"Of me you shall be witnesses", the evangelizing mission of every believerSpain is the country with the most missionaries in the worldJesus Torres: "Africa evangelized me".Alfonso Tapia has been a missionary in Peru for 23 years, where he was ordained in 2001. He lives in a parish in the apostolic vicariate from San Ramón, a jungle area, very poor and with very complicated communications: from the vicariate headquarters to his parish there are 277 km, which takes almost eight hours to travel.
In this interview, he speaks with his Peruvian accent about his vocation, his work in Peru and the evangelizing mission of the Church.
How was your missionary vocation born?
At the age of 26, when I was a mathematics teacher, I participated with an NGO in a two-month missionary experience in Peru. That opened my world a little bit, I realized that the Church is very big, very rich, and that there are very different realities from the one I lived in Spain. I was especially struck by the priest who was there, a Spanish Jesuit. I returned the following year and, from the first moment, my intention was to be able to ask for a leave of absence from work to share with this priest for at least three years.
Things went differently: the priest died during the town's festivities, demanding justice for the people. That moved me internally, generating in me a desire to want to die in the same way, with my boots on. I started to pull a little bit of strings and in less than two weeks I had everything ready to be able to go to Peru for a whole year. And there, under the shadow of the testimony of this priest, facing the needs of the people and, above all, at the moment of prayer, I discovered that the Lord was also saying to me: "Whom shall I send, who will go for me?
I wanted to stay there in Peru to study, because I had seen very good Spanish missionary priests, but they were practically islands within the presbyterate. I left my job and studied for three years at San Damaso. Then I finally managed to be accepted not in Arequipa, which was the first diocese I was in, but in Lima, and there I met a seminarian from the jungle. I finished my studies in Lima, but I was ordained in the Apostolic Vicariate of San Ramon, where I have been since December 2000.
What is your assignment at San Ramón? What story or stories have touched you the most?
Since I arrived at San Ramón, I have always said that the bed is too big and the blanket is too small. What does that mean? Well, those of us who are here have to do a lot of things. Basically, the biggest thing is that I am the bursar of the vicariate and the vicar general, who is, let's say, supporting the bishop. Besides that, I am not in the seat of San Ramón, but seven hours further inland, in a parish, in a historical missionary territory, the Gran Pajonal, which is an area of native Ashaninka communities. There we have a school with residence, with children from native communities. It goes from first to fifth grade of secondary school, which in Spain would be ESO and one more year.
They stay from Sunday afternoon until Friday. On Friday, after lunch, they walk back to their communities. They usually walk between two and nine hours. Some are from farther away: their parents come with motorcycles or, if not, they stay there. We try to help these kids to catch up with their studies and we prepare those who want to go on to higher education. The curious thing is that most of those who persevere want to go to university. We have bilingual teachers in the vicariate, with seven different languages. We help the children in this whole process of improving their studies, their possibilities for the future, but without giving up being Ashaninka, that is why the school is bilingual and they speak their own language among themselves. Normally they come with a fairly low level of Spanish, and most of them have no religious knowledge either. So, at the pace they want, we evangelize them. Some are evangelical, others are not at all. Some ask for baptism, others do not. So, respecting the rhythm of them and their parents, we also try to let them know the person of Jesus, the kingdom of heaven, and generally they accept it quite well.
Do you think the missionary task has changed or not since the first centuries of the Church?
The mission of the Church in terms of sending and mission is always the same: the one sent by the Father, who is Jesus Christ, sends the Church to the whole world. Therefore, the whole Church is missionary, but of course the one who sends us is precisely the one who became incarnate. Logically, the Church continues to "reincarnate" in every reality, in every situation, in every historical moment. Of course it is completely different from one place to another, we are constantly reincarnating ourselves as the mystical body of Christ.
The Pope encourages us to live with a missionary spirit. For those for whom the mission is still something distant, how can we live the mission in each place? And at the same time, how can we encourage and help those who go to mission places and those communities?
I think we all know more or less the same thing: on the one hand, to make the mission of the Church known. We are well aware that, in a secularized world such as ours, one of the few things, along with CaritasI believe it is precisely the work of the missionaries that maintains a certain affection of the people for the Church. That is why I think it is important to make it known with simplicity and without triumphalism, so that people know what the Church does in all those places and that we are not only the little fathers who wear flip-flops, but that I was born of the Church of Spain and we are all the same Church.
We are there because we have been sent from here, from here they help us, they support us... It is important that all this is known a little bit. We have to live the communion of saints in daily prayer for one another. I also invite those who feel called and have the opportunity to make a missionary experience of at least one month (less is not worth it), or three months, six, one year, two... to see the options, prepare themselves, of course, and do not deny the Holy Spirit this opportunity for them and for the church.
The Church is missionary by foundation, she is the one sent by the One sent, and the mission is precisely to be sent. Every baptized person is called to be a missionary. And experience tells us that it is more difficult to do it at home than on the other side of the pond, in another continent. We begin to be missionaries through what we have close to us: family, parents and siblings, friends, co-workers, those in the neighborhood... We have to be missionaries in sports, in the world of culture, of entertainment... This is much more complicated than doing it among natives. It depends on us, as the Pope says, this creativity to see how to make God present in this world.
