Today’s Gospel presents us with Jesus sending His disciples out to begin the work of proclaiming the Good News. In Redemptoris Missio, Pope Saint John Paul the Second calls the parallel text from Matthew 10, Christ’s “missionary discourse,” and it is here, he says, that Jesus “teaches them the paths of mission [the way to evangelize]: poverty, meekness, acceptance of suffering and persecution, the desire for justice and peace, and charity – in other words, the Beatitudes, lived out in the apostolic life” (91). What the Pope is saying, then, is that Jesus is telling His disciples that they need to be saints; to really bring the Good News to others, to really give a convincing testimony, the missionary must be a saint; the missionary must be holy. In fact, the title of this section in his encyclical is “The true missionary is a saint.”
Called
All of us are called to be missionaries, that is, to spread the Gospel. As missionaries, we cannot give what we do not have: if we were not holy, or not living out the truths that we profess, we will not give a convincing witness. If we are holy, though, we give a great testimony to the truth of our faith.
Contemplation
A key to this holiness is how we pray. This point is so important that the Pope himself mentions it. He writes: “The missionary must be a ‘contemplative in action.’ He finds answers to problems in the light of God’s word and in personal and community prayer. My contact with representatives of the non-Christian spiritual traditions, particularly those of Asia, has confirmed me in the view that the future of mission depends to a great extent on contemplation. Unless the missionary is a contemplative he cannot proclaim Christ in a credible way.” Unless we give time to Christ in prayer and adoration, we will not know Him, and if we do not know Him, we will not be able to proclaim Him well. We can ask ourselves: do we really take the time to prepare our meditations? Do we try our best to pray without ceasing? If not, what keeps us from really benefiting from our time of prayer?
True Missionary
There have been no exceptions to this rule: the true missionary is a saint. This is possible even in the midst of difficult conditions and challenging situations. Saint Jean de Brebeuf, one of the North American Martyrs, wrote to his superior general to say that, in spite of all the many difficulties, “all who are here are zealously striving towards perfection.” When this happens, everything else falls into place. We come to share God’s vision of the world and of the salvation of souls. It was this holiness that enabled that same martyr saint to tell his superior, after baptizing a dying baby, “For this one single occasion I would travel all the way from France; I would cross the great ocean to win one little soul for Our Lord!” One soul was worth all the trouble, because it was a soul Christ died for.
Through the intercession of Mary, Star of Evangelization, and all the great missionary saints, let us ask for the grace to be holy missionaries. May we offer a convincing witness of the Gospel and thus lead others to Christ.
[Readings: Isaiah 66:10-14c; Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20 ]
