10/19/2014 – 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time – World Mission Sunday – Matthew 22:15-22

      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.

         Our Church challenges us today on World Mission Sunday to follow Jesus’ mandate: “I will build my Church.”  As the Body of Church, we are to build up his Church.  We are to be evangelizers and missionaries no matter where we are in our journey of faith.  Jesus, in the Gospel, tell us to repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God, but as Catholics, we have the responsibilities to participate in politics and the public life in our society, to infuse it with the values of our faith.   And we will have a chance to do this in the way we cast our votes in the election in November.  Yes, we definitely evangelize in many different ways. 

10/21/2012 – 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time – World Mission Sunday - Matthew 10: 35-45

        James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were two of the apostles called by Jesus.  Jesus gave them the nickname “the Sons of Thunder”, probably for their great zeal and fiery personalities. James and John make a very bold request of Jesus: they want him to give them a place of honor at his side.  Yet, Jesus tells them that they must be willing to drink the same cup that Jesus drinks, they must be willing to recognize that our faith is not all about honor and glory, but rather about being a servant and about carrying our crosses in life.  Little did James know that he would be the very first apostle martyred for the faith, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.  This happened after James returned back to Jerusalem from his missionary travels in Spain, in which he came back after having converted very few inhabitants to our faith.

         Today, the next-to-last Sunday in October, is always celebrated in our Church as World Mission Sunday.  This day reflects the deep identity of our Church to always be missionary and to bring Christ’s Gospel to all the world.  On this day, October 21, Pope Benedict XVI will canonize 7 new saints in our Church.  Kateri Tekakwitha, who has been recognized as blessed in our Church since 1980, will be the first native American recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church.  Kateri, known in our Church as “the Lilly of the Mohawks”, was born in the mid-17^th century and was baptized by the French Jesuit missionaries when she was 20 years old.  Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, himself a native American, states that “Kateri's life is a witness not only to the cost of discipleship – she bore a great deal of suffering for her faith among her own people – but also to its fruitfulness….She reminds us that Jesus came for all people in every age, but especially for the lowly, whom God loves in a special way."

         Also being canonized today is Sister Marianne Cope, a Sister of Saint Francis from Syracuse, New York, who was invited with her fellow sisters by Father Damien and King Kalākaua of Hawaii in 1883 to journey to the island of Molokai in Hawaii to work with the poor and the lepers there.   Bishop Silva of Honolulu notes: “In this Year of Faith, we thank God for (Mother Marianne and) these beautiful models of women who embraced the sufferings of life and who nevertheless exuded great joy because they were so in love with Jesus."  In addition to serving the lepers, Mother Marianne and her fellow sisters established schools and hospitals that served the poor in Hawaii. 

         Our theme on World Mission Sunday is “Called to Radiate the Word of Truth”.  Just as Mother Marianne and Kateri Tekakwitha were models for living out joy in their faith, we are all called to share the Good News of Jesus in joyful proclamation, to bring hope to our world through the joy that is at the heart of our Christian experience.  We don’t have to travel to a faraway place like Hawaii to be missionaries to the world.  As a part of our baptismal calling, we are called to radiate this missionary joy wherever we are in our lives, to be bearers of the hope-filled witness of the Gospel in our prayers and in our proclamations. 

         We have had such wonderful examples of missionaries in our Church through the ages – Father Damien and Mother Marianne Cope and their example of working with the lepers in Hawaii is just one example among many.  However, we must remember the example of one of the patron saints of our Church’s missionary spirit – Saint Therese of the Little Flower.  Therese died at the very young age of 24, and lived her life as a Carmelite nun in a cloistered convent in France.  Yet, Pope John Paul II named Therese as one of the patron saints of the missions, even though she never went off to a faraway land herself.  I saw a posting on the internet when someone questioned why the pope would name a cloistered nun as a patron saint of the missions, when we have so many great missionaries from which to choose.  Perhaps she was chosen for this role to show how all of us are called to have a heart for the missions.  Therese always dreamed of going to the missions, but her poor health prevented her from doing so.  She recognized God’s calling to be missionary, as she supported the missions in prayers and in sacrifices.  She spiritually adopted missionaries and seminarians, praying for them and corresponding with them, giving them spiritual advice and counsel.   Therese brought a joyful spirit in her love for the missions, which echoes the joy that Pope Benedict calls us all to have in our Christian witness, a joy that is so important in midst of the anxiety, sorrow, and violence that is so present in our world.  As members of the Church, we are called to bring a joy that is authentic and enduring, the same joy that the shepherds and angels proclaimed on the night that Jesus was born. 

         There a lot of things that bring us happiness and pleasure in this world.  And it is certainly good to have earthly pleasures and happiness as a part of our lives.  Yet, they are mere shadows of the joy that we find in our faith.  I always remember the advice Paul gave to the Philippians, telling them to always to joyful in Lord.  Paul tells them to let this joy be obvious to everyone, to realize that the Lord is always near to us.  Paul is able to say in this letter that he is full of joy for the Lord, even though he is writing this letter to the Philippians while he is in prison.  Thus, this joy had to be deeper and more profound than any of the pleasures and happiness that he could experience in a worldly sense.  I try to convey this sense of joy in my priesthood. In fact, we are all called to convey this sense of joy in our lives as this joyful aspect of our faith calls out to all of us each and every day.

         As we celebrate the Year of Faith this year, we are called to deepen our love and understanding of all different aspects of our faith.  We celebrate today our call to be missionary no matter where we are in our lives.  We celebrate the great missionaries who have brought our faith to people near and far.  May we search out ways to be missionaries in our own little corner of the world, and to support the missionary endeavors of our Church.