Dear friends in Christ,

I have been praying very hard for Pope Francis this week. He arrived in Canada for what he described as a “penitential pilgrimage.” This Papal trip does not have the usual pomp and circumstance of other visits. The Pope, who is recently confined to a wheelchair, is coming to apologize on Canadian soil for the atrocities and sins of the state sponsored residential schools, the majority of which were run by Catholic religious orders. These schools took children away from their families and their land, they were not allowed to speak their native language, and in general tried to extinguish their cultural heritage. If that was not bad enough, there have been widespread stories of abuse taking place at many of these schools. Our dear Holy Father is there to repent for the sins of the Church and ask for forgiveness.

Failures like the ones seen in these residential schools sometimes have people wondering about not just the way people have evangelized in the past, but also the very value of missionary work itself. We hear it said that we are called to be “missionary disciples,” but what does that mean? I believe a true missionary takes the message and person of Jesus Christ incarnate into the culture and lives of all people. It is the pride and privilege of mostly Europeans who believed everyone had to act like them or they were not civilized and could not have faith in Christ. Just a quick glance at Scripture in the Acts of the Apostles makes clear that the first hurdle the early Church overcame was not forcing conformity and making everyone Jewish before they became Christian. We call ourselves Roman Catholics, and the Vatican is in Rome, but there is not a more diverse religion on the planet than Catholicism. It started in the Middle East and has spread to all corners of the globe. The historical Jesus was not Caucasian, despite what just about every statue or image we see would have you believe. The only reason for our connection to Rome is that it is the place where our first Pope, Saint Peter, and our greatest evangelist, Saint Paul, were martyred.

To understand what it means to be a missionary, I think we should look to Mary. Our Blessed Mother has appeared many times over thousands of years in many different places. She always looks like the people to whom she is bringing the Gospel message:  in Rwanda she was African, in Knock she was Irish, in Guadalupe she was Indigenous, in La Vang she was Vietnamese, etc. This is how we become missionary Disciples and truly evangelize. Just like Jesus, our faith must take on flesh or be incarnate in the existing culture. This is why the best way to evangelize is to be a friendly, good neighbor and to be a witness by a faithful life in the Gospel as you share the love of Christ Jesus with individuals or in small groups. True love doesn’t demand you become someone you are not, but rather the person you were always meant to be:  a unique, unrepeatable, holy saint!

God love you,

Fr. Matt

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