Are You Ready For Mission?

October is designated Mission Month, but surely mission is what the Church is about all the time. After all, we don’t have a special month dedicated to Jesus! The fact that we actually need a Mission Month suggests that we have forgotten that the Church exists for the purpose of mission — without mission we cannot call ourselves a church.

The loss of attention on mission is something that we see all around us — in (some of) our parishes, in (some of) our dioceses, in (some of) our religious orders. There is a wonderful renewal movement that has been capturing the imagination of parishes across South Africa and its core textbook, by Fr Robert Rivers, is entitled From Maintenance to Mission.

The book’s title indicates just where we might have gone wrong. We can be so focused on maintaining things that we don’t have any time left for mission — maintaining our buildings, maintaining our organisations, maintaining our traditions, maintaining our good image in the world. I am not saying that maintaining those is not important, but they are a means to an end — and the end is mission.

I had reason recently to focus on this theme of mission when I talked with Sr Helena McKinney. She is a Newcastle Dominican who was receiving the Paul Harris Award, the highest accolade from the international Rotary Club. As someone devoted to mission she is a missionary in the fullest sense of the term.

Sr Helena’s story

Sr Helena came over from Ireland as a young Sister almost 50 years ago, full of optimism about what she could do in Africa. As a teacher, she found herself stepping into a turbulent school system that was dealing with the aftermath of the Soweto uprising.

Her life has remained devoted to working with young people; specifically for the last 35 years she has been working with “runaway” children. Sr Helena founded an organisation called Streetwise, operating originally in central Durban and for the past few years based near Mariannhill.

Through the years Sr Helena has dealt with everything that can be thrown at her — intimidation from neighbours, a building being burnt down, precarious funding, changes in the government systems. She has had help in her work from parishes, local businesses, the Society of St Vincent de Paul, overseas volunteers and the Department of Social Development. But all of that has had its ups and downs.

Yet, through all of this, Sr Helena has remained full of hope and joy in her work. Many secular people working with the same kinds of problems soon burn out. It seems to me that the difference is the idea of mission. The activities that are pursued — feeding, healthcare, counselling, training — are often the same. But the difference is that these are not the mission. The mission is to bring Christ into the world. For as long as we remain focused on that, we can withstand any number of setbacks, any amount of discomfort, any quantity of manure.

Of course, how the mission is lived out changes over time and circumstance. Sr Helena will be the first to admit that, despite working with children for over 50 years, her work has had to adapt to changes in the political scene, the social environment and the role of families. And she is not alone in doing this: she stands for hundreds of such hardworking women and men across the country who have dedicated their lives to mission.

A fixed image

It is unfortunate that the word “missionary” has such a fixed image. We tend to think of a white European (usually these days quite elderly) in religious vows wearing a habit. It does not help that the pictures of missionaries who have been canonised rarely show them smiling! (Now there is a challenge for the editor looking for the next “Saint of the Month”.)

But a missionary, of course, is anyone who has taken up the challenge to be sent. That has meant being sent from Europe, but these days in South Africa we also have missionaries sent from India, South-East Asia, Latin America and other parts of Africa. And there are now missionaries sent from Africa to other parts of the world, even those parts that used to send their priests and religious to Africa.

Some have taken vows and made a lifetime commitment to their mission. But more often these days, there are lay people on mission: gap-year students, retired professionals, people looking for something to (re-)inspire them. And while many are volunteers, many more work for organisations that pay them something while also setting high standards that they must meet.

Perhaps only some of us will have the opportunity to devote ourselves entirely to mission.  But all of us, as Catholic Christians, are called to mission. The Latin closing words of the Mass were “Ite, missa est” (literally, “Go, it is sent”; it’s the origin of the word “Mass”). The modern English form that we hear every Sunday, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”, is rather unchallenging. I would suggest a better paraphrase would be: “Now get out of here — the mission is on!”

Seize the opportunity

Jesus was already concerned in his lifetime that there would not be enough labourers for the harvest. The “get out” part of that phrase is important. We are unlikely to be able to fulfil our mission if we remain in the comfortable confines of our churches. Mission requires a willingness to be sent to wherever the opportunity is.

Across KwaZulu-Natal, were I live, there are “mission stations” which now look established and venerable. But when they were set up, often by the Mariannhill Missionaries who had travelled thousands of miles from home, they were a leap into the dark, trusting that God was leading them to the right place.

Equipping ourselves for mission, and indeed building missions, should not just be part of our Catholic history but also of our present. Yet it seems that as a community, we hardly even build missions any more. Meanwhile, other Christians do.

I recently went to look for a new branch of Grace Family Church, one of the thriving cappuccino churches in Durban. I was surprised that it was way outside Ballito, off the tarred road and seemingly far from any houses. Yet when I arrived it looked like a modern mission station — a church, a creche, an art project, a coffee shop. They have anticipated where the opportunity will be for the church and they have taken the risk to “get out” and start building it.

Have we lost our appetite for mission? Sr Helena, despite her age, has not. She believes fervently that by spending time in prayer, we can be open to being guided by the Holy Spirit to be sent out.

But are we creating a new phase of missions and a new generation of missionaries to continue the line of Abbot Pfanners or Sr Helenas? Or do we, as a Church and as individuals, stay in our safe spaces and hope against hope that God does not send us out to bring Christ into the world?

We cannot solve it all in the Mission Month of October, but this is a good moment to ask ourselves seriously if, as individuals and as a Church, we are ready for mission.