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The second to last Sunday of October each year is designated by the Church as “World Mission Sunday.”
It is a vital work of mercy, this missionary business, lying at the very heart of the Church’s identity and purpose. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… (Matt 28:19).
But of course, because it is so much at the heart of the Church’s identity, missionary work can’t just be for those called to special vocations as missionaries, right? The Church is you and me, and anything that is of the essence and heart of the Church is of your essence and heart and mine too, right?
We are all missionaries. The word is from the Latin mission, which means “to send.”
We are all sent; we all have a mission. We all have been put into this world by God for some reason, and that reason is our particular mission.
And of course that mission will one way or another be a proclamation of the Gospel, will be a work of making disciples of all men and women, always starting with ourselves.
The Gospel for the Sunday is not chosen especially with the theme of mission in mind, but is simply the next little bit of Mark’s Gospel we’ve been reading through in this year’s Sunday cycle.
But in fact it speaks to the heart of the matter, the key to our life being just that of a missionary, according to the plan of God for each of us.
It is the familiar story of James and John coming to Jesus and asking to be at his right and left hand in glory, Jesus’ answer that to do so they have to drink his cup and be baptized with his baptism (referring to his passion and death), the indignation of the other disciples, and his call to them to be humble and serve.
At the end, though, is the luminous verse, For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (v. 45). And that’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it?
He was sent into the world to serve and to give his life. We are sent into the world to serve and to give our lives, which of course is only possible through, with, and in him, because we are sinners.
And that’s the essential struggle all of us have. It’s a question of the way of James and John in this Gospel or the way of Christ.
(Of course, we need to remember that they both “got” the Lord’s correction eventually, James dying as the first of the twelve to be martyred, John living to old age and passing on to us the riches of Christ’s words and deeds in his Gospel.)
Do I approach life looking for what I can get out of it, or do I approach it by asking how I can serve and give my life today? That’s what makes us missionaries of the Lord … or something else.
Now, mind you, James and John were setting their sights pretty high. Most of us are not quite that grandiose—seats at the right and left hand of the Lord and all that.
But looking at myself, I can see that I can easily be playing for smaller stakes that are no less selfish, no less counter to living my missionary call here as a poustinik priest in MH Combermere.
Any day of the week, I can be looking for a comfortable life, looking for my own will or plan or ideas to carry the day, looking for approval or affirmation, and so forth.
Oh, there are all sorts of things we can be seeking that take us right away from the reason we were sent into this world, from our own path of serving and giving that God has laid out for us.
The path, the mission, can look very different for each of us.
I know very well that there are quite a few missionaries who receive Restoration, and I thank you each for the life and love you pour out every day for God’s people.
But missions come in all shapes and sizes. Mothers and fathers taking care of their children, priests serving in their parishes, young people just beginning to find their way in life, elderly people still doing what they can and offering up the pains of old age as a sacrifice of prayer, all of us simply living as members of our local communities.
All of this is mission, so long as all of it is infused with the spirit of Christ, the spirit of serving and giving.
And all of it—including the work of missionaries toiling in difficult and dangerous fields—can fail to be true mission if it is degraded by the spirit of “what can I get out of this.”
It really is as Jesus said to James and John. We have to drink the cup Jesus drank and undergo the baptism he has undergone. That is our necessary path to “making it as a missionary.”
Because we all have that little selfish self which on some days may not be so little at all, we all have to go through the purifying fire of God’s love.
What this simply means is that each of us has to enter into the reality of suffering in our lives—not to go looking for it, mind you, but taking it when it comes, as it inevitably does.
And when it comes, when those times and seasons are upon us when life is hard labor and affliction, to know that Christ in that is purifying us of our selfishness and conforming us to himself.
And then, out of that purification and conformation, he sends us.
Over and over again this is the repeating pattern of our lives, if we are living our missionary call. Sent by the Lord, baptized in his grace and drinking from the chalice of his love, we can serve and give our lives to the end of our life, and so be faithful to the mission of Christ and of his Church.
A refection on Mission Sunday and Mark 10:35-45, the Gospel for October 21st, the 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time
