I hope you have all had an opportunity to meet our new NET Missionaries. These wonderful men and women have dedicated their lives to Saint John for the next year in support of our engagement to the larger community. They wear bright blue shirts each Saturday and Sunday and are assisting us with ushering and greeting, as well as integrating into our Parish Family. They are the epitome of the word “missionary”. They put their entire lives on hold, sleeping sometimes on floors and in sleeping bags in the homes of the families of our Parish, focusing on spreading the joy and love of our faith through their outward actions. They go out from our church every day to speak to strangers, who they hope to turn into friends, and those friends into missionaries themselves.
On this World Mission Sunday, their example provides context to our whole Parish Family. We do not need to go to Uganda or Laos to become missionaries. The calling we all feel to assist those around us is our vocation tugging at our souls. We can reflect on the needs of the world and our own role in shaping the positive response to hunger, thirst, lack of education, poverty, homelessness, racism, forced migration, human trafficking, and all the facets of evil in the world. Pope Francis asks us in his message for today:
This Day invites us to reflect anew on the mission at the heart of the Christian faith. The Church is missionary by nature; otherwise, she would no longer be the Church of Christ, but one group among many others that soon end up serving their purpose and passing away. So it is important to ask ourselves certain questions about our Christian identity and our responsibility as believers in a world marked by confusion, disappointment and frustration, and torn by numerous fratricidal wars that unjustly target the innocent. What is the basis of our mission? What is the heart of our mission? What are the essential approaches we need to take in carrying out our mission?…
The Church’s mission, then, is not to spread a religious ideology, much less to propose a lofty ethical teaching. Many movements throughout the world inspire high ideals or ways to live a meaningful life. Through the mission of the Church, Jesus Christ himself continues to evangelize and act; her mission thus makes present in history the kairos, the favourable time of salvation. Through the proclamation of the Gospel, the risen Jesus becomes our contemporary, so that those who welcome him with faith and love can experience the transforming power of his Spirit, who makes humanity and creation fruitful, even as the rain does with the earth. “His resurrection is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world. Where all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. It is an irresistible force” (Evangelii Gaudium, 276)…
The Church’s mission is enlivened by a spirituality of constant exodus. We are challenged “to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the peripheries in need of the light of the Gospel” (Evangelii Gaudium, 20). The Church’s mission impels us to undertake a constant pilgrimage across the various deserts of life, through the different experiences of hunger and thirst for truth and justice. The Church’s mission inspires a sense of constant exile, to make us aware, in our thirst for the infinite, that we are exiles journeying towards our final home, poised between the “already” and “not yet” of the Kingdom of Heaven…
Dear brothers and sisters, in carrying out our mission, let us draw inspiration from Mary, Mother of Evangelization. Moved by the Spirit, she welcomed the Word of life in the depths of her humble faith. May the Virgin Mother help us to say our own “yes”, conscious of the urgent need to make the Good News of Jesus resound in our time. May she obtain for us renewed zeal in bringing to everyone the Good News of the life that is victorious over death. May she intercede for us so that we can acquire the holy audacity needed to discover new ways to bring the gift of salvation to every man and woman.
– Pope Francis, Message for World Mission Sunday 2017 (http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/missions/documents/papa-francesco_20170604_giornata-missionaria2017.html)
We have been showcasing our missionary spirit here at Saint John during our response to Hurricane Irma and for years with our efforts in Jamaica, Immokalee, and around the world. Thank you for your continued support and commitment to the Mission of the Catholic Church, and make sure you say welcome to our NET Missionaries the next time you see them.