Mission possible! A reflection on Mission Sunday

I remember after my first Religious Profession being asked by our then Superior General where I saw myself in five years and I responded that I was open to ‘be a missionary’, to go wherever I was needed, even to the new foundation which was being considered at that time in a particularly cold climate! However, she was quick to assure me that my mission was in the ‘green fields of Ireland!’

I had just spent four years in Italy and whilst the mission at that time was in Ireland, it would later bring me to other countries – Poland, Vatican City, Italy again and then Canada.  During those years abroad from Ireland, I never really saw myself as a missionary, just living in a different country carrying out the ministry associated with our charism as Disciples.

And yet here I am, 30 years later, a religious, and not a ‘missionary’! Or am I? So what’s that difference, you may ask?  What makes a missionary a missionary? When are we ‘on mission’ or ‘on the missions’?

One of the great documents to emerge from Vatican II was the decree ‘Ad gentes’,  a Latin title meaning  "To the Nations." Every Christian, in virtue of their baptism is a missionary because we are immersed into the life of the Trinity and we belong to a Christian family which has a structure which we call the Church.  The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature, since it unites with Jesus the Son, with the power of the Holy Spirit, in accordance with the will of the Father. The purpose of this missionary activity is to evangelise, evangelisation, to bring the message of Jesus to peoples and groups where it has not yet taken root.

As a young child probably no older than 5 or 6, I recall being fascinated by the stories from a priest who had spent some time on the missions and came to visit our school after his time in Africa. I remember the pictures on the projector of children and families in Africa who lived so simply or who sadly lived in extreme poverty. What struck me was the joy that they had in sharing the little they had, or the exuberant happiness when they went to Church, they danced, they sang- something very foreign to our European experience. I also remember being aware also that the world was divided into those who had and those who didn’t have and how unfair this seemed.

As a child, I also used to deliver some of the missionary magazines and the Sacred Heart Messenger for Sr. Bernard (see another recent blog post here about this wonderful Sister) and used to read them en route (I suppose I could have been reading worse!) Through words and images my little mind would be thinking of those religious and lay men and women who were doing great things to help people in poorer countries. We collected money during Lent in our school to send to the missions, to help these families, we prayed for them during our Rosaries, little did we know, we were little missionaries!

And yet, if you speak to any missionary, they will all tell you that they always got more than they gave. They learned the importance of simplicity of life, of gratitude, of humility, of care for each other, of sharing and solidarity, even with a simple bowl of rice, of compassion which goes beyond race, religion, colour, language, culture. They learned how at times people who have nothing materially have everything in life and at the same time, learned the struggle of being a seemingly ‘drop in the ocean’ in the battle against poverty, famine, corruption, injustice, the list goes on. But nearly all of them would say that they would still have gone to far-off places, even knowing all the challenges and difficulties that they would encounter.

Almost every Christian group has a form of mission and missionary outreach. When we think of it, as Christians, we turn to the Word of God, the Bible, as our source of strength, inspiration, joy so the message of Jesus in the Gospels: “Go out into the whole world and proclaim the Good News” (Mk 16:15) is for all of us to take up. Each of us is called to mission and bring the message of Good News. And what is this Good News? That God so loved the world, He gave us his only Son- it is a message of love, of hope, of mercy, of faith! And this is what I try to do in my own little ways each day- be a messenger of God’s love among the ‘pots and pans’ as St. Teresa of Avila would say! So yes, although I felt I wasn’t a missionary because I didn’t ‘go on the missions’ (our Baltic foundation didn’t happen in the end!), I now see that each new day brings an opportunity to be on mission, to be the hands, the feet, the heart, the body of Christ to whomever I meet. And this is mission, whether I do here in the leafy suburbs of South County Dublin, or commuting on the 46A, or whether it is in the sweltering heat of Congo or the sub-zero temperatures of Russia, we are called to be missionary disciples and messengers of hope, a pilgrim missionary Church!