In autumn 2022 I was lucky enough to interview Mar Awa III Royel, Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East in Rome for Agenzia Fides. It is a Church that now it is small from a numerical point of view, but has a long history, and represents a direct heir of that Ancient Eastern Church which in the first centuries of Christianity was at the center of an extraordinary missionary adventure. An adventure that brought the Christian message from the Middle East to the Arabian Peninsula, India and even China. In the interview I asked Mar Awa what in his opinion was the secret of that great missionary adventure.

The young Patriarch of the Assyrian Church replied to me that the missionaries of the ancient Church of the East were a singular "army", a spiritual army. He remembered that they were above all monks and nuns, who captivated the hearts of other people "with sweetness, and not through dynamics of conquest". For them -- added Mar Awa -- «Every emergency, every concrete problem in life became an opportunity to do good, becoming friends and brothers with everyone». Various reasons in my opinion still make that extraordinary historical and ecclesial event very relevant today. For most of the references contained in my speech I am indebted to the rich and in-depth studies of the Italian sinologist Matteo Nicolini-Zani, monk of the Community of Bose.

I am referring in particular to his essay "Monastic Mission in Dialogue" contained in the volume "The Mission of the Universal Church -- an Oriental Perspective, edited by Professor Germano Marani sj and published by Urbaniana University Press. Origin and specific traits of the Church of the East The communities of the Church of the East which took root for centuries also in China since the most distant antiquity are often defined as "Nestorian", because at the time of the Council of Ephesus (431), which condemned the Patriarch Nestorius of Constantinople, wanted to remain linked to the theological and spiritual tradition of the Church of Antioch, from which Nestorius himself came. That Antiochian tradition strongly emphasized the incarnation and humanity of Christ, his human nature, recognizing that through the humanity of Christ the mystery of his divinity is revealed.

Since the beginning of the 3rd century AD, the Eastern Church had begun to structure itself as an autonomous Church, outside the borders of the Roman Empire, distancing itself from the Church of the Empire. The Christians of the Eastern Church had their own Patriarch (Katholikos) based in Seleucia-Ctesiphon on the Tigris River, in Mesopotamia. The distancing from the Churches of the Empire and above all from the Church of Constantinople/Byzantium was not mainly due to theological or doctrinal reasons, but to reasons that we could define as political, in a broad sense. As its presence moved towards the East, between to the Persian Empire and beyond, the Eastern Church, also to avoid persecution, had to show that its Christians did not belong to communities linked to the Roman Empire, which for centuries had represented the enemy par excellence of the Persian world.

The communities of the Eastern Church progressively increase their presence towards the east through different ways and processes. In some cases this occurs due to deportations of populations in the territories conquered by the Persian Empire, when among the deportees there are Christians and even bishops. In less troubled times, Christians moved eastward following trade routes. In any case, on their journey towards the East, the Christians of the Syriac Church encounter new peoples, new languages, new cultures and new religious communities. For example, when they found new Episcopal Sees in present-day Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, cities like Samarkand and Tashkent became the meeting place with the Sogdians, a population of nomadic merchants, who partly became Christians.

To follow the Sogdian merchants, bishops who embraced their nomadic status were ordained. Therefore that of the East Syrian Church is a Christianity that expands following the events of history: migrations, deportations, movements along the flows of trade. In their fundamental work of missionary theology, Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder recognize that the originality and relevance of this "missionary movement" were linked to two of its characteristics: the monastic connotation and the openness to a dialogue attitude towards everyone. A monastic missionThe missions of the East Syrian Church were monastic undertakings. In the new territories, the first communities were always structured around monasteries. The missionaries sent to take care of the Christian life of the communities and also the metropolitan bishops of the new ecclesiastical provinces outside Persian territory were monks, raised in the monasteries scattered in Mesopotamia and Persia. Historical evidence documents that Patriarch Timothy sent the monks of the Bet'Abe monastery, located north-east of Mosul (in present-day Iraq), to China as bishops.

The monks were well trained in the study of the Holy Scripture and in theology, and due to their faith they were ready to live in difficult situations. A letter from Patriarch Timothy reports that «Many monks cross seas towards India and China carrying with them only a stick and a pouch". In the area currently included in the diocese of Zhouzhi, a few kilometers from Xi'an, the "Nestorian Stele" was found in 1625, today kept in the Stele Forest Museum of Xi'an: it is the relic/archaeological evidence which attests to the arrival of the first Christian announcement in China by the missionary monks of the Eastern Church as early as 635 AD. Built in 781 with texts engraved in Chinese and Syriac, the Stele represents -- as stated in its heading -- the "Memorial of the Propagation of Da Qin's Luminous Teaching in China". In Chinese, the term Da Qin originally referred only to the Roman Empire. Then the expression was used to refer precisely to the communities of the Syriac Church that had permanently settled in China.

