Jesus commands: “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.”

Jesus promises: “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).

These are the final words of Jesus, according to Matthew. They are strong words, challenging words. The italicized words are all imperatives, all commands. They are the words which commission all of us to act as missionaries.

Mission Imperative

A missionary is a person who hears Jesus’ words of challenge in his or her heart and joins an organization of like-minded people to preach Jesus Christ’s Word and Kingdom. Missionaries may be married or single, ordained or not, religious or lay.

In this Youth Update, the word lay means any member of the Church who is neither ordained nor a member of a religious order. This word pops up frequently to remind you that everyone is called by Jesus to act with a missionary spirit.

Informally, a missionary is everyone in your parish. You are a missionary!

Has your love of God and neighbor ever led you to serve meals in a soup kitchen, help with summer Bible school at the parish or invite an unchurched friend to come with you to a youth meeting? When you act in such ways, you are acting as a missionary: preaching Jesus, being Jesus.

In the Church’s beginning, preaching was the entire work of the apostles. St. Peter’s first sermon at Pentecost converted about 3,000 people (Acts 2:41). But in those early days of the Church, the apostles also found themselves being asked to provide for the material needs of the new Christians, so they chose helpers called deacons to aid them.

Missionaries then and now know that they must attend to what we call the corporal and spiritual works of mercy if they are to be effective preachers about Jesus himself. They will practice the first—helping people survive and thrive physically—if they want to accomplish the second—strengthening and encouraging people’s spiritual growth.

In our time missionaries are also encouraged to work with people for economic and social equity between rich and poor, government and the governed, the educated and the disadvantaged, and to help people claim the human rights that all God’s people should experience in this life.

An example of this last area of work, close to home, is ministry among Native Americans. This is their land, but you have seen enough wild-west movies to know how they, most of whom treated our ancestors as friends, were treated.

Missionaries on Indian reservations today not only teach and preach, but also try to obtain justice through the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, the agency which governs our Native American brothers and sisters.

Mission Worldview

The word mission often implies leaving home. Many missionaries travel to other countries. Working as a missionary overseas or in the southern hemisphere is not without its problems. Missionaries face three major challenges when working in faraway lands.

1. Learning the culture. Missionaries strive to have the greatest influence in the shortest period of time so that the local Church community will be strong, well-trained and well-rooted, with or without native clergy, and with or without the continued presence of the missionaries. To accomplish this, missionaries benefit from instruction in, observation of and experience with the culture of a mission new to them. This is called inculturation.

You may have experienced inculturation if you prepared for travel to a foreign country by learning about the customs, money, language and culture of the people before you went on your journey.

For missionaries, inculturation means that they begin to embrace the culture in which they will be working before they go there by studying the language, history, customs, values and culture of the people. Then, when they begin their work, they can build on what they have learned.

Missionaries have to keep in mind that they are sent forth to preach the gospel, not to make the entire world look like their own country.

2. Lack of resources and help. The lack of even simple resources, such as Bibles, is a problem. Missionaries depend on societies such as the Propagation of the Faith, a worldwide organization founded to support missions around the globe. The Propagation of the Faith—which relies on an annual parish collection, as well as other donations—helps missionaries with everything from education to disaster relief. Without such support, missionaries would find it difficult to continue.

The lack of staff to use the resources that are available is also a serious problem. One experiment to multiply the effectiveness of missionaries in Argentina was approved by the bishop, planned by the missionaries and carried out by the people. The team, consisting of two priests, a brother and a missionary couple, helped to organize the parish to run under the direction of a lay coordinating team.

The team was taught all the skills necessary to lead the parish, which would be without a full-time priest. At first the people did not like the idea, but the missionaries sat in on planning meetings and gave of their expertise when asked or needed.

The people were urged to gather every Sunday for the Liturgy of the Word and the distribution of holy Communion. The missionaries taught them to lead prayer services, instruct those seeking Baptism, celebrate Baptisms, visit the sick, conduct funerals and administer their parish. A priest would visit on a regular basis for the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist and to strengthen the parish team.

On a wall at Maryknoll, a U.S.-based society to make Jesus known overseas, is this quotation which sums up the missionaries’ philosophy: “The task of the missioner is to go where you are needed but not wanted, and to stay until you are wanted but not needed.”

3. Martyrdom. Martyrdom is giving your life for a noble cause. It may include torture, rape, starvation or imprisonment, or any of the ways we humans have developed to torment other people.

The news reports today sometimes tell of persons who have given up their lives as a consequence of the work they were doing for a cause they believed in. In the Church, if this happens to a person who loved and worked for God’s Kingdom, the person is a “martyr.”

Perhaps you recall the stories of Catholic martyrs in El Salvador. Are you aware of any other modern martyrs? Working to spread the gospel does not protect people from the possibility of danger, even death.

When the Church involves itself in the struggles of the poor, this can upset people in power. For instance, when the congregations of 14 parishes in Nairobi came together to discuss their bishop’s letter on democracy, the governing politicians sent undercover police to spy on the proceedings.

Sometimes God’s hand is clearly seen in suffering. Bishop James Walsh, cofounder of Maryknoll Missioners, was locked in a Chinese prison for 12 years and then deported, as were all the other foreign missionaries. But Bishop Walsh never condemned his captors. “I could never feel angry with any Chinese....I love the Chinese people,” he said. The experience caused him to see God’s direction leading him along a new path, and he moved on to open missions in Latin America and Africa.

A handful of missionaries have been allowed back in China but only to teach English in the universities. They are not allowed to seek out people who want to become Catholic, but they are permitted to answer the questions of anyone who approaches them. One missionary expressed the China/Western paradox in these words: “In China there are hundreds of seminarians without professors; in the West there are hundreds of professors without seminarians.”

Singular Mission

Every country presents unique challenges in proclaiming the faith. This is what makes inculturation important. Let’s look at two examples.

For 3,500 years, society in India has been based on the caste system. In this Hindu system, each person is born into his or her level (caste) in society with rules and punishments specific to each level. The Indian Constitution of 1949 did away with this system on paper, but little has changed in reality.

The Indian bishops have said publicly that the sinful neglect of the lowