Reflection: And if we make this mission our own today

‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted. To proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Luke 4:18-19

The purpose of mission is to bring the lost into the stream of God’s blessing. God sends Abram to fulfil his plan. Genesis 12:1: ‘ The Lord said to Abram, ’Go from your country, your homeland and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.Jesus is sending us today just as he sent his apostles. He invites us to evangelise, to proclaim the Good News, to fight evil and, above all, to help those who are suffering. Jesus sends his disciples out two by two to continue his mission because it is a community adventure. Our faith is enriched by the faith of others, by the faith of our parents, grandparents, friends and acquaintances, and our faith contributes to that of others.Alone, we are sometimes fragile. In pairs, we have more self-confidence, more power, and better cope with adversity, depression, and fatigue. He sent them out two by two: the testimony of two people was important to be heard in a trial. What’s more, Jesus tells us that mission is not an individual affair but a community endeavour, a team effort. Even after his death, those on the road to Emmaus were always two, not one.In his homily on World Mission Sunday, Cardinal CRESCENZO SEPE said: ‘Today, this mission is a vast ocean into which the whole Church must venture, counting on the help of Christ. The Eucharist encourages and impels us to cross the oceans of languages, cultures, and so many socio-political and religious barriers in order to bring all nations closer to Christ, with a view to a missionary action without frontiers, convinced that the Saviour of the world destroys nothing of what God has sown in all peoples, but brings all to its fullness’ (cf. Mt 5:17).

You don’t just decide to be ‘sent’; Jesus himself decides that. Once called and elected, we are sent on mission. You don’t go for your desire or interest; you go as a missionary; you are a ‘spokesperson’. And you never go alone. Mission is always a community effort. Never alone.

There are many duties in this great mission. The most important is to invite people to conversion. To do this, we ourselves must bear and express the signs of a true conversion: to love like Jesus, to love in Jesus, and to love for Jesus. This is the true mission of the good missionary.

Like the disciples of Emmaus, we, too, set out ‘without delay’ to communicate what we have seen and heard after having had a personal experience of the Risen Lord. The encounter with Christ,’ writes the Holy Father in the Apostolic Letter Mane nobiscum Domine, “constantly deepened in the intimacy of the Eucharist, awakens in the Church and every Christian the urgency of witness and evangelisation”(n. 24).

It should also be noted that Vatican II, in Ad Gentes, situated mission as constitutive of the Church: ‘By her very nature, the Church, during her pilgrimage on earth, is missionary, since she herself derives her origin from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit, according to the plan of God the Father’. (AG,2)

John Paul II, of happy memory, identifies three missionary situations in today’s world and no longer speaks in terms of territories but refers to ‘peoples, human groups, socio-cultural contexts in which Christ and his Gospel are not known…’ (RM, 33). We are moving from a geographical conception of mission to taking into account other fields of mission, ‘the new airspaces’, because other dimensions of human life and the contemporary world need to know the Gospel.

If each of us today could grasp this same vision that Jesus had, his primary mission on the breadth of the Earth would also become ours. We would be so filled with the love of Christ that nothing could distract us from proclaiming it. The people around us could not escape the name of Jesus. For the mission, we need to know that words are necessary, actions are good, and there is no faithful proclamation of the Gospel without words. Mission is a global but complex reality that is accomplished in different ways, some of which are of particular importance in the current situation of the Church and the world.

Mission is a free and conscious response to God’s call. However, we can only perceive this call when we experience a personal relationship of love with Jesus living in his Church.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you. We are sent first and foremost to proclaim the Good News, to bring Christ so that people may be saved. Jesus’ mission takes place within the Church, and this mission aims to make a family of us all. At the end of our mission, we must realise that we are a family of God’s children, the family of the baptised.

Secondly, the mission of the Church is to be hopeful and bring joy and hope to the world. It is good today to pray for those who have passed on the faith to us, who have brought us the Good News, as the Letter to the Hebrews teaches us: ‘Remember your leaders who proclaimed the word of God to you; consider the end of their lives, and imitate their faith’ (Heb 13:7). At the same time, the epistle to the Hebrews warns us against false doctrines and bad teachers, whose mission is to lead us astray from the salvation that Christ brings us. ‘Do not be led astray by various and strange doctrines, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, and not by food that has done no good to those who have clung to it’. (Heb 13-9)

Let us think of the missionaries who left their towns and villages to come and proclaim the Good News of salvation to us and of their sacrifices. Some of them left their comfortable lives, sacrificed themselves, and accepted living in extreme poverty for the sake of the Gospel.

Let us make our mission that Christ has entrusted to us. Let us go to the ends of the earth to proclaim the Good News of salvation. Mission means making the universal God known to all peoples. We are called to accomplish a mission. And that mission is not the will of men but the will of God. Our objective must, therefore, be the mission that God has entrusted to us for his people. May the Lord help us to be less carnal and to fulfil his mission.

Simon Lumpini, MSC