Brothers and Sisters in Mission

Novena Day 9 Sisters and Brothers for Mission Sisters and Brothers for Mission- The Church's Mission is to make Christ present in the midst of His People through reading the Word, the celebration of the Sacraments and all actions that care for the wounded and suffering. "It is necessary for all of us in the Church to enter into a process of conversion in order to respond to this need, which would imply proposing the kerygma as the fundamental proclamation and listening to Christ crucified and risen for us." Do we have any Christians with us here today? Do we have any missionaries with us here today? You should keep your hands raised; to be a Christian is to be a missionary. We are all of us by baptism called to be missionaries. Pope Francis says, “by virtue of their baptism all Catholics are called to be missionaries, sharing the good news of Jesus Christ by their action and their words.” I will confess to you that I like Pope Francis very much. Ok, I love the guy! In bold and subtle ways, he is redirecting the direction of the church. One example: for centuries the most important office in the Vatican was the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It was the office responsible for promoting and defending the faith. In the Middle Ages it was the inquisition. It was supposed to make sure that true doctrine was being taught in the Church and punish any offenders. Now the Pope says that the most important office is the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. It is the office responsible for sharing the faith. More important than keeping the faith, is spreading the faith. “The Church exists to evangelize. We can never be centered on ourselves. Our mission is to witness the love of God in the midst of the whole human family. This Synodal Process has a deep missionary dimension to it. It is intended to enable the Church to better witness to the Gospel, especially with those who live on the spiritual, social, economic, political, geographical, and existential peripheries of our world. Synodality is a path by which the Church can more fruitfully fulfil her mission of evangelization in the world, as a leaven at the service of the coming of God’s kingdom.” When we think of missionaries in the Church, we think of those people who went to African or Asian. Who brought the faith to pagan lands. Baptizing children in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. People, almost always priests and nuns who risked their lives in miserable conditions to proclaim the gospel; in fact, many of them died a martyr’s death. They are missionaries! But so are you. We are all called to be missionaries by our baptism. During these past 9 days I have seen many examples of the missionary activity of this Church. On Monday I visited Gloria. Gloria is 95 and she has been attending the novena since she was 5 when her grandmother brought her to the novena. For many years Gloria played the organ for the novena, playing an organ is an example of evangelization, as is singing in the choir. When I first started coming here 15 years ago Gloria used to drive me to visit the sick. Another example of evangelization. Gloria now is home bound. She can’t leave her home, but she continues to pray the novena with us, and she prays for her family and friends. She continues to be a missionary. Frida is an obvious missionary, so I don’t want to talk about her, but rather a missionary she invited. It was at the 7:00 service and she had someone to bring up the bread and wine, but she needed someone to bring up the collection. So, she asked a woman sitting in the back of the church to bring up the basket. This woman responded saying that she wasn’t Catholic. Frida said, “that doesn’t matter and thrust the basket into her hands.” This woman was thrilled to be asked. She came back the next night and asked, “what can I do tonight?” She is a missionary. She wants to serve. There is a family that has been bringing food to the evening novena. A couple their son and daughter in law. They had a grandchild who was born premature. Fr. Dan went to visit them in the hospital and baptized their child. They are missionaries. Another woman came here from the Philippines a few months ago. She was a lector in her church in the Philippines and she volunteered to serve as lector here. She is a missionary. But she is another kind of missionary as well. Her sister who she is taken care of isn’t a Catholic, so she has been inviting her sister to come to the novena. She is a missionary even though her sister hasn’t responded to the invitation yet. The three themes of the synod are communion, participation and mission. Communion means that we are gathered together. This novena is an example of communion. We gather together, people from St. Anne’s and other parishes in the bay area. People of many different cultures and races, even different religions. But we are joined together. This is an example of mission. Participation: means we have to do something. It is enough to just show up, we also have to participate. The Synod says the main thing that we are called to do is to listen. To listen to one another, to be aware of other’s stories and situations in life. Finally, we are called to be missionaries. There are two types of missionaries in the Catholic Church. Missio Ad Gentes and Missio intra gentes. Missio intra gentes is doing missionary work here. It is proclaiming the gospel to those who come to Church on Sunday. Visiting the sick who are Catholic, doing prison ministry again for the Catholics. Bringing your children to mass, having them baptized. All of this is examples of missio intra gentes. Like all the examples that I gave of folks here at St. Annes. There are all ways of sustaining the faith of those who believe. It is a very important ministry in the Church today. Missio ad gentes means going out to the nations. That means bringing the Gospel to those who have not yet heard the Gospel or who do not receive it as good news. The woman who is trying to get her sister to come to church who is not Catholic is an example of this. She is going out to other people. The woman who invited her non catholic neighbor to the novena is another example. St Anne’s is a very good example of the need for Missio intra gentes. It is a strengthening the faith of those who already believe in Jesus. In the office of the rectory there is pictures of overflowing crowds at the novena in the 30’s. The church is packed, and the procession is endless. Even in my 15 years the participation at the novena has dropped. Since the pandemic we have about ½ what we used to have for the three novenas. What is happening? Isn’t there a need for the novena anymore? Obviously, we can and should do more to bring more folks to the novena. We can work harder to make the Novena known, but this isn’t the goal. The novena isn’t important, knowing Jesus is important. We are preparing for the Synod in Rome in October. A major theme is evangelization, but the goal is not to have full churches again. Empty Churches are just a sign of the problem, but it isn’t the problem. The problem is that people don’t know Jesus Christ anymore. So, evangelization isn’t about trying to get our churches filled up again, it isn’t about having thousands of people attend the novena. No! It is about bringing people to Jesus, it is about helping others to know Jesus, to share his word and celebrate the sacraments. I have great hopes for the Synod because I think that it will help us in our work of evangelization. I am looking to wonderful ideas coming from the Synod in Rome. But today on this our feast day of Good Saint Anne I would like to offer you three ideas on how you can be an evangelizer. First of all, I want you to think of someone who doesn’t know Jesus. Maybe there are baptized but they really don’t know who Jesus is. I am willing to bet you can think of someone in your family. Now the first thing to do is to pray for them. Don’t pray that they come back to church, just pray for them. Lord, I offer Daniel up to you, Lord I put Mary in your hands. Lord watch over Michael or Lillian. Don’t tell the Lord what to do for them, just mention their name to Jesus. Make that your intention for the next year before we gather for the 117th novena to Good Saint Anne. Pray for them every morning or every night. The second thing to do is to Listen! If you are like me, you would like to talk to them. Let them know that they should be going to church. You’d like to give them a hard time for not practicing their faith. But the goal of the Synod is to be a listening Church. Listen to why they don’t like to go to Church. Listen to their stories of how they have may like spiritual lives outside of the church. Allow them to share with you their pain that they might have because of someone who hurt them inside of the church. The third thing is to do something for them. Our mission as church is to make visible the presence of Christ in the world today. This is done through the proclamation of the word, celebration of the sacraments and deeds of charity. So, to do good deeds for someone is making Christ present in the world. A deed of charity can be helping someone financially, it can be visiting someone who is sick, attending a funeral. Doing something to help the immigrants. All of these are deeds of charity. You don’t have to say, “I am doing this as a deed of charity to make Christ present.” You just do it. If someone were to ask you could say, “I am doing this because of my faith in Jesus.” We are brothers and sisters in Mission. As you well know they is a lot of work for us in the world today, but we can do no less. We alone can put this world on the right track by making Christ present in the world. This has been our mission for the last 2000 years, and it continues to be our mission today and will be tomorrow.