The Mission

“The Mission”

The mission begins in 1750 in the rain forest of Central South America when Father Gabriel who was a Jesuit missionary attempts to bring the Gospel or good news to the native people who are called the Guarani. This was Father Gabriel’s mission, which was very risky considering the Guarani killed the first missionary that was sent to them. Father Gabriel gains the native people’s trust by playing music to show that he was a man of peace; the Guarani then take Father Gabriel into their midst.

While Father Gabriel begins to convert the natives and build a mission, European settlers built a plantation run by slave labor not far away from the mission started by the Jesuits. The slaves were supplied by mercenaries like Mendoza who eventually repents and joins the Jesuits after being challenged by Father Gabriel to do penance for his crimes. Mendoza began a new mission with the Guarani people, which involved helping them instead of persecuting them like he did before he met Father Gabriel. The conflict that evolves with the Guarani mission is who should have control of the mission lands. The Spanish and Portuguese have signed a treaty that transfers the lands to Portuguese control. Cardinal Altamirano decides that the mission lands should no longer be under the protection of the church, which provides the Indians with no protection from slavery in the Portuguese’s new territory. In letting the mission lands fall to the Portuguese, the Cardinal fails at the overall mission of the church because the church lost many new members who had a great love for the faith and for the worship of God. The Cardinal’s decision was not wise in the long run because it failed to expand the church into a new realm of the world. When the Cardinal told the natives that they must leave the mission of San Carlos, the natives refused and state that they would fight to save their homes. The cardinal advised the Jesuits to not resist the exchange of land but only Father Gabriel does not take up arms against the Portuguese as they attack the mission. As this is all occurring, Mendoza refuses to sit back and do nothing so he reverts to his old way of life with a new purpose. His purpose in fighting this battle is not to benefit himself as he had done in the past but to save the Guarani people who he had grown to love. The Jesuits and the Guarani people fail in their attempt to repel the invaders and all the Jesuits including Father Gabriel die even though he did not take up arms. The movie concludes by you see the child the survived come back to the mission and collect some of the remaining artifacts such as a violin and other items that they used in worship before. The movie leaves you with the thought that the surviving Guarani people are going to try to continue to praise God.

In the ecclesiology of the church, this experience is quite a failure at the mission of the church because the Jesuits attempted to bring the Guarani people into the church but they are never considered part of the church by the Church authorities. The Cardinal claims that he “sacrificed” the mission for the greater good of the church which is not true at all because what he truly did when he took away the mission is he was thinking more like a politician than a person of the church. He was acting to gain support of other political groups instead of acting to help save the people as Jesus Christ would have wanted him to do. As the Cardinal, he is responsible for the spiritual and physical well being of anyone that he can save. He failed at his job and let many helpless men, women and children die so that the Portuguese could just make some money. The mission was destroyed so that the Portuguese could profit from their slave plantations in which the Guarani people were the slaves. The mission did succeed in a sense even though they were destroyed because they did bring the good news to the people for a while and showed the Guarani the love of Jesus Christ our savior. The mission was set up as a colony in which the people grow closer to God but at the same time worked to produce products and supplies to sell to make profit for all that lived in the community of the San Carlos.

From the two main characters in the movie, Father Gabriel and Mendoza, we learn many different things. Father Gabriel taught us that his mission in life was to live peacefully carrying out the work of Jesus Christ as a Jesuit missionary, teaching the word of God to the native people in South America. To Father Gabriel their was nothing in the world that he could take up arms for but he also refused to abandon his congregation.