WORD FOR MISSION
Missionary reflection  on Sunday Liturgy

Today's missionary Church is the voice

crying in the wilderness of the world

Baruch  5:1-9

Psalm  125

Philippians 1:4-6.8-11

Luke  3:1-6

Reflections

Luke the Evangelist makes a stirring entry, as a historian attentive to the facts (Gospel): he sets the public appearance of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth into the historical-geographic context of the day.  With quiet precision he names seven personages who are contemporary to the event (vv.1-2). Here too, the number seven has a symbolic meaning: indicating a totality. Mentioning the seven personages and their position and function, Luke intends to point out that the whole of history -- pagan and Judaic, profane and sacred -- is involved in the events he is about to narrate. They are facts that regard the whole human family, with its institutions and its religious and civil structures.

The event is that “the word of God came to John, son of Zecharaiah, in the wilderness” (v.2), close to the river Jordan, sending him with a message of “repentance, for the forgiveness of sins” (v.3). Luke, with the evidence displayed, wants to assure his readers that God’s Salvation  takes place in a time, in a place, according to a clear and precise plan. It is a further proof of the intention of the Evangelist, expressed in his prologue: to go over the whole story carefully, to write an ordered account, so as to show how well-founded are the teachings received. (Lc 1,3-4). The Gospel of Jesus is based on secure facts, transmitted by eye-witnesses who can be believed; there is no room for human inventions or psychological projections.

God’s salvation takes place within human history, not outside it; it is not added on to history, but is part of it, even though it transcends it. Like salt. With the power of the seed  and of the yeast. Like the ferment of new life. That is exactly what Jesus did, and what we Catholics are called to do in the world (see the Letter to Diognetus). John the Baptist foretells this with the words of the prophets Isaiah and Baruch; words which become reality in this precise geographical context. John preaches in the wilderness, a biblical place rather than a geographical one; a place and a time for powerful spiritual experiences (calling and alliance, temptations and fidelity..) that the chosen people has to re-live continually. The Baptist preaches on the shores of the Jordan; the river that has to be crossed (in the Baptismal rite) with a change of mind and of live (conversions), so as to enter the promised land. No longer following harsh and twisted paths (the biblical symbols of pride, arrogance, oppression and injustice…), but the way of interior conversion, mad smooth and straight (vv.4-5 & 1^st. Reading).

Paul offers a further description of this kind of new life in Christ: it is full of love, of moral integrity, of commitment to the spreading of the Gospel (2^nd Reading).

God’s salvation is for everyone, the Baptist insists, quoting Isaiah: “all mankind shall see the salvation of God” (v.6).  Every single human person, all flesh, that is, each one is his or her weakness and fragility, will have salvation from God. A salvation that God offers to everyone, without exception. A salvation that no man can work for himself, but that has to come from outside: only from God! The Russian writer  Alexander  Soljenitsyn has a description of he radical incapacity of the human person with regard to personal salvation: “If someone is drowning in a pool, he cannot save himself by pulling himself out by his own hair.” Another hand, from outside, I needed: the hand of God. And the hand of God‘s friends. The time of Advent, the time in which all humanity is waiting, calls on us to think and act for the many peoples who do not yet know the Saviour who is coming.

The loving hand of God is seen also in the maternal presence of Mary Immaculate (8^th December), who is so close to God and to the human family, as seen also in her attitude as Our Lady of Guadalupe (celebrated on 12/12). God also shows Himself through the friendly hand of Christians, a hand stretched out to help anyone who is in material and spiritual need. Today, the mantle of John the Baptist falls on the Missionary Church, that cries out in the desert of the world: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” (v.4). To proclaim Christ is the permanent task of Christians, a treasure to be shared with others, as Pope Benedict XVI declared at the end of his recent pastoral and ecumenical Journey to Turkey (*), The Gospel is the most precious treasure of the whole human family.

The Pope’s words

(*) As the Body of Christ, she (the Church) has been charged to proclaim his Gospel to the ends of the earth (cf. Mt 28:19), transmitting to the men and women of our time the Good News which not only illuminates but overturns their lives, even to the point of conquering death itself. This Good News is not just a word, but a person, Christ himself, risen and alive! By the grace of the sacraments, the water flowing from his open side on the Cross has become an overflowing spring, “rivers of living water”, a flood that no one can halt, a gift that restores life. How could Christians keep for themselves alone what they have received? How could they hoard this treasure and bury this spring? The Church’s mission is not to preserve power, or to gain wealth; her mission is to offer Christ, to give a share in Christ’s own life, man’s most precious good, which God himself gives us in his Son.

Benedict  XVI

Homily in the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit,  Istanbul, 1^st. December 2006

In the steps of Missionaries

- 10/12: World Day of Human Rights (UNO, 1948).

- 12/12: Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared on Tepeyac Hill in Mexico (1531) to (St.) San Juan Diego, a local indio, with a message of hope in the early days of evangelisation of the American continent: “Don’t be afraid; am I, your mother, not here?”

- 14/12: St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), a Spanish Carmelite priest, mystic and Doctor of the Church. Along with St. Teresa of Avila, he reformed the Carmelite Order.

- 14/12: St. Nimatullah Youssef Kassab Al-Hardini (1808-1858), a Lebanese Maronite priest and ascetic who gave himself to study and to pastoral work

- 16/12: Bl. Philip Siphong Onphitak (1907-1940), a family man and catechist, the first martyr of Thailand. When the priest was driven away, the community chose him as their leader. Later he was killed at  Mukdahan.

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Compiled by Fr. Romeo Ballan, mcci - former Director of CIAM, Rome

Translated by Fr. J.M. Troy, mccj

Website:    www.ciam.org    “The Word for Mission”

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