The Amazon can no longer be understood solely as a mission field. Today, it is also a region that evangelizes, challenges, and transforms the universal Church. This was one of the main reflections shared by Marcelo Lemos, executive secretary of the Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon (CEAMA), during the virtual forum “The Missionary Commitment in the Light of Dilexi Te”, organized by the Center for Missionary Formation (CFM) of the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS) of Venezuela.
The meeting took as its starting point Pope Leo XIII’s first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi Te, a document centered on service to the poor and on the transformative dimension of Christian love. Based on this text, Lemos proposed a missionary reading from the perspective of the Amazonian reality, inviting a rethinking of the role of territories, peoples, and communities in the life of the Church.
From Mission Territory to Evangelization Territory
During his remarks, the executive secretary of CEAMA recalled that one of the great contributions of the Synod for the Amazon was recognizing the existence of “theological territories”—that is, places where God reveals himself and speaks through cultures, peoples, and creation.
However, he affirmed that the Amazonian experience invites us to take a step further.
“The Amazon is no longer merely a mission field but has become a territory of evangelization. It is no longer just a place where the Church goes to proclaim the Gospel; it is also an ecclesial subject that evangelizes the Church itself,” he noted.
According to Lemos, the Amazonian peoples offer fundamental lessons for the Church’s current journey: deep listening, reciprocity, care for life, interdependence, pastoral simplicity, and a profound communion with creation.
Borders That Speak
One of the central themes of his reflection was the understanding of borders as privileged spaces for encountering God.
For the CEAMA representative, geographical, cultural, social, linguistic, and human frontiers are not merely obstacles to mission, but places where it is revealed who continues to be excluded, discarded, or rendered invisible.
“Mission does not consist solely in reaching the frontiers, but in allowing ourselves to be transformed by them,” he affirmed.
From this perspective, the missionary experience ceases to be understood as a unilateral action and becomes a process of mutual conversion, where those who proclaim the Gospel are also evangelized by the realities they encounter.
The Leading Role of Women
Lemos devoted a significant portion of his address to highlighting the role of women in the life of the Amazonian Church.
“Women are the most powerful ecclesial force in the Amazon,” she stated.
She acknowledged that it is they who sustain the faith, spirituality, communal memory, care for life, and the resilience of the peoples on a daily basis. She also highlighted the fundamental role of religious sisters and so many laywomen who keep communities alive in the region’s most remote areas.
In line with the exhortation Dilexi Te, he recalled that many women face situations of exclusion and poverty that demand a renewed response from the Church and a greater appreciation of their ministries and services.
From the Good Samaritan to the Samaritan Woman
As an interpretive key to understanding mission today, Lemos proposed complementing the traditional image of the Good Samaritan with the figure of the Samaritan woman.
While the Good Samaritan represents care, attention, and solidarity with those who suffer, the Samaritan woman reminds us of the importance of listening, dialogue, encounter, and the ability to proclaim the Good News.
“Today we also need to learn from the Samaritan woman, who teaches Jesus, dialogues with Him, and becomes a herald of the Good News,” he affirmed.
This perspective, he explained, helps us understand a mission centered more on relationships than on structures, more on presence than on prominence, more on listening than on planning.
A Church with no limits to love
In the final part of his reflection, the executive secretary of CEAMA returned to one of the central ideas of Pope Leo XIII’s apostolic exhortation: Christian love as the foundation of all missionary action.
“Love is, above all, a way of conceiving life and a way of living it,” he recalled, quoting the papal document.
Based on this conviction, he noted that the Church is called to live out a mission marked by care rather than efficiency, by community rather than structures, and by reciprocity rather than control.
“The Church the world needs today is a Church that sets no limits on love and that does not seek enemies to fight, but men and women to love,” he concluded.
The reflections shared during the forum demonstrate how the Amazonian experience continues to offer significant contributions to the missionary renewal of the universal Church, especially in a time marked by synodality, integral ecology, and the search for new forms of evangelizing presence on the peripheries of the world.