what we should bring, each of us perhaps a crumb, all of us we possess, and express this in the readiness to give without asking any return.
HE Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, from Gilligan Crow's "a Man of Vision" (New York: SVS Press, 2005) 158-159.
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