RBWords

     Are you a "missionary?"  When I was an elementary school student and for many years after that, the word, "missionary," meant someone who proclaimed the gospel in foreign lands, or, at least, in areas where Catholics were scarce!  I was rather caught by surprise when I began to do "itinerant preaching" and heard myself being called a "missionary!"  In today's gospel, that is really what Jesus calls himself.  He cannot be confined to one geographic place but must go to "the other towns."  This missionary impulse is what we call "evangelization." 

 

     Every one of us who has been baptized is called to be a missionary.  In recent years, Bl. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have promoted a "New Evangelization."  This term refers not to those who have never heard the word of God, but to those who already believe but have "fallen away" or simply allowed their faith to become dormant in their lives.  One reliable survey has stated that if all the "former" Catholics in the USA were put into one church, they would be the second largest denomination in this country after the Catholic Church.  We have our work cut out for us!  The faith is not our private possession, just as Jesus could not be confined to one place.  The "other towns" may be other persons we know who no longer practice their faith.  Can we invite them to reconsider?  Can we tell them what our faith has done for us and why it is important?  Can we help to heal whatever injury or problem that led them to abandon the church?  We have been commissioned by baptism to do this work.  In today's gospel passage we have our model - Jesus the missionary!  AMEN