October is a busy month for us in the Catholic faith. It is the month of Mary. It is Respect Life Month. And this weekend, the 3rd Sunday of October, is declared World Mission Sunday by the Society of the Propagation of the Faith in the Roman Catholic Church.
On World Mission Sunday today, we join in solidarity with our brothers and sisters throughout the world to celebrate the Church’s responsibility to spread the message of Christ’s Good News. Ever since Christ sent his apostles and other disciples out into the world as missionaries to preach his word, each successive generation has answered this same missionary call. Priest, consecrated men and women, and lay people share the responsibility to reach out to those who do not know the Gospel message and those who do not believe in Jesus our Savior. The message we receive today is that we all can be missionaries, whether we go off to a far off land or whether we remain right here where we live. No matter where we are, we are called to contribute to our Father’s plan through prayer, through our actions and example, and through our evangelization efforts.
From the prophet Isaiah, we hear how God expects those of us with faith are expected to communicate that faith to others, as our reading today states: “I have called you by name… so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun, people may know that there is none besides me. I am the Lord, there is no other.” A passage from an earlier chapter of Isaiah gives us the theme of World Mission Sunday 2020: “Here I am, send me.” Our relationship with God must be the most important part of our lives. Our relationship with God must define our words, our thoughts, and our actions. If the sacrifice Jesus made for us touches our soul and our entire being, then we will desire others to have the opportunity understand and accept his mercy just as we have. Out of our relationship with Christ, we are called to have a missionary spirit that enables us to say: Here I am, Lord, send me.
For the last couple of years at St Jude, we had the ALPHA program to help us grow in the faith and to introduce the faith to others. We saw the ALPHA program change a lot of lives and to introduce people to the Catholic faith who may have never consider it before. ALPHA helped stir a sense of interest and joy in the faith of those who perhaps had become complacent or who were not super active in their faith. But, we know that like many things, the pandemic hit the pause button on our ALPHA program right in the middle of our sessions. We have been excited to get out small faith groups going again with THE SEARCH with Chris Stefanick that have been meeting through ZOOM these past few weeks. We are going to be offering an Advent series with small groups, starting in late November with the beginning of the Advent season. We will be offering some groups for our adult parishioners to enter. We will also be encouraging our parishioners to form group and to have our ALPHA table leaders reach out to those in the ALPHA program. Our Advent program will be multi-media, with videos, readings, and songs. We are excited to continue in our small group faith formation programs. Very excited. It is a way for us to be missionary, to grow in our faith ourselves, and to reach out in our faith to others.
Creativity is what is important in how we approach our faith during the pandemic, how we are to approach faith formation. We are called to look outside the box as to how we practice our faith, express our faith, and grow in our faith during the pandemic. We are to be equally creative in our missionary spirit as well, in our call to evangelization. And perhaps the call to be missionary is more important now than at an other time in our lives. Jesus calls all of us to be missionaries in the reality of our present lives. May we hear this call on World Mission Sunday.
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