Mission Sunday - Iowa, Honduras, Bolivia, the Amazon, and the world

Today is Mission Sunday in the Extraordinary Month of Mission that Pope Francis called for to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Maximum Illud, an apostolic letter of Pope Benedict XV on the missions.

Today is also the end of the week of mission in the deanery of Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras. About fifty members of the parish of Dulce Nombre de María went on mission to the parish of Corquín, Copán, more than an hour away from Dulce Nombre. They spent the week – without money and without cellphone – visiting homes in scattered villages throughout that parish.

Missionaries of the Dulce Nombre parish

I had a less gruelling mission – visiting our sister parish, Saint Thomas Aquinas, in Ames, Iowa, and a visit to the Iowa City Catholic Worker.

At Thursday Night Liturgy at St. Thomas Aquinas, Ames

We prepared our missionaries with four sessions. At one of them, our pastor had asked me to share some thoughts on the letter of Pope Benedict XV.

The letter does respond to the situation of the early twentieth century, but there were several points that clearly redirected the sense of mission. One that I particularly appreciated the call to separate missionary activity from nationalism of any sort.

Part of the problem of missionaries has often been that they have come with the invaders – Franciscans and others came to the Americas with the conquistadors. I wonder if sometimes the native peoples identified them with the mother country and not with our real mother country – the Reign of God. A few like the Dominican priest and bishop, Bartolomé de las Casas, were exceptions.

But Pope Benedict XV advised missionaries to avoid nationalism. He noted that

“…such a situation could easily give rise to the conviction that the Christian religion is the national religion of some foreign people and that anyone converted to it is abandoning his loyalty to his own people and submitting to the pretensions and domination of a foreign power.”

And so, “it is not our vocation to expand the frontiers of human empires, but those of Christ, nor to add any citizens to countries here below but to our fatherland above.“

Pope Benedict XV goes on to characterize the missionary as humble, obedient, chaste, and a person of prayer. Meeting the unbeliever,

“...his bearing toward them is neither scornful nor fastidious; his treatment of them is neither harsh nor rough. Instead, he makes use of all the arts of Christian kindness to attract them to himself, so that he may eventually lead them into the arms of Christ, into the embrace of the Good Shepherd.”

In my meeting with our parish missionaries, I noted how they were going to different places not to impose our way of being a parish but to help open spaces for God to work.

As I look at the Synod of the Amazon, I see a part of the Church struggling to be a Church in place, not a church which is tied to any foreign nation or culture. I believe that some of the opposition comes from trying to hold onto a European/North American cultural expression of the faith – without noting that the Church in those places took much from the local culture in the early centuries of the Church.

What is important is to be open to the presence of Christ Jesus who was born into a particular culture and political situation but who transcends these. Christ and his message can find echoes and reception in many cultures. We should live in hope – and not in fear.

This afternoon, I had a few hours between Mass and dinner with some friends and so decided to spend time at the Saint Thomas Aquinas Catholic Student Center, here in Ames. I decided to visit the room dedicated to the Dulce Nombre de María parish, acknowledging our sister relationship, and also the room dedicated to “Cigar Box Ray.”

I entered the room and immediately saw the display in honor of Father Ray Herman, a graduate of Iowa State University, a priest of the Dubuque archdiocese, and a missionary to Bolivia. Reading one plaque I realized that today is the anniversary of his martyrdom in Morochata, near Cochabamba, Bolivia.

I wrote about him a few years ago here. He lived among the poor, responded to their needs, and died after getting a hospital built. And he did it with great austerity. His body was brought back to be buried in Iowa. His personal belongs fit into a cigar box.

I am far from that but he and many other missionaries, such as Blessed Stanley Rother and Blessed Tulio Marruzo, ofm, inspire me and encourage me to deepen my commitment to mission.

And so, today is a special mission Sunday for me, a time to recommit myself to the mission we all have as missionary disciples. For, as Pope Francis wrote in The Joy of the Gospel/Evangelii Gaudium (120):

"In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Mt 28:19)."