Missionaries Without a Mission
Missionaries Without a Mission
State of the Union: Christ has tasked us, in the words of St. Faustina, to “proclaim that mercy is the greatest attribute of God.”
Faith turns predictable into providential. It was raining all day here in Krakow. Our group toured the Sanctuary of St. John Paul II, and then we made our way to the Divine Mercy Sanctuary.
The Divine Mercy Sanctuary, rather an architectural atrocity, is adjacent to a cloistered convent of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. In one of the convent’s chapel, St. Faustina now rests. Above her hangs the Miraculous Image of Merciful Jesus by Adolf Hyła. We spent some time praying there as rain pattered on panes of stained glass, and then celebrated Mass in one of the chapels in the basement of the large sanctuary. When we emerged, the sun had broken through.
My colleague, John Hirschauer, recently wrote a State of the Union blog post about the comments of then-Bishop Americo Aguiar, whom Pope Francis recently named a cardinal.
“We don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that at all,” Aguiar said. “That we all understand that differences are a richness and the world will be objectively better if we are capable of placing in the hearts of all young people this certainty.”
Aguiar later attempted to walk back these statements. Nevertheless, Hirschauer, while being charitable to Aguiar, delivers sharp and succinct analysis. “Catholics, particularly Catholics in positions of authority, should act as though they believe Catholicism is true—not just that it can be used to create a more just society, or make life meaningful, or tell a compelling story about God’s relationship to human beings—but actually, really true,” Hirschauer writes.
And, “if Christianity is true,” Hirschauer says elsewhere, “we must—not should, but must—’want to convert the young people to Christ.’ If that’s impolite, so be it. Christ came to bring the sword, not to set up an NGO.”
Today’s gospel reading, Matthew 10:34 to 11:1, contains the passage Hirschauer references above:
Jesus said to his Apostles:
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth.
I have come to bring not peace but the sword.
For I have come to set
a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s enemies will be those of his household.“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.“Whoever receives you receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet
will receive a prophet’s reward,
and whoever receives a righteous man
because he is righteous
will receive a righteous man’s reward.
And whoever gives only a cup of cold water
to one of these little ones to drink
because he is a disciple–
amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.”When Jesus finished giving these commands to his Twelve disciples,
he went away from that place to teach and to preach in their towns.
Children against parents. Brothers against brothers. Such is the price of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us—many received him, others received him not.
As Hirschauer writes, “Take Christianity and Islam. Christianity and Islam make mutually exclusive claims about the most fundamental matters of theology and philosophy: the nature of God, the person of Christ, the path to salvation, and more.… It is not possible that both Christianity and Islam are true.”
I’ve spent the last two weeks intensely studying Catholic Social Teaching here in Krakow, as developed predominantly through Pope Leo XIII and Pope John Paul II. The body of literature most commonly understood as Catholic Social Teaching, we’ve learned, emerges out of a transitional period in Church history.
In the centuries separating Leo XIII’s papacy and the Protestant Reformation, the Church had a reasonably defensive posture. In the throes of Protestant reformers and political repression, the Church adopted a kind of ecclesio-centrism that sought to be a bastion of tradition, and more or less succeeded in that effort. But when what historians call the long 20th century came around, it was time for the Church to open the gates and reclaim evangelization.
I’m unqualified to say whether or not this mission has been a success on the whole, but I certainly owe my Catholic faith to the Church’s continued effort.
What I will say, however, is that missionaries aren’t sent out empty-handed. They carry with them powerful tools for evangelization. One of the most powerful tools at their disposal is the Church’s tradition, ironically thanks to periods of fortification that successfully preserved it. Exposure to this tradition—spiritual, intellectual, and physical—is in no small part why I’m Catholic today.
What Aguiar originally proposed is a view of the Church that is neither a bastion nor evangelical. It takes one of the worst aspects of certain forms of the new evangelization—making concessions to the modern world—and pairs it with one of the worst consequences of withdrawal—passivity. It strips missionaries of their mission, to “make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you.”
Christ brought the sword, but He also brought His Divine Mercy. And He’s tasked us, in the words of St. Faustina, to “proclaim that mercy is the greatest attribute of God.”
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