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
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