Dear Friends,
The pandemic restrictions and lockdowns of the past couple of years remind us of our need to be connected to one another, especially in our wider family, community and Parish. The experience of physical and emotional connectedness was forced on families, often to the exclusion of other family members, neighbours, work colleagues and school friends. In a course on Family Counseling some years ago, I came across a couple of helpful concepts describing relating within the family – comfortable closeness and uncomfortable overcloseness – concepts that may describe the different moods and experiences of our family dynamic during the isolation.
Our 2022 Parish Report referred to our need to ‘rebuild’, to ‘reconnect’ as Parish and as Church. Even during ‘normal’ times, we need to ‘grow into’ our different stages of living and different roles – growing into being a husband or wife, a parent, an adult, a leader, being a person of faith, even growing into old age! Such is the dynamic of our living and of our spiritual journey. Jesus took this same journey and Pope Francis suggests that Christ was the first to be sent to proclaim, as the Father’s missionary and as His ‘faithful witness.’
October is World Mission Month and you and I have a missionary calling, part of which is that journey of ‘growing into’ the Body of Christ. The Scriptural focus is familiar to us - from Acts 1:8. It was the theme of World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney - ‘You shall be my witnesses!’ Pope Francis puts it this way:
‘Every Christian is called to be a missionary and witness to Christ. And the Church, the community of Christ’s disciples, has no other mission than that of bringing the Gospel to the entire world by bearing witness to Christ. To evangelize is the very identity of the Church.’
He noted that Jesus sent the disciples out in pairs, since ‘the witness of Christians to Christ is primarily communitarian in nature.’ – hence we speak of the ‘domestic church’ or the ‘Church in the family’.
‘The disciples are urged to live their personal lives in a missionary key: they are sent by Jesus to the world not only to carry out, but also and above all to live the mission entrusted to them; not only to bear witness, but also and above all to be witnesses of Christ.’
We’re at our best when we are together, particularly in family life – so important in defining our personal and familial identity – as we witness to Christian values and open ourselves and our children to goodness in living. Mission is eminently practical – it’s about good parenting, honest work, noticing those on the margins, challenging injustice and unjust systems, the daily defence of human rights, human dignity and human life – bringing Christ to the marketplace. Pope Francis has the final word:
’The Lord is asking you to be a gift wherever you are, and just as you are, with everyone around you. He is asking you not simply to go through life, but to give life; not to complain about life, but to share in the tears of all who suffer. Courage! The Lord expects great things from you.’