The brothers James and John approach Jesus having thought long and hard about what they can ask of him. Their question is simple: They want to ask to be with him when he enters his kingdom in glory; one at his right and one at his left. With today’s Gospel, I thought of a book on prayer I read by Father Ron Rolheiser. In the preface to the book, Father Rolheiser speaks about how spirituality often gets drowned out in our modern world by our emphasis on the physical, on what we measure, see, taste, touch, and smell. When so many in our society center their lives on what is digitized, or what is on the screen of a TV or smartphone or computer, or on what material possessions we have or we can acquire, spirituality can get pushed aside. When our lives are centered upon the physical realm or upon what we see on the surface, it is hard to focus our attention on faith and prayer. With that as a backdrop, we can see how James and John think of things is worldly terms: of who will have power and who will sit in the place of honor. James and John view greatness through the values of the world, not through the lens of faith and spirituality.
As we hear this wonderful Gospel today and think about how we see the world as people of faith, we celebrate World Mission Sunday. We celebrate our call to mission as we ourselves are a Mission Diocese. A priest at our deanery meeting this past year very adamantly asserted that he thought we should not label ourselves as a missionary diocese any longer, that we should lose that identity. However, that designation is made by the USCCB; it is not something we decide on our own. Think of the financial challenges many of our small parishes face in our Diocese and the small percentage of Catholics we have; that reflects the missionary identity of our Diocese. Many people in our Diocese have told me that they did not have a lot of Catholics in school with them growing up. Our children and you in Clinton face that reality today. In addition, as a priest, I can sometimes feel a sense of discrimination from the public in my different encounters in the community as well. So, I myself am very glad we have the identity of a mission diocese, because that certainly reflects our reality.
The theme Pope Francis chose for World mission Sunday this year is rooted in the Gospel of Matthew: “Go and Invite Everyone to the Banquet.” This theme reflects the inclusive and urgent call to bring God’s love to everyone. As disciples of Christ, we are all called in this universal mission to spread the Gospel and invite all to experience the joy of Christ’s message. I often mention this theme of going and forth and inviting in my homilies, so hopefully this message sounds familiar.
I feel a strong missionary spirit in our Diocese. I have shared with all of you my own missionary journey that led me to become a priest in the Diocese of Jackson, of mission work with the street people and the indigenous people of Canada, of working in a remote mission site in Ecuador in South America, of teaching at a mission school for a year in Texas, and then being a member of the Mississippi Delta Corps, teaching Spanish in the Delta for four years. All of us can be missionary in spirit in different ways. Jesus went to the margins of his own community with his ministry and his Good News. We are called the same. I have recently started an outreach committee in the parish, trying to coordinate our efforts to reach out to others in the community. And we have come up with a lot of good ideas. But on World Mission Sunday we are also to look beyond our local community, to support the global mission of our Church in different ways. We receive help from different Dioceses from the Mission Appeals we have. I myself have been to Rhode Island, California, and Iowa this year on Mission Appeals. We also receive help from the Catholic Extension Society. However, we as a Diocese are also called to support this missions beyond our local community. The second collection today is a part of that effort.
St Therese of Lisieux is one of the patron saints of the missions. However, she did not serve as a missionary in a faraway land. She lived her whole life in the same region of France, dying at the age of 24 in a Carmelite monastery from tuberculosis. Yet, Pope John Paul II named her as a patron saint of the missions due to her prayers and support of missionaries, of her love of the Church’s missionary spirit of spreading the Gospel throughout the world. Like Therese, we are all called to that same missionary spirit. We can all be missionaries of Christ’s Good News.
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