THE STRATEGY AND SPIRIT OF MISSION

Fr Billy Swan

I once knew a widowed lady who was the mother of two unmarried sons. Both lived with her until the day she died in her nineties. Since they were infants, their mother did everything possible for them. She cooked their food, washed their clothes and did for adult men what they should have learned to do for themselves years before. When she died, the two brothers struggled to cope, not just because they missed her but because they were unable to do what she always did for them.

This story reminds me of how the Irish Church finds itself right now. In the mid-twentieth century, Irish cities, towns and villages had plenty of religious and priests. Everything seemed to be going just fine and everyone knew where they stood. But then the numbers of priests and religious begin to dwindle. Convents and presbyteries began to close and communities began to decline. The life of parishes seemed to be dying with the loss of priests and religious.

With the greatest respect to those priests and religious and while questioning myself and style of ministry today, I wonder are we like the mother of the two bachelor sons who thought the only way of loving her  sons was do to everything for them, leaving them barely able to make a cup of tea and load the washing machine when she died. For years, the model of ministry of priests and religious has been overly centred on our own ministry at the expense of empowering all the baptised to be co-responsible for the mission of the church with us.

I believe that this lesson needs to be at the heart of the renewal of Irish Catholicism today and tomorrow. We are slowly waking up to this realisation and it’s not too late. Missionary disciples of Christ today must see beyond our own ministry and efforts no matter how heroic they might be. I must not just be content to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. I must burn to make other disciples too. We must also see how mission in the present is always future orientated so that if and when we are no longer there, there will be committed people to continue that mission so that it does not end with us and die when we do.

Yet this shift of attitude is not only a change of strategy but a return to the spirit of the Gospel. When the disciples observed Jesus praying, they didn’t ask him: ‘Lord, pray for us please’. Instead, they said: ‘Lord, teach us how to pray’ which he did. Jesus empowered people to get into intimate contact with the mystery of God themselves, through him. The same is true for the early Church. If the Apostles and first disciples did not see beyond their own time and ministry, then the Church would never have grown and spread. This brings us back to the basic truth of the Gospel that we believe and burn to share: ‘Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you’ (Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel, 164). The Strategy and spirit of mission is not just to light the fire but ensure it continues to burn after us.

Just a few thoughts for this 'Mission Sunday'.