The mission of the Church

Father Stephen Bankemper

Guest

These “Go and Glorify” columns generally focus on some aspect of the Sunday readings. This coming Sunday, however, is the Church’s annual observance of World Mission Sunday, so it seems appropriate to spend some time meditating on the theme of mission as it connects with the Church and its members.

We often speak of the Church’s mission, implying that Christ created the Church and gave her a mission. Various spiritual writers, Catholic and Protestant, have played with that idea in various ways. Some have remarked that the Church does not have a mission so much as she is a mission. Others have turned the words around and have written that the Church does not have a mission, but the mission has the Church. There is some value in playing with these ideas, but however one sees it, the Church and the mission are inseparable. The Second Vatican Council fathers even described the Church as missionary in her nature (<<Ad Gentes Divinitus, or Decree on the Mission Activity of the Church>>).

What is the mission of the Church? Pope Benedict has been quoted as saying that the Church does three things: she worships, cares for the poor, and evangelizes. While all three are woven together in many ways, the last two, and particularly the last, are what we normally think of as the missionary activity of the Church. Even her care for the poor is not discreet; always we have in mind the proclamation of the Good News.

World Mission Sunday is a day, as the online encyclopedia Wikipedia puts it, “set aside by the Catholic Church throughout the world to publicly renew its commitment to the missionary movements through prayer and donations.” On this Sunday we are reminded that there are women and men who have given their lives to spreading the Gospel in the world, and that they need our support, both of our prayers and sacrifices, and of our monetary donations.

It is nothing new that some are called by God to what we traditionally think of as missionary work and that others in the Church are asked to support them. Perhaps our first great missionary, St. Paul, wrote to the Philippians: “Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble. And you Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving except you only; for even in Thessalonica you sent me help not once but twice.” (Phil 4:14-16)

It is worth highlighting a word Paul uses. We think of our donations as helping to fund some activity, and even our prayers for missionaries as support. It would be more helpful to think of Paul’s word — partnership. The work of missionaries is the work of the Church, so it is our work, too. When we provide monetary or spiritual help to missionaries we are partnering — taking our part — with them.

Those are not the only ways we can each take our part in the Church’s mission. We are called, too, to be missionaries of the Gospel to the world. Although it may look different than our picture of traditional missionaries, it is just as real. Consider this well-known prayer of St. John Henry Newman’s:

“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do his work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place . . .”

There is a question, then, that each of us is bound to ask: What mission has God assigned to me? How can I further God’s plan to bring the Gospel to everyone in the world — and that may not be someone in Africa or Appalachia; it may be my next-door neighbor or my barber or even a fellow parishioner. Whatever the work God has given us to do, our doing it will further the mission of the Church.

The Church offers us a choice of special prayers for this Sunday. The second option of a Collect for The Evangelization of Peoples includes the themes we have been considering in this article. May it inspire us.

O God, you have willed that your Church

be the sacrament of salvation for all nations,

so that Christ’s saving work may continue to the end of the ages;

stir up, we pray, the hearts of your faithful

and grant that they may feel a more urgent call

to work for the salvation of every creature,

so that from all the peoples on earth

one family and one people of your own

may arise and increase.

Let us pray for one another.

Father Stephen Bankemper is pastor, St. Catherine of Siena Parish, Ft. Thomas, Ky.