Light and Leaven
They go out, they go out full of tears carrying seed for the sowing.
They come back, they come back full of song, carrying their sheaves.
(Ps 126:5-6)
The Missio Ireland stories from Malawi and Bangladesh in this month’s Intercom provide inspiring examples of Christians who despite the challenges they face (such as discrimination in Bangladesh where they are treated as second class citizens as Fr Peter Chanel Gomez reports) they manage to be both cheerful and to suffer with hope in their hearts.
An evangeliser, said the late Pope Francis, should never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral. We have good news to share and should always present it happily, or at least cheerfully.
The times may be challenging in a different way for us in our part of the world. Indifference even occasionally outright hostility towards religion and people of religious faith may tempt us to keep a low profile, to be an underground or gone to ground Catholic.
Yet as we pray for and support missionaries during this month of October, we know that our mission from Christ is clear – we are to be lights and leaven for the world. The children of Malawi were described as ‘missionaries of hope’ through daily acts of prayer and kindness, forgiveness and peacemaking. It’s an agenda for all. Our daily mission like those whose lives are dedicated totally to missionary work is to make a positive difference.
At our baptism when a candle is lit the celebrant prays that we may walk always as ‘a child of the light’, to reflect the light of Christ that can pierce through the darkness of the world.
We can’t all go on the mission field but the truth is that in this age of instant communication God has now brought the mission field to us. As the saying goes, ‘let us bloom where we are planted’.
Paul Clayton-Lea
Editor