Homily for World Mission Sunday

October 20, 2024
St. Joseph Catholic Church
Arlington, Texas

Isaiah 53:10-11
Psalm 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22
Hebrews 4:14-16
Mark 10:35-45

Isaac Jogues, Rene Goupil, Jean de Lalande, Antoine Daniel, John de Brebeuf, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier, and Noel Chabanel: these are the names of the North American Martyrs whose feast we celebrated yesterday. Saint Isaac Jogues was a man of clear resolve in his love for Christ. He wrote his religious superior, ‘Yes, Father, I want whatever the Lord wants, even if it costs a thousand lives.” It was the gift of fortitude that brought him and the other martyrs to clarity.

When Isaac Jogues and Rene Goupil were accompanying a party of their Christian Hurons on a trade mission, a larger war party of the Iroquois ambushed them. In the ensuing battle, Isaac Jogues found himself knocked unconscious and hidden in the weeds while the seminarian Rene Goupil and the Hurons were captured. Isaac Jogues was faced with a decision. He could have remained hidden in the weeds, but instead he came forth to absolve, to anoint, and to comfort those who were captured and whom he loved as a missionary.

Isaac Jogues suffered immensely at the hands of the Iroquois for thirteen months — he had hot coals thrown on him, he was beaten daily, malnourished and mocked, he had two of his fingers gnawed off of his hand. Most painfully, he suffered by witnessing the murder of the Christian Hurons whom he had baptized and catechized and loved as a pastor and in whom he had found Christ. He also witnessed the murder of the seminarian Rene Goupil for whose priestly formation he had been responsible. Isaac Jogues was later liberated by a Dutch trading party and taken back to France.

Isaac Jogues, having suffered all of this, was then presented to the courts of royalty and politicians to further the political agenda of many within the Church and the state. They attempted to use him as a vehicle for the promotion of fund raising. Yet, he trusted, he loved and remained simply faithful to Christ and to the people to whom he had brought the Gospel. His fidelity brought him to an obedient return to the Huron Church where he courageously met his martyrdom by being tomahawked to death and decapitated by a Mohawk warrior. This Mohawk warrior was later to be converted and baptized in no small part because of the loving and faithful witness of Isaac Jogues. At his baptism, Christ called this Mohawk warrior by the new Christian name of Isaac Jogues — the name by which Christ was to call him later at the Mohawk’s own martyrdom for the love of Christ and His Church.

The readings from the Book of Isaiah and the Letter to the Hebrews place their focus clearly upon Jesus Christ, the Savior of the World, the promised Messiah, the great high priest. The “suffering servant” spoken of by the prophet Isaiah reveals the authentic nature of the mission of Jesus Christ— to suffer and to be rejected for the salvation of the many. Isaiah’s revelation is intended to prepare God’s chosen people Israel, the People of God — for the true Messiah and not for a military king who will avenge them against the oppression they have suffered at the hands of other tribes and nations.

The suffering of Christ is at the heart of human redemption that is brought about by the offering of it as a sacrifice by Jesus Christ who is both priest and victim of the sacrifice. Because Jesus is truly God and fully human, He is the only one who is able to offer such a sacrifice capable of remitting all human sins for all time and to make satisfaction in both perfect justice and perfect mercy. His justice and mercy reveal God’s perfect and selfless love and also reveal the only way we are able to love God fittingly in return as human beings created in His image and likeness and baptized into His priestly people, the Church, the People of God.

The centrality of Christ as recorded in each of these readings — the suffering servant from Isaiah and the High Priest Jesus Christ in the Letter to the Hebrews, is overlooked momentarily by the Apostles James and John and the other ten apostles as recorded in today’s reading from Mark’s Gospel. James and John go to Jesus and request that He do for them what they ask. They are looking for Christ to do what they want which is to give them their way which involves power, glory, and status.

The three elements always present in Christ’s mission that He shares with the Church to fulfill are rejection, suffering unto death, and resurrection. Christ and His disciples suffer these in the face of selfless service: the teaching of the Catholic faith, Christ’s caring and healing of the sick that brings hope, and the forgiveness of sins through His merciful charity. Each element is essential for the full sense of the mystery of the mission of Jesus for His people and for the world.

Part of the missionary spirit given to the Church is that we go forth with zeal both to meet Christ already present in our neighbor and also to introduce Him to others who have not encountered Him. We go into the world to find Christ where He has called us as we meet new people and encounter new cultures. Cultures which simultaneously need the truth and freedom of the Gospel but in other ways have the seeds of the Word already planted within them. As Saint John Paul II once said on the occasion of a past World Mission Sunday, “Every local Church arises from mission, every Church grows and matures when she sends missionaries to proclaim the Gospel to other peoples.”

Throughout the history of the missionary efforts of the Church, Her members have at times struggled with the temptation of James and John to lose their focus on Christ and momentarily replace the authentic mission of salvation with colonialism or proselytism. This struggle prompted Pope Pius XI to entrust the missionary work of the Church to the intercession of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux as co-patroness of the missions, who never left the cloister of her Carmel in northern France but understood through her simple love for Christ the true nature of vocation and mission.

She wrote, “Charity gave me the key to my vocation. I understood that if the Church had a body composed of different members, the most necessary and most noble of all could not be lacking in it, and so I understood that the Church had a heart and that this heart was burning with love. I understood that it was love alone that made the Church’s members act, that if love were ever extinguished, apostles would not proclaim the Gospel, and martyrs would refuse to shed their blood. I understood that love includes all vocations. … Then in the excess of my delirious joy, I cried out: “O Jesus, my Love … at last I have found my vocation; my vocation is Love!” The Spirit of the Mission of the Gospel is the selfless love of charity, the love demonstrated perfectly by Christ. It is to love and to be loved. It is to serve and not to be served.

The late Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen would frequently say, “All of us are missionaries, some of us go by giving and some of us give to the missions by going to the missions.” Today’s second collection for the Pontifical Mission Societies should encourage our generosity to share Christ and to meet Him in our neighbor. As Catholics, we share the same cup that was offered to James and John, to the other Apostles, and to the entire Church throughout the last two thousand years. This cup is the chalice of suffering and service which only the Grace of the Holy Spirit enables us to drink as we trust Him and ask Him to place His mercy upon us.