World Mission Sunday
October 18, 2015
- Pope Paul VI said that: “A Church that is not missionary is dead”.
- This is true obviously. “Go and Baptise in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
- But he had in mind, what I had in mind in 1978, when I was first sent to Papua New Guinea. Namely, conversion and spreading the Catholic faith.
- There is value in that but this is not mission in the Church today.
- I have since been to Solomon Islands and the Pacific; Europe; China; Hong Kong; Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh. (and Greythorn)
- We are confronting secularisation and Islam; Materialism and Buddhism and deeply entrenched social systems that resist Christianity.
- Saint Irenaeus said that: “The glory of God is man fully alive.”
- So Mission is dialogue towards mutual enrichment and it is the ministry of development, especially health and education (the ministry of presence)
- Catholic Mission is never more urgent than now, not to be a band-aid, but to intelligently create dialogue; minister to the sick and dying and play its strongest card, education.
- There is no doubt that silence and inaction express only a hard face and lack of courage.
Dr Joe Naimo, a single dad with a disabled young daughter, sent me an Email recently on “The lucky few”.
- It read, in part, If we could shrink the earth’s population to one village of precisely 100 people, with all ratios staying the same, it would look something like the following:
- There would be 57 Asians; 21 Europeans and the rest.
- 70 would be non-white and 30 would be white.
- 70 would be non-Christian and 30 would be Christian.
- Six people would possess 59% of the entire world’s wealth and all those would be from the USA.
- 80 would live in sub-standard housing; 70 could not read and 50 suffer from malnutrition.
- 1, yes only 1, would have a University education.
- 1 would own a computer.
- Need I go on?
- What is our message to this world? Is it spiritual or material?
- It is certainly missionary. John Paul II, who could now barely speak from Parkinson’s Disease and age, had a Mission Message for 2004: refers more than once to the Eucharist as “nourishing this world too”.
- He says that Mary is the “woman of the Eucharist”.
- We can see that we are all people who must understand, share and educate.
- We must be good, prayerful and moral individuals.
- But we must also make a difference.
- The homily notes for today state: Jesus attended to the whole human person, teaching, curing and forgiving, befriending and feeding. He attended to the mind and the intellect, to the spiritual needs. But he understood our need to be loved and was attentive to all basic needs.
- The Church exists to bring this mission to completion.
- We give through the appeal envelopes but also by trying to meet the needs of others.
- I was nine years in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands as educator, priest, administrator and in policy formation.
- they were happy years and rich in friendship.
- That is what mission is all about; extending friendship; embracing people and giving opportunities to others.
- “I have come that you may have life and have it to the full”.
- The Church sends us to act in love and for justice to all who desire it.
- That village of 100 people that Joe Naimo brought to our attention is on our doorstep.
- We cannot all go on mission in the name of the gospel.
- It is God’s dream, so to speak, that all may be one and equal.
- It is a great challenge but not one to be avoided or feared.
- From those to whom much has been given; much will be expected.
- As a missionary of the Sacred Heart I have always wanted to take justice and well-being to the most needy.
- After PNG and Solomon Islands I went to Europe for studies.
- I went to China in 2002 to work with Universities and was Deputy Rector of the University of Macau, HKU and then opened a Seminary for students from China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand and South America. Cyril Jerome Law was ordained last week. The first priest for Macau in over 25 years.
- From Macau and China, after Vietnam and Thailand, I settled in Manila to work at the Institute for consecrated Life in Asia (ICLA).
- After three years I moved to Bangladesh. and, last year, Fr Joseph Prodip, a priest who could not walk (I found him at the Cathedral in Rajhasana, Bangladesh, finally walked onto a plane for Dhaka. I had walked there a year earlier.
- One last word on Bangladesh.
- The tribal people in the north, Santals and Khasi, where I worked, migrated from India even before Islam. They live on the margins and stay there now.
- Rigid social systems; gender inequality; landlessness; exploitative Hinduism and Jihadist Islam have kept this under-class in mud huts, scavenging, prostituting and knocking at the door of the Catholic Chuches.
- We have build schools, boarding schools, health centers and they live on our land. Fortunately there are many vocations and the Church is loved.
- The G20 is a bragging point for Australia but, those 20 countries own 85% of the world’s wealth.
- Is it a political medal we wear or a grave moral responsibility?
- We boast of increasing Foreign Aid but we are reducing it in real terms. The amount goes up but the percentage goes down. We are richer every year, after 22 years of growth, but we give less in absolute terms to the beggars of the world. Smoke and mirrors will not do.
- In Bangladesh (and Manila) I lived in horror streets. The unwashed and untreated; unemployed and drug heads; human trafficking.
- We cannot all have my freedom and contacts but we can give from the plenty most of us have.
- Please give generously – for one small girl or boy in Saint Joseph’s boarding school in Rajapur – Rjashani Diocese, North-West Bangladesh.
- And remember that in 1972 the Pakistan army of West Bengal murdered over seven million East Bengalis (Bangladesh) and the world was never told.