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Mission Sunday 21st October 2001 Sermon
by Fr. Martin Coffey C.P. in Mount Argus On Tuesday next Fr. Bernard Lowe will
leave here for Botswana. He is the latest in a long line of missionaries to go
from this community in response to the call of Jesus to go out to the whole
world and to share the Gospel. Today we pray for him and wish him well. Every Christian is on a mission to
spread Good News in a world that seems to specialise in bad news, disasters, and
tragedies. We want to share our faith because it tells the story of the triumph
of good over evil, of forgiveness and compassion in the face of hatred and
cruelty. It is the story of hope overcoming despair. Our faith is about the
capacity of the human spirit to endure terrible trials and hardship to keep
going in the face of all the odds and the courage to make a new beginning when
everything we know and cherish is crumbling around us. All of this we see in Jesus who
embodies what is best in our human nature. He opens up the possibility of a new
humanity based on selfless dedication to one another, self-sacrifice for the
sake of the greater good, and the willingness to move beyond self-interest. This
is the message missionaries have brought to the Four Corners of the world giving
hope to millions and motivating heroic action for a better life. When people
were beaten to the ground and demoralised they were given the gift of faith that
restored their spirits and gave them the inner strength, the motivation to get
up and go, the hope that says it’s worth the effort, the song in the heart and
the spring in the step that makes all the difference. This is the great gift of
new life that comes with faith in Jesus. To share his life is to have some of
his courage and tenacity, his strength and determination, his capacity for love
and forgiveness. Faith takes our humanity and reshapes it and gives it the stamp
of Jesus. Millions have received the gift of faith and new life through the word
of Irish missionaries. For over a hundred years thousands of
Irish missionaries left these shores to bring Good News to people in Africa,
Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific. Indeed wherever you find the Catholic
faith you will hear the stories of Irish missionaries and their dedication to
the education and health of the local people. The presence and commitment of
missionaries kindled and sustained the hopes of people many of whom had been
colonised and brutalised by foreign powers. The Christian faith and the struggle
for human rights go hand in hand. Many missionaries have given their lives
because of their commitment to their people, especially in the struggle against
poverty and injustice. The most recent Fr. Rufus Halley from Waterford killed in
the Philippines just a few weeks ago. Our mission is the promotion of life
and of all that is good. The Kingdom of God is the promise of a world united and
reconciled, where people of different languages, races, colours and creeds can
live in harmony and mutual respect and acceptance. All of this is based on the
simple truth that God is father of all, that we are his children and brothers
and sisters to one another. It is sin that divides us. The sin of greed that
refuses to share, the sin of pride that wants to dominate and put others down,
the sin of arrogance that claims to know all and refuses to learn from others.
These sins take different forms at different times — religious intolerance and
persecution, racism, slavery, colonialism, the modern day impoverishment of the
developing world for the sake of enriching the first world. The mission of the
Church and of all Christians is to proclaim the coming of God’s new reign
where these sources of division and suffering will be brought to an end not by
some mystical divine intervention but by the hard work and effort of good people
resisting evil wherever they encounter it and promoting what is best in the
human heart. That has been and still is the message of missionaries. In a world where religious divisions
can so easily lead to political conflict and even war, we need to engage in
serious efforts to understand those who hold different religious beliefs. In
Ireland we know what can happen when religious differences lead to
misunderstanding, mutual hatred and violence. Consider what it might be like on
a global scale. The prospect is unimaginable. Therefore we must resist the
inclination to join the chorus of indignation against Islam or any other
religious group. Working for mutual understanding and respect for differences is
an indispensable dimension of our modern mission. George Bush says that the Western way
of life is under threat and he’s right. He has called for a coalition to
defend it. But missionaries know that our western way of life and standard of
living is fed and kept going by consuming over 70% of the world’s produce. If
we continue to support this, the planet will soon be depleted and the two thirds
of the world who are poor will just sink deeper into the mire of poverty and
degradation. It’s a simple law of mathematics and bombing Afghanistan will not
change that. The modern Western desire to build a fortress to protect what we
have and keep everyone else out will not and should not succeed. The drive to
push religion out of the public arena and make it a purely private affair for
the individual doesn’t wash with a huge majority of the world population for
whom religion is everything and they can’t be forced to think and act the way
we want. In other words, our way of life is not self-evidently the best and most
enlightened. It suits us but it does not suit those who have to pay for it by
cheap labour, cheap fuel, cheap exports, and general poverty. The supposed
superiority of the modern Western world and its values is pushed down the necks
of people from China to Afghanistan but they see it for what it is, just the
latest and most subtle form of Western domination. But not everyone is willing to accept
it all lying down. Osama Bin Ladin is a symbol of that. A growing chorus of
indignation is rising form the poor of the world who refuse to accept the place
assigned to them by the rich and powerful nations. Why should the rich West be
allowed to pay low wages and import cheap goods from the poorest countries in
the world, which continue to slide down the poverty scales? Why should the rich
farmers of the West be subsidised and protected from the market in which the
poor farmers of the third world have to struggle for survival? Why should the
prosperity, pride and arrogance of the West be fed on the hard labour and
impoverishment of the poor? Our precious way of life is deeply flawed and many
of the poor in the third world are asking if it should be allowed to continue.
Missionaries can teach us a lot about the lack of justice in the world. Closer to home, Christians inspired
by the Gospel of Jesus have to take to heart his concern for the weaker members
of society. He walked the streets with the homeless, had nowhere to lay his
head, knew what it was like to be hungry and thirsty, was regarded as a social
misfit. He was the butt of jokes and regarded as a religious deviant. To many
socially respectable people, Jesus was not a nice man because of the company he
kept. If we really take him seriously we will have to make his mission to the
poor our mission too. A successful economy need not lead to
ruthless selfishness but unfortunately it often does. Everyone is out for
himself and personal ambition and success are admired and rewarded. But we will
be judged on how we treat the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the outsiders. It
will do us no good to say that we were just following the law of the market
because the market is just the modern version of the law of the jungle — the
survival of the fittest and the weak go to the wall. Modern liberal democracy
with its market economy has many good points but in the end it is cruel and
heartless to those who fall to the bottom of the pile. Our mission is to create a more human
society and a New World Order. The Christian message has sown the seed of hope
in many hearts, it has inspired heroic deeds in defence of the poorest and
weakest, has given us the values we cherish of respect and tolerance, it is the
source of our idea of human rights and the dignity of the person, is the basis
of all we consider most admirable in the human spirit. The contribution of the
Gospel to the creation of the New World Order cannot be ignored because it is
indispensable. From it we learn that all the peoples of the earth belong
together, that no one group can lord it over others, that we share equal dignity
as God’ children and that the fruits of the earth are to be shared with all
for the good of all. This is the message missionaries still carry to the
remotest parts of the world. May this Christian vision continue to inspire us
too and may the sun never set on our hopes and dreams for a better world. |
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