“SEEDS OF LIFE”
Sunday, 16th October 2016.
Twenty Ninth Week of Ordinary Time
World Mission Day 2016
Ex 17: 8-13;
Ps 121: 1-8;
2 Tim 3:14 – 4:2;
Lk 18: 1-8
MISSIONARY CHURCH, WITNESS OF MERCY!
Have you ever wondered, “When a person becomes a Christian, why doesn’t God just take them on to heaven?” The answer is that God has an assignment for each of us; you were made for a mission. What is that mission? Mission began with the words of Jesus in Matthew 4:18 “Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men”. It was clear from the outset that when Jesus called someone to be his disciple he was not calling them to a religious life but a life devoted to mission. He wasn’t calling them to the Temple, to Torah, but a life of active discipleship. In Acts 1:8 we see that just before his ascension Jesus spoke to his disciples and told them that they would be witnesses of him in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. And then in Acts 2, on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit was gifted to God’s people to enable them to participate in the ongoing mission of God in the world. Since the day of Pentecost the mission of God has been an outward movement. It moves outward while somehow keeping Christ at the centre. Mission is something we are all invited, commanded even, to participate in. Mission then is giving witness to who Jesus is through the proclamation of what we believe and lived out in our daily actions; actions of loving God and loving others!
The God of the Bible is not the God of the status quo. First he shakes us up, and then he uses us to shake our world. That’s always been God’s method. When God wanted to change the world, he told Noah to do something he had never done before (build an ark) to prepare for something he’d never seen before (rain). When God wanted to bring forth a great nation, he called Abram and told him to leave Ur of the Chaldeans. When God wanted to deliver his people, he found a man slow of speech named Moses and sent him to talk to the Pharaoh. When the Lord needed someone to hide the spies in Jericho, he found a prostitute named Rahab. When God needed someone to defeat Goliath, he chose a shepherd boy named David. When God wanted to deliver his people from destruction, he chose a young girl named Esther.
When Christ wanted some men in his inner circle, he chose fisherman and tax collectors, a loud mouth named Peter and two brothers called the “sons of thunder,” and told them to drop everything and follow him. A witness is somebody who simply says what they have seen and what they have experienced. That’s all. One doesn’t have to be a great theologian. You are the expert on your life. All you need to do is share what God has done in your life. Each one of us was created in the image of God. St Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians demands a careful consideration: “Our preaching of the Gospel proved not a mere matter of words for you, but one of power” (v. 5). The Good News, as Paul had proclaimed it among those ancient Greeks had not fallen on deaf ears and hardened hearts; it had been welcomed and allowed to take root in the fertile soil of their faith and hope. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, present within Paul and within those who received his message, the gospel of Jesus Christ became an incarnate, flesh and blood, palpable experience in Thessalonica. Is not this the intended goal every time the good news is announced? Now, where are we supposed to share this good news? This is not mission impossible. It is mission inevitable. Where do we start? Right where we live. In our Jerusalem; friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, people who cross your path. And that is the second area that we are to do that, not just our Jerusalem, telling those in our immediate sphere of influence the Good News of Jesus, but then Judea and Samaria, Jesus said. And these are folks, this is the area where we reach beyond our immediate world, our immediate comfort zone, people near us but different in background, education, perhaps economics. Paul said “I become all things to all people, so that by some means I might save some.” (1Cor 9:22)
The Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, which the Church is celebrating, casts a distinct light on World Mission Sunday 2016: it invites us to consider the mission of the Church as a great, immense work of mercy, both spiritual and material. On this World Mission Sunday, all of us are invited to "go out" as missionary disciples, each generously offering their talents, creativity, wisdom and experience in order to bring the message of God’s tenderness and compassion to the entire human family. By virtue of the missionary mandate, the Church cares for those who do not know the Gospel, because she wants everyone to be saved and to experience the Lord’s love. She “is commissioned to announce the mercy of God, the beating heart of the Gospel” (Misericordiae Vultus, 12) and to proclaim mercy in every corner of the world, reaching every person, young or old.
All peoples and cultures have the right to receive the message of salvation which is God’s gift to every person. This is all the more necessary when we consider how many injustices, wars, and humanitarian crises still need resolution. Missionaries know from experience that the Gospel of forgiveness and mercy can bring joy and reconciliation, justice and peace. The mandate of the Gospel to "go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Mt 28:19-20) has not ceased; rather this command commits all of us, in the current landscape with all its challenges, to hear the call to a renewed missionary "impulse". "Each Christian and every community must discern the path that the Lord points out, but all of us are asked to obey his call to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the ‘peripheries’ in need of the light of the Gospel” (Evangelii Gaudium, 20). Let us not close our hearts within our own particular concerns, but let us open them to all of humanity.
Prayer: Lord, here am I. Send me to be Your missionary. Amen
