Mission Sunday

-October 18-

Today is Mission Sunday. We often talk about being on a mission. What is a mission? How can we become missionaries? A mission is simply sharing our faith experience. If we have a strong experience, we cannot help but share it. I remember an incident that happened some time ago. One of my friends developed blood cancer. He visited many doctors but none could help him. My friend was terribly disappointed. “There is a Pilgrimage Center in Goa. Make a pilgrimage there and offer some prayers then you will be healed,” someone told him. He made the pilgrimage and to his great surprise he was miraculously healed. He was very excited by this, to say the least. Since then, whenever he meets a cancer patient he tells them: “Go to Goa…! You will be healed.”

This is what mission means. It is sharing our Christ experience with one another. If we have a strong experience we cannot help but share it. Saint Paul says: “The love of God urges us.” Pope John Paul II said: “Faith is complete when it is shared.” This is what we see in the lives of the Apostles and the Disciples. When they experienced the power of the Risen Lord, they started to share it. When they were stopped from preaching, Peter and John said to the Sanhedrin, “It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). We are the fruits of their sharing.

Our Church is missionary by nature. The dimension of sending was explicitly implied in Jesus’ calling. He called them to ‘be with Him and to be sent’. Different times in his ministry Jesus reminded his disciples of this Task. When he appeared to his disciples after the resurrection Jesus said: “Go 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.. I am with you always, until the end of the age.”(Mt. 28:19-20) Minutes before His Ascension Jesus repeated the same: “You will receive the power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the Earth”( Acts. 1:8).

Now it is our turn to continue this mission. How do we carry out this mission? How do we proclaim the God News of Jesus? We can become missionaries in three ways:
1. By becoming pray-ers. Our model for this is Little Theresa of the Child Jesus. She never saw the world that was outside of the four walls of her convent. But, by her prayers alone, she became the Patroness of Missionaries.
2. By witnessing. Jesus says: By your love show the world that you are my disciples. So living our faith in our day to day life is the most powerful way of Evangelization. People may not read the bible but they do read our lives. Actually mission begins with the evangelization of the Evangelizer.
3. By sharing. Jesus himself is our model. He emptied Himself to fill our emptiness. He became poor to make us rich. By sharing our being and our possessions with the underprivileged we can become living Gospels.

I would like to conclude this reflection with this little story. Once when Jesus and his Disciples were traveling they saw a handicapped person on their way. Seeing this person’s misery, Peter asked Jesus: “If God is such a loving Father, why did He create him without hands. Doesn’t He have any solutions for this person’s problem?” Jesus replied: “Yes! He created you with two hands.”