2017 USCCB Convocation Participants Guidebook and Journal | Page 26

The Call to Missionary Discipleship order to reach all the “peripheries” in need of the light of the Gospel. 25 The Church carries out Christ’s mission when she brings the healing message of the Gospel to a world wounded by sin. Pope Francis has brought particular attention to parts of our world that are often forgotten. For example, he often draws a link between abortion and the failure to care for God’s creation by talking about the “throw away culture,” a culture that focuses on pleasure and consumption, tending to ignore the need to care for all God’s creation, even using persons as mere means to an end. He writes: Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a “throw away” culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new. Exclusion ultimately has to do with what it means to be a part of the society in which we live; those excluded are no longer society’s underside or its fringes or its disenfranchised—they are no longer even a part of it. The excluded are not the “exploited” but the outcast, the “leftovers.” 26 The peripheries are where the castoffs of the “throw away culture” are discarded. At the Convocation, we will spend time talking about these areas and how we can reach the people who are there. There are peripheries we can see around us if we are willing to look; there are people to whom we are called to bear witness to the hope of salvation. The poor, the sick, and the prisoner: these are persons whom God’s people have continually been exhorted to love and care for. 27 “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:35). Today, we can identify, encounter, and accompany people in other peripheries as well, those who are notable for their vulnerabil- ity in a “throw away culture.” For example, persons at the very 21