Also from the text of the Stele it can be deduced that monasteries were also present in Chang'an, the ancient eastern capital of the Empire, today Xi'an ).The Stele describes the Christian community as a community with monastic traits, made up of people who live without being subjected to worldly passions, practice fasting and penance, experience liturgical and prayer moments 7 times a day according to the office of the monks and they carry out works of charity The other characteristic of this missionary adventure is that of openness and dialogue, which can be seen taking place in three areas: dialogue with cultures, with religious realities and dialogue with power and political authorities. In dialogue with cultures When they arrive, the missionary monks of the Eastern Church do not place themselves in a position of strength, but as humble monks and traders. And precisely because they are well founded in their faith and doctrine, they can come into contact with the local culture and literary tradition with a dialogue attitude, as had already happened in the encounter between Christianity and Greco-Roman culture.

The East Syrian communities flourished in China during the Tang (618-907) and Yuan (1272-1368) dynasties. When they arrive in China, the missionary monks are confronted with a superior culture, and to bear witness to their faith they begin a process of adapting the Christian theological language into the Chinese cultural context, preserving the heart of the Antiochian faith. Numerous quotations are also found in the text of the Stele modeled on the expressions taken from the Chinese classics. Thus the monks begin a process of sinicization which is not a flat and mechanical replacement of Chinese cultural data with oriental Syriac data, but a more gradual and vital process of contamination. Only in this way is adaptation real and fruitful. Mission and dialogue with religions In the experience of the Eastern Church in China, Christianity takes its words from religious ways and doctrines such as Buddhism and Taoism.

Even the words chosen to describe monastic institutions, such as the word "monastery", are taken from Buddhism. Their attempt produces texts in which many key terms belong to the Buddhist and Taoist religious sphere. And the adoption of this language is not perceived as a loss of Christian identity, but as a tool to expose the "proprium" of the Christian faith in a pluralistic context. It is an adaptation of the announcement of Christianity in its essential terms, with words that belong to cultural contexts different from those of the Greek and Roman cultural world. To give an example, the mystery of the Trinity is evoked by referring to the salvation given through "Three Majesties of Luminous Teaching". The effects of this contamination are also documented for example in the iconography of the Christian tombs of Zaitun (13th century), where crosses are grafted into the lotus flower and celestial beings similar to angels painted in the Buddhist iconographic mode.

Mission and dialogue with politics and power Another dimension of the dialogue approach of the missionary practice of the Church of the East in China is that adopted towards the authorities and the political power of the Tang Emperors and the Mongol Yuan rulers. The uninterrupted dialogue with it was accepted by the imperial authorities as a necessary tool to gain recognition as a legitimate and "orthodox" teaching in the sense of Confucian political meaning. This was the only way through which the Christian faith could be accepted in a Chinese society and to avoid being associated with cults considered pernicious and perverse, prosecuted by law.

The Stele itself testifies to the intent of Christianity of Syriac origin to acquire legitimacy at the imperial Court. The entire Stele is permeated by the intent to show the connection and harmony between the just actions of the rulers and the presence of the Church in China, which makes its contribution to the social order and the common good. Therefore the Stele also testifies to a process of adaptation to the Chinese way of conceiving and managing relations between communities of faith and political authorities. A certain number of Christians were functionaries and officials in the political and military administration of the Tang empire, French Cardinal Eugene Tisserant , an expert and lover of Eastern Christianity, recalled in one of his writings on the Eastern Church that «The Nestorian priests in China voluntarily offered their services to the government, taking on public roles». Among these there was also the donor of the Stele , the Bactrian Yazdbozid, who in China takes the name of Yisi. The Chinese section of the Stele, in the final part, reproduces his biography and highlights his high-ranking roles achieved in the imperial administration, and exalts his practice of the Christian virtue of charity. In this attitude of collaboration and service towards the political authorities, the Church finds its legitimacy in the political context so different from that of the Roman Empire. Christianity, in the way it is lived and witnessed by those communities in China, becomes a confession that can be embraced because it is not perceived as a doctrine of foreign people or those subjected to foreign powers or interests. The names of Christians who already in those centuries became court advisors and doctors in China show that the choice of dialogue and not opposition was useful in spreading the Gospel and bearing witness to it, in that period of history which was in many ways the antipodes of what would have been happened many centuries later, in the era of Colonialism.

Conclusions The two aforementioned scholars Bevans and Schroeder underlined that the missionary experience of the ancient Eastern Church has a lot to say to our present. The attitude of openness to meeting and dialogue leads back to the sources of the mission. And in today's world, it appears increasingly clear that dialogue and openness to encounters are necessary attitudes for every Christian testimony. This was also demonstrated by the first Council of the Catholic Church in China, which took place in Shanghai 100 years ago, in 1924. On 21 May a conference organized in Rome by the Pontifical Urbaniana University in collaboration with Agenzia Fides commemorated that important Council. said Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization (section for the first evangelization and the new particular Churches), speaking of the Council of Shanghai, the announcement of the Gospel is not identified with a civilization and a culture , and precisely for this reason it protects and promotes the riches of individual peoples and their cultures. Because the liberation and healing brought by Jesus are a gift for each and every one, as Pope Francis always repeats.

This article is a translation. Apologies should the grammar and/or sentence structure not be perfect.