Homily for Mission Sunday
Today is mission Sunday in the Catholic Church throughout the world. Christians are asked today remember that the gospel, through the ages, has fired the imagination of men and women, prompting them to leave all for the gospel's sake. We are now inclined to forget that the gospel continues to motivate men and women in today's world. We are asked to support these men and women today through our prayers and through our contribution at the special collection held at all Masses.
However, at this time in the life of our Church, we must be conscious too of the need for evangilisation or mission at home. We can no longer confine our notion of missionary activity exclusively to foreign countries, as we call them. The average age of priests in Europe in now 70 years; here in Ireland, the average age is just over 60, the same as in the USA. Yet even that statistic masks the true enormity of the change: In 1970, 750 people were seeking to become priests, brothers and nuns. Last year, the number was 39. All but one seminary in Ireland have closed; Yet, you will see from that study I drew to your attention in the Newsletter, almost three times as many people believe that the Church today is in a healthier condition that it was in the past. They may well see the disappearance of clerical claustrophobia as a positive development.
72 per cent of the Catholic population in France never attend Mass. 67 per cent in Britain; 53 per cent in Germany. Our own attendance has dropped from 92% to 65% in 17 years. While our Mass attendance remains extraordinarily high by European standards, we are moving fairly rapidly towards the European norm. And these statistics would seem to indicate that Church attendance, if not Christianity, is receding rapidly throughout Europe, including Ireland, if less dramatically here. While Europe remains culturally Christian, it seems to be spiritually dead. By culturally Christian, I mean for example, that when people think of birth, marriage or death, they still automatically think of a Church, whether they are Christian in any meaningful sense or not. The Church still provides the stage and the social backdrop for the key events of our lives. But it functions as a convenient prop rather than a motivating force. And all indications would seem to suggest that Ireland is heading in the same direction. In Europe, however, while the Church survives as a cultural vessel, it has been largely emptied of its spiritual contents.
Today however the Church's understanding of Mission has broadened. The map of Europe has been redrawn, as far as Christianity is concerned. The need today is not just to preach the gospel to those who have not heard it. A more urgent need is to preach the gospel to those who have forgotten it. In the words of John Paul II, Europe stands in need of re-evangilisation. The human being is born with a hunger for god. That is our nature. This hunger is part of what we are. That hunger is not being satisfied today. The challenge to the Church at the beginning of the 21st century is to seek out ways of satisfying that hunger, to seek out new ways of preaching the gospel. This will not be done by traditional missionaries. It was Pope Paul VI who stated: "People today are not looking for preacher but witnesses". What we do rather than what we say will bear witness to the gospel working, or failing to work in our lives.
However, there is a value in lifting our eyes to other cultures and other lands, since the gospel was explicitly preached as a universal gospel from the very beginning. It was explicitly intended for the whole world. Simply because 'God loved the world so much that he sent his only son, not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him.' So the gospel is an agent of salvation, saving the human race from its own selfishness and its inbuilt instinct for self-destruction. Today the gospel asks us to elevate our eyes from our own parochial difficulties and to share in the universal vision of God for human happiness.
However, the major challenge facing us today is to recognise that we are as central today to the spread of the good news as the disciples were in their day. God is as dependant upon us in our own day as he was upon the early disciples at the birth of the church. In fact the new missionary challenge facing the Church is far more daunting that ever faced the missionaries in Africa or South America. It will be a much slower and less rewarding task this time. The results will not be as instantaneous or as visible. But the same hunger is being addressed, a hunger that will only be satisfied by the bread of life, Jesus himself.