Today is World Mission Sunday - a day set aside for Catholics worldwide to revive our missionary awareness and commitment…a day to reflect on how to pass on the faith.
We recommit ourselves to our common vocation, by virtue of our Baptism, to be missionaries, through prayer, participation in the Eucharist, and by providing financial support and concrete help to all the missions of the world".
Today we share in those celebrations taking place in every parish, seminary, school and convent all over the world.
In the Gospel - Jesus told His disciples and is telling us about the necessity to pray always and not lose heart.”
Let us pray especially for Missionaries for perseverance and for them not to lose heart.
St. Francis Xavier, S.J. , along with St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower - are the patron saints of missionaries. Let us ask for their intercessions for missionaries and all missionary works.
Talking about missionaries - Our Pastor Father Glenn actually is a missionary belonging to the Mission Society of the Philippines… Actually, he was in Korea for at least15 years and spent some time in Bangladesh; and so, let us pray for Fr. Glenn and provide him all the support we can in any way and let us pray for all MSP missionaries.
Please always include Father Glenn in your prayers. Let us also pray hard that God will send a parochial vicar to our parish as soon as possible so Father Glenn can find time to rest. Every now and then we check on Father Glenn because we are concerned about him and, being a true missionary, he said: “More work, more grace.” Inspiring! There is so much truth in that.
The will of God will not take us to where His grace cannot sustain us.
The more we share our faith, the stronger our faith becomes.
The Mission Society of the Philippines (or MSP) was established by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), and so the MSP serves as the official and chief missionary arm of the Catholic Church of the Philippines… as a gift to the world in gratitude for the faith and blessings brought to the Philippines also by missionaries.
The MSP now has been working in five continents and at least twelve countries in the world including the United States and that is why Father Glenn is here and we are so blessed.
One of the many missionary visions or goals of MSP is to instill missionary consciousness to the Filipino migrants, making them partners and instruments of missionary vocation.
And so – let us use ourselves as an example. We - who are migrants here in America – we are here not just to enjoy ourselves with the comforts and pleasures and material prosperity – we have a mission - there is a reason why we are here… in fact – we have a mission wherever we find ourselves in.
We are all so blessed…. And our Blessings come with a mission.
Pope Francis, a Jesuit priest, a missionary himself said: “I am a mission, always; you are a mission, always; every baptized man and woman is a mission.”
St. Teresa of Calcutta said and it is still true today: “There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.”
She said: “The greatest disease in the West today is not physical illness or disease; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love.
The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”
Therefore – we should see the West – America for example – as our mission field. We live in a very secular and even atheistic society to say the least.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said: “The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort; you were made for greatness.” - meaning – we were made for holiness… set apart for God. We are in this world – but not of it.
We always have to remember as the Scripture says: Much more has been given to you – much more is expected of you. And we need to share this vision and mission to our children who are born and raised here for them to continue the mission… and so we need start in our own families. We need to tell our children our faith stories.
Those of us who made it here in America – we are not only so materially blessed in so many ways – we also have the freedom – including freedom to practice our faith unlike in many areas in the world. In fact, there is too much of everything here in our society – materially and in terms of freedom – anything goes pretty much including morally - that people lose sight of what really matters in life and that is the danger for all of us.
If we are not careful – we who migrated here, we initially might have been materially poor but spiritually rich when we left our country but because of attractions and attachments to material things and comfort and pleasure and new found freedom – we might be finding ourselves now – materially rich but spiritually poor… and worse even – there are those – both financially poor and spiritually poor.
For many of us who are first generation immigrants – coming from a Third World Country like the Philippines - We know what it is like to be without – we know how to persevere and not lose heart and not lose hope even in the midst of struggles and pains - that is a gift we need to share with those who were born with a silver spoon – so to speak - who do not know how to deal with sufferings and struggles in life.
Reality check - Life is getting tougher and tougher even here in America – illness due to too much pleasure and too much consumption of all kinds; violence, financial problems, degradation in moral values, etc.
Many people around us do not know how to deal with struggles – their threshold for pain is so low and so they are the ones who give up on life so easily because they do not know any better.
And so – as Christians – we are called to be light of the world, the salt of the earth and source and instruments of hope.
Only in Christ, can humanity find hope. (St. Pope JPII)
"The Lord always reminds us how precious we are in His eyes, and He entrusts us with a mission." (Pope Francis)
St. Teresa of Avila said it so beautifully: Christ has no body now on earth but yours. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good; Yours are the eyes with which He looks with compassion on this world; Yours are the hands with which He blesses all the world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
We say in our Profession of Faith: We believe in one, holy catholic and apostolic church. We are the apostolic church. The word “Apostle” means “one who is sent to deliver or proclaim the teachings to others.
That is why at the end of the Mass… after having been nourished by God’s word, His Body and Blood, we are sent to go out there into the world in the peace of Christ, to glorify the Lord by our very lives…. By proclaiming the Good News of God’s love, grace and mercy in Christ by our very lives.
Actually, in essence, the mass never ends. It must be lived.
God bless…
29th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – CYCLE C
OCTOBER 20, 2019 - Luke 18:1-8
