Communication For Communion

Today, in most parts of the world on the one hand people live in alienation and isolation from themselves, God and other people, on the other hand there is a longing for communion, peace and harmony.  The mission of the Church today can not be but building communion.  Hence, an attempt is made to study ‘mission as communicating for communion’.

The three main articulations of this study are:

1) a consideration of the intimate relation between mission and communication,
2) a theological reflection on mission, communication, communion and on the Kingdom of God and
3) a missiological presentation of communication within the cultural Context of Tamil Nadu. These three areas of concern are explained in ten chapters. The nature of the study is interdisciplinary.

Trinity is the basis of the various kinds of communion (Ecclesial, Ecumenical, Intercultural, Interreligious, Ecological).  Analysing today’s cultural context of Tamil Nadu, group communication is one of the suitable approaches for building up communion as it is participatory, liberative, communitarian, simple and low cost.  It stresses particularly folk media in Tamil Nadu, like kummi, puppetry, street theatre, villupattu, and therukoothu.  Pope John Paul II states: “The Church’s first purpose then is to be the sacrament of the inner union of the human person with God, and, because people’s communion with one another is rooted in that union with God, the Church is also the sacrament of the unity of the human race.  In her unity is already begun; and at the same time she is the ‘sign and instrument’ of the full realisation of the unity yet to come…Communion with Jesus, which gives rise to the communion of Christians among themselves, is the indispensable condition for bearing fruit, and communion with others, which is the gift of Christ and his Spirit, is the most magnificent fruit that the branches can give.  In this sense, communion and mission are inseparably connected”.(Ecclesia in Asia, 24)