Anthony De Mello - A Missionary of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

We live in a troubled, restless, confused world. The old landmarks have disappeared, are being challenged or replaced with all sorts of surrogates. There is talk of horizontalizing values, which is nothing more than relativizing and replacing them. What has shaped humanity for centuries and brought civilization, known as Europeanism, is increasingly criticized, judged, removed. Christianity is no longer lived, as the most wonderful way of life, as the most wonderful invitation to a loving partnership with God, but as a system of outdated values, because people perceive it according to the manifestations of some or others of those who say Christians and not after what he is. In this world, a missionary, like Anthony de Mello, seems outdated, yet his deeds and some of his teachings retain the beauty and depth that we discover in the ranks of Holy Scripture or in the writings of the Holy Fathers. Of course, reading his entire work, anyone will be able to say that Tony de Mello, as his friends called him, is syncretistic, heretical, and so on. But, remembering the exhortations given to the young people by St. Basil the Great, we can only collect the nectar of the flowers, even if some of them are of thistles or thistles. Far from capturing the whole spiritual charge of Father Anthony de Mello's work, our lines will be an invitation to read.