The year was 1919. Two missionaries, returning to their respective missions visit the Berriz Convent School. Later, on March 19, the Feast of St. Joseph, Mother Margarita Maturana begins Mercedarian Missionary Youth in the school to help organize the students desire “to do more” for the missions. Later in November of that same year, Pope Benedict XV issued his Apostolic Letter Maximum Illud, a document on the Church’s mission to bring to the world the salvation of Jesus Christ. A confluence of coincidences or the action of the Holy Spirit?
Fast forward to Mission Sunday 2017. Pope Francis proposed, “For the month of October 2019, I ask the whole Church to live an extraordinary time of missionary activity.” In response, the Church is celebrating from this past October 1, on the feast of Saint Therese of Lisieux, patroness of the Missions–together with Saint Francis Xavier and continuing through World Mission Sunday on October 20, the Extraordinary Missionary Month.
The theme for the month and the title of Pope Francis’ Message for next Sunday–World Mission Sunday is the same—
“Baptized and Sent: The Church of Christ on Mission in the World.”
Therein, Pope Francis clearly states, “Celebrating this month will help us first to rediscover the missionary dimension of our faith in Jesus Christ, a faith graciously bestowed on us in baptism. Our filial relationship with God is not something simply private, but always in relation to the Church. Through our communion with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we, together with so many of our other brothers and sisters, are born to new life. This divine life is not a product for sale – we do not practice proselytism – but a treasure to be given, communicated and proclaimed: that is the meaning of mission.”
“The Church is on mission in the world. . . This missionary mandate touches us personally: I am a mission, always; you are a mission, always; every baptized man and woman is a mission. … Each of us is a mission to the world, for each of us is the fruit of God’s love. This life is bestowed on us in baptism, which grants us the gift of faith in Jesus Christ, the conqueror of sin and death. Baptism gives us rebirth in God’s own image and likeness, and makes us members of the Body of Christ, which is the Church. . . in baptism we receive the origin of all fatherhood and true motherhood: no one can have God for a Father who does not have the Church for a mother (cf. Saint Cyprian, De Cath. Eccl., 6).”
“Today too, the Church needs men and women who, by virtue of their baptism, respond generously to the call to leave behind home, family, country, language and local Church, and to be sent forth to the nations, to a world not yet transformed by the sacraments of Jesus Christ and his holy Church.”
“Faith in the Easter event of Jesus; the ecclesial mission received in baptism; the geographic and cultural detachment from oneself and one’s own home; the need for salvation from sin and liberation from personal and social evil: all these demand the mission that reaches to the very ends of the earth . . . The Easter event of Jesus breaks through the narrow limits of worlds, religions and cultures, calling them to grow in respect for the dignity of men and women, and towards a deeper conversion to the truth of the Risen Lord who gives authentic life to all.”
The celebration of this Extraordinary Missionary Month has four dimensions: praying-that personal encounter with Christ in his Church; re-discovering the value of the lives/witness of saints and martyrs for mission; a deepening in Church doctrine; practicing of charity through financial support of the missions.
The world was indeed different a century ago when the missionary thrust of the Church was re-energized. Now, 100 year later, we are called to acknowledge that we, too, are mission and have a mission: to know Jesus and make Jesus known to people everywhere, just as Blessed Margarita Maria.
