What is the Christian Mission?

Missionary Intention: That by participating in the sacraments and meditating on Scripture, Christians may become more aware of their mission to evangelise.

There is a special grace in being able to see something very familiar with new eyes, but when it happens it can change a person’s life.

Many of the great founders of religious orders had drunk from the wells of Scripture and the sacraments since their childhood. They had heard the word and received the sacraments many times before they felt called to their particular vocation.

At some decisive moment, however, these fundamental sources of inspiration took on a new and deeper meaning and changed everything for them.

TS Eliot’s oft-quoted lines in the “Four Quartets” come to mind.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Cradle Catholics very often take their Catholicism for granted. We take the sacraments and the word — these two extraordinary manifestations of God’s presence in our world — as ordinary, mundane, familiar parts of our lives.

If we’re honest, we will admit that at times we have even found them boring. In this intention we seek the grace truly to know them for the first time so that things can begin to change in the household of our lives.

If we receive this grace with generosity then it will naturally lead us outwards to others where we will freely share what we have discovered anew.