20211001 MISSION IS FOR EVERYONE
01 October, 2021, Friday, St Therese of the Child Jesus
First reading | Isaiah 66:10-14 © |
Towards Jerusalem I send flowing peace, like a river
Rejoice, Jerusalem,
be glad for her, all you who love her!
Rejoice, rejoice for her,
all you who mourned her!
That you may be suckled, filled,
from her consoling breast,
that you may savour with delight
her glorious breasts.
For thus says the Lord:
Now towards her I send flowing
peace, like a river,
and like a stream in spate
the glory of the nations.
At her breast will her nurslings be carried
and fondled in her lap.
Like a son comforted by his mother
will I comfort you.
And by Jerusalem you will be comforted.
At the sight your heart will rejoice,
and your bones flourish like the grass.
To his servants the Lord will reveal his hand.
Responsorial Psalm | Psalm 130(131) © |
Keep my soul in peace before you, O Lord.
O Lord, my heart is not proud
nor haughty my eyes.
I have not gone after things too great
nor marvels beyond me.
Keep my soul in peace before you, O Lord.
Truly I have set my soul
in silence and peace.
A weaned child on its mother’s breast,
even so is my soul.
Keep my soul in peace before you, O Lord.
O Israel, hope in the Lord
both now and forever.
Keep my soul in peace before you, O Lord.
Gospel Acclamation | Mt11:25 |
Alleluia, alleluia!
Blessed are you, Father,
Lord of heaven and earth,
for revealing the mysteries of the kingdom
to mere children.
Alleluia!
Gospel | Matthew 18:1-5 © |
Unless you become like little children you will not enter the kingdom of heaven
The disciples came to Jesus and said, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ So he called a little child to him and set the child in front of them. Then he said, ‘I tell you solemnly, unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And so, the one who makes himself as little as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
‘Anyone who welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.’
MISSION IS FOR EVERYONE
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [Is 66:10-14; Ps 131; 1 Cor 13:4-13; Mt 18:1-5 ]
Today, we celebrate the memorial of St Therese of the Child Jesus, the Little Flower as she called herself. However, in mission countries like ours under the Congregation of the Evangelization of Peoples, we celebrate it as a feast, for she is the patroness of missionaries. It is ironical that although she had never stepped out of her monastery, she has been named by the Church as the patroness of missionaries. This honour given to her is an acknowledgement of the Church fulfilling the deep desire of St Therese of always wanting to be a missionary like St Francis Xavier and others. Yet on the other hand, the Church wants to present her to all of us that we can be missionaries for Christ even if we have never left our home, monastery, parish or country. She is therefore an example to most of us who did not receive a calling to be a missionary abroad. As we celebrate Catholic 200SG, we are called to reflect on how she fulfilled the missionary aspiration in her heart without ever having left the walls of her monastery.
In the first place, we must recognize, as she shared with us, that not all of us have the same charisms and calling in life. In her autobiography, she wrote, “Since my longing for martyrdom was powerful and unsettling, I turned to the epistles of St. Paul in the hope of finally finding an answer. By chance the 12th and 13th chapters of the 1st epistle to the Corinthians caught my attention, and in the first section I read that not everyone can be an apostle, prophet or teacher, that the Church is composed of a variety of members, and that the eye cannot be the hand.” As St Paul wrote earlier in 1 Cor 12, that the Church, like the human body, has many members. We all need each other, just like the different parts of the human body. God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as He chose. “If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. (1 Cor 12:19f)
But she wrote, “Even with such an answer revealed before me, I was not satisfied and did not find peace.” Indeed, whilst we might all know that we are not called to be the Prime Minister, the President, a minister, a CEO, a bishop, a priest or a religious, it does not mean that we are happy and contented where we are placed in life, and the role that God has assigned us. Most of us feel rather insecure in life. We want attention, we seek glory, power and wealth. We want to be somebody in life, recognized and appreciated by the world as powerful, famous, successful and wealthy. This is why most of us are never happy with ourselves. We want to compare ourselves with others who are better than us. We fall into the sin of envy and sometimes even depression when we see ourselves so useless and ordinary compared to those whom the world admires.
This is why we need the grace of the humility of St Therese to be able to see the divine plan of God for each one of us. In one of her contemplations she came to realize that each has a place in God’s plan and if we fulfil our roles as perfectly as possible, we will bring great joy to ourselves and to the whole world. She wrote, “Jesus set before me the book of nature. I understand how all the flowers God has created are beautiful, how the splendour of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away the perfume of the violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy. I understand that if all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked out with little wild flowers. So, it is in the world of souls, Jesus’ garden. He has created smaller ones and those must be content to be daisies or violets destined to give joy to God’s glances when He looks down at His feet. Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wills us to be.” Indeed, happiness and joy in life is simply to accept the role that God has assigned us to be. Fulfilling that role like a musician in an orchestra, we will bring God’s music of love to all of humanity.
This is what the gospel is inviting us to be, childlike, so that we can enter the Kingdom of God. When “the disciples came to Jesus and said, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ So he called a little child to him and set the child in front of them. Then he said, ‘I tell you solemnly, unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And so, the one who makes himself as little as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.'” Indeed, it is childlikeness, trust and simplicity that will make us joyful and be at peace with ourselves, not always comparing ourselves with others.
The truth is that a child is always loved by the mother regardless how he or she behaves. This is how Isaiah describes the love of God for us, like a mother’s instinctual love, a womb-love for her child. “That you may be suckled, filled, from her consoling breast, that you may savour with delight her glorious breast. For thus says the Lord: Now towards her I send flowing peace, like a river, and like a stream in spate the glory of the nations. At her breast will her nurslings be carried and fondled in her lap. Like a son comforted by his mother will I comfort you.” Indeed, when we are able to accept ourselves, we will no longer be ambitious or compete with people. We can accept others in their smallness, weakness, and dullness as well. Compassion for self is the first step in compassion for others.
Humility must however be accompanied by love. Again, St Therese shared with us, “I persevered in the reading and did not let my mind wander until I found this encouraging theme: Set your desires on the greater gifts. And I will show you the way which surpasses all others. For the Apostle insists that the greater gifts are nothing at all without love and that this same love is surely the best path leading directly to God. At length I had found peace of mind.” It was when she came to 1 Cor 13 that she found the answer to her joy and happiness in life. St Paul wrote, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” (1 Cor 13:1-3) Love, therefore, is the highest of all gifts, in fact the only gift that is common to us all. Without love, whatever we do would be without values, even if we are missionaries of the gospel and give ourselves wholeheartedly to our work and our mission. We all have different vocations but the same vocation of love.
This was what St Therese came to realize about the Church and her mission in life. She wrote, “When I had looked upon the mystical body of the Church, I recognised myself in none of the members which St. Paul described, and what is more, I desired to distinguish myself more favourably within the whole body. Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love.” To be Church is to be a Sacrament of love and unity in the world. This is how we evangelize in the final analysis. As Pope Emeritus Benedict always reminded us, that the best way to evangelize is not through proselytization but attraction and witness. We must draw people to ourselves by our love for them, and our love for each other, like the early Church when those outside remarked, “See how they love one another!”
We too must now ask ourselves, where is the Lord calling us to love? It does not matter where we are sent to love, or whom we are called to love. What is critical is that we must do everything out of love. As St Therese made it clear, “I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more. I saw and realised that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In one word, that love is everlasting.” When we choose to love and serve with love and humility, we will encounter a deep interior joy knowing that we have done what we could and should do, according to the charisms and talents the Lord has given to us. With St Therese, we say, “In the heart of the Church, I will be love.”
Written by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights Reserved.
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