The Holy Spirit gives us a very
insightful Gospel reading as we celebrate World Mission Sunday today. To start off, we can look at the
motivation of the Pharisees in the way they ask Jesus questions in today’s
Gospel. The Pharisees asked their
questions not wanting to grow in their faith, not trying to better understand
Jesus’ calling or his relationship with his heavenly Father, but their question
tried to entrap Jesus and discredit him and his teachings. As we look at the motivation of
Pharisees today, we see how important motivation is to our own faith and our
proclamation of God’s kingdom in our lives. When I was the associate pastor
of St Richard Catholic Church in Jackson, we started a conference of the St
Vincent de Paul Society, an organization dedicated to serving the poor. When the regional director of
the St Vincent de Paul Society came to our parish for a visit, she asked
members of our group to identify the primary goal of the St Vincent de Paul
Society. Without any hesitation, one
lady, a very accomplished social workers, answered without hesitation: “Helping
the poor, of course” The regional director quickly snapped
back: “Absolutely not – that’s not the primary goal.” She explained that primary goal of the
Society Vincent de Paul Society is to be an apostolate where members can grow in
faith and in their relationship with Christ. Helping the poor flows out of
faith of the members, out of their relationship with Christ. Without that, the works of that group are
just good works, not works of faith. The
good works have to come out of our faith. I felt the same way about my
missionary work, since what I did as a missionary always started at the
foundation of my faith. Without my faith, without the
way I grew as a Catholic and as a disciple of Christ, my missionary work would
have been very different. I still would have done good works, for sure, but my relationship with
the people and with the work itself would have been very different taken out of
the context of faith.
Today, on World Mission Sunday,
the theme is “I Will Build My Church.” This theme highlights the
outreach of local churches through priests, religious and laity among the poor
and marginalized around the world. Our Catholic Church’s Society
for the Propagation of the Faith advocates and facilitates this important work
of the universal Church throughout the world, the work of bringing the message
of Christ to the whole world. Paul is the original model of
the missionary of the Good News of Jesus Christ to the different peoples of the
world. Today, in our second reading, we
hear the beginning of Paul’s letter to the Christian community in Thessalonica,
a major city in Greece. This is just one of the places
where Paul traveled to bring the Gospel to those who had not heard it before. We are called to be
evangelizers of the Gospel on many levels – this is certainly one of the
messages we have heard from our most recent popes – Benedict and Francis –
again and again. We are called to be
evangelizers in our own parish, to reach out to those who have fallen away from
our Catholic faith, to our community, and beyond. As you know, in the past few
months this summer, I traveled to a parish in New Jersey to talk about the
reality of the Catholic Church here in Mississippi, and then to a large parish
in Chicago to talk about the missionary work I did in Ecuador with the Comboni
Missionaries on behalf of our universal Church. It is important for us to share
our story with others, to share our experiences as Catholics in places where
Catholicism is not very common, even here in Mississippi.
Yes, we are called to proclaim
our faith, to proclaim the values of our faith. We have been celebrating
Respect Life Month in the Catholic Church during the entire month of October. Newly appointed Archbishop
Blase Cupich of Chicago stated that regarding social justice issues in our
society, “the Church should never be
satisfied (that) it’s doing enough if there’s still a social ill out there to
be addressed.” He said that it would be naïve
for us to think that this is the Kingdom of God and that we have done enough.
He said that we can’t nag and harangue others in our society about these issues,
that this is not the best approach to take. But, we have to keep pressing forward and
engaging people into conversations about the Lord’s truth, illuminating the
light of the Gospel of Christ as we speak about these various issues. Archbishop Cupich listed
various social issues that we face as a society: immigration, inequality,
racism, pornography, drug abuse, white collar crime, abortion, and the death
penalty. Let’s be honest: these are
difficult issues that divide our society.
However, Archbishop Cupich stated that these issues require the
attention of the Church and they require changes in our policies and our laws
in order to protect human life.
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