Over the past decade or so, one of the most popular phrases in the Catholic Church has been “missionary discipleship.” Because of this, there should be no surprise that this term was included in the mission statement adopted by our diocese and, by extension, our parish.
Jesus has invited all Christians to be His disciples, and that word is worth a brief consideration. A disciple is one who learns from a master, following their example, and letting the master’s teachings guide their thinking and acting. The first disciples of Jesus spent time with Him to do just this. Since His Ascension and sending of the Holy Spirit, this discipleship is accomplished through reflecting on His words in the Scriptures, learning His truths more deeply through the teaching of the Church, and letting His life be lived in us and through us through the grace of the sacraments.
Being a disciple, however, is more than just learning and following the Master. After their initial formation, Jesus sent His closest disciples, the Apostles, to go and spread this message far and wide: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (Mt 28:19–20)
Nearly two-thousand years later, this same expectation of spreading the Good News of the Gospel pertains to those who are disciples of Christ. Before the Second Vatican Council, there was a sense (though not really officially the Church’s teaching) that the missionary work of spreading the Gospel belonged to priests and consecrated religious. But the Council presented a robust view of discipleship as it applies to all Christians, that we are all called to have a missionary aspect to our discipleship. How this looks will vary based on our state in life, but nevertheless, we cannot truly claim to be living discipleship if we are not also missionary in some way. Pope Francis articulates this in a compelling way, in words that have become the heart of this resurgence in the notion of missionary discipleship in the Church:
In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Mt 28:19). All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients. The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization; indeed, anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love. Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus: we no longer say that we are “disciples” and “missionaries”, but rather that we are always “missionary disciples.” (Evanglii Gaudium, 120)
Perhaps this sounds a little intimidating, but it does not have to be so. In next weekend’s bulletin, we will explore this topic a little more, especially as it applies in our daily lives, the special missionary field to which we are called.
Father Alford