Pope Leo XIV (fourteenth), our new Holy Father, recently said, “I saw first-hand how the faith, the prayer, and the generosity shown on World Mission Sunday can transform entire communities.” He also said that your prayers and your support will help spread the Gospel, provide for pastoral and catechetical programs, help to build new Churches, and care for the health and educational needs of our brothers and sisters in mission territories.” For Pope Leo, these words are not theoretical but rather they come from his more than 20 years of service as a missionary in Peru, serving as a parish priest, a seminary teacher, and eventually as a Bishop. As a missionary, he was involved in disaster relief, seminarian formation, and the pastoral care of poor communities! He speaks then from his own personal experience as he emphasizes the importance of what the Church is celebrating throughout the world today on this Mission Sunday. Yes, his work as a missionary in Peru has deeply influenced his understanding of the Church’s role in supporting communities during different times. He continues to support the work of missionaries and has called upon all of us to recognize clearly how prayer and generosity can definitely transform communities in need. He said it so clearly at the beginning of his time as Pope: “Together we must look for ways to be a missionary Church.” Recalling the assistance he received when he was a missionary priest and bishop, he has asked the entire church today to pray in unison for missionaries and their apostolic labors and to be as generous as they possibly can be in the Mission Sunday collection.
Yes, how true the words of the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen are that “some people give to the mission by going and some people go to the missions by giving.’ Today we are here at this Eucharistic Celebration in the Diocese of Brooklyn to recognize and celebrate all those men and women who have left the comforts of home to go to a foreign land to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ by their words and, equally important, by their deeds. We acknowledge in a particular way missionaries, living and deceased, who entered religious missionary communities to serve God’s people wherever they were sent. How grateful we truly are for their generosity, their sacrifice, and their untiring desire to spread the gospel message. We assure them of our prayers not only today on Mission Sunday but also each and every day as they do this special work for God’s people. Today, we also celebrate and recognize the many, many people who go to the missions by giving. In a particular way, all those in our parishes who made a special financial donation to support the work of missionaries. But in a very special way, all the children and young people in our parish academies, schools, and faith formation programs who have collected money for the missionaries to continue their work. Many of the young people are here today. And we, as a Church, thank them and encourage them to continue to be generous. Who knows if God might be calling some of them to actually give to the missions by going? Children and young people of our Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, God bless you for your generosity!
And today we are conscious of our role as missionaries – right here at home in Brooklyn and Queens! Yes, we are keenly aware of the work that goes on in the foreign missions and in the “home missions” of the United States. But we are not going to forget the call to be missionaries in our homes, our places of work, our schools, and our communities. That call – given to each and every one of us at our Baptism- is the missionary work assigned to every baptized Catholic – go and teach all nations – baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To baptize is the easy part! To teach takes a lot of work. To teach as Jesus did and to teach as Jesus wants us to teach is to try our best each day to lend a helping hand to our neighbor, to be conscious of the needs of others, and to try to place the needs of others before our own needs! To teach as Jesus did means we have to know Jesus in our prayer and ask him to help us to follow His example of love, care & compassion. I’m so very impressed with this story about Mother Teresa, who was one of the greatest missionaries of all time: A young religious sister at the beginning of her lifetime of service felt the call to serve the destitute and the dying of India, much like Mother Teresa. So the young sister traveled to Calcutta, where Mother Teresa changed her life. After Sister offered to follow in Mother Teresa’s footsteps, Mother Teresa said to her, “No, Sister, I want you to go back to your own neighborhood, find the poor there, find your own Calcutta.” Sister said to Mother Teresa – “Mother, how do I do that?” Mother Teresa said, “You look at the people, you look into their eyes and find Jesus. Those will be the poor.” Sister did find her own Calcutta right in her own neighborhood and spent her whole religious life serving the sick, the poor – seeing Jesus in them. My own amazement at this story never ceases. Taking Mother Teresa’s advice: we can become missionaries here – at home – in Bayside and Bay Ridge; in Floral Park; in Fort Greene; in Corona and Crown Heights; in Douglaston and in Downtown Brooklyn! Keeping in mind the great wisdom of Saint Teresa of Calcutta, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, we can all become home missionaries and do what good we can do for God and each other.
Today, we are invited to pray with perseverance. Our readings for this Sunday encourage us to never get tired of praying, always being mindful that it is our duty to pray. Our Prayer doesn’t make God better, but rather it brings us into His presence – our prayer draws us closer to our God. And in prayer today, we ask for God’s blessings on all the missionary work of the Church – in foreign lands – in home missions – and in our own local neighborhoods. We ask God to bless the missionaries with perseverance in their desire to do the preaching and the teaching of the Gospel – to never give up, even in the face of the most difficult obstacles. So Paul urges Timothy in our second reading to “be persistent” in proclaiming the inspired word. Believing that missionaries are called and sent, our prayer today is that all missionaries, in lending ourselves, have the conviction necessary to face any challenges in their world. We know who has called us – we know who it is who has sent us to be “missionaries of hope among all peoples” – Yes, to be signs and messages of hope throughout the world. Yes, our hope is the Risen Jesus. “Praise be Jesus, now and forever.”
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