Today, we hear the prophet Habakkuk cry out to the Lord: Why Lord, do we look out and see ruin and misery, violence and destruction, strife and discord? Habakkuk tells God that he sees the wicked surround the righteous in the world, that justice, when it comes, is distorted. But Habakkuk then says, in midst of all these disturbing things he sees, “the Lord answered me…” The Lord tells him to write down his vision, that it will have it’s appointed time to be proclaimed to the people. This reminds us how sometimes we want results immediately, but things happen on God’s time, not our time. God tells us to be patient and to have faith. In fact, the Gospel echoes this theme by telling us that with faith as small as a mustard seed, that faith can do wonders.
But Habakkuk and the other prophets just don’t talk about things that happened long ago. In our own day, we might see some of the same things that Habakkuk saw: the righteous who are persecuted by the wicked, justice that is slow to come and distorted, the destruction of things that we hold dear. But, like the message of hope that Habakkuk brought to the people of Ancient Israel, we find messages of hope in our world today as well. Pope Francis has declared October this year as the Extraordinary Mission Month in commemoration of the ground breaking document issued by Pope Benedict XV 100 years ago, Maximum Illud, in which the Pope called on the Catholic faithful to bring Christ’s Gospel to all the people of the world. At the time, in 1919, Europe was still recovering from WWI, which had ended less than a year earlier. Much of the Church’s missionary activity took place where colonialism and nationalism were keeping the status quo. Pope Benedict XV called for the fostering of local bishops, local clergy, and local churches, for a missionary spirit amongst all the faithful.
Pope Francis has named four different themes for this special month: promoting a personal encounter with Christ living in his Church; listening to the witness of the missionary saints and martyrs: engaging in Biblical, catechetical, spiritual, and theological formation for mission; and promoting a spirit of missionary charity as a commitment to support our Church’s missionary activities.
The Extraordinary Mission Month started on October 1, the feast of St Therese of Lisieux. Therese was a cloistered nun in France and died at a very young age, yet she is one of the patron saints of the missions. Therese had a heart for the missions, a heart for bringing the Gospel to the people of the world, a heart for her brothers and sisters in Christ. Therese shows us that no matter who we are in life, God calls us all to be missionaries.
Pope Francis, in the vigil mass opening Extraordinary Mission Month, called us to be a Church on the go, to not lament things that are not right or that go wrong, to not seek to be a safe oasis, but rather to be the salt of the earth and leaven in the world. And that means that we are all to work together to bring Christ’s Gospel to the world. Is it enough to just fulfill our Sunday mass obligation? The answer to that is that we are call to so much more. We are invited by Christ to do so much more. And he wants us to respond with joyful hearts. Pope Francis said that we should all ask ourselves this month: What kind of witness am I for the Gospel message of Christ?
We at St Jude reach out to the community in many different ways. We are inviting those outside of our community to participate in youth and adult ALPHA. We have regular ministries at Millsaps College, Whitfield state hospital, and Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. We regularly have masses in Latin and in Spanish in addition to our English masses. Be a part of all that is going on at St Jude.
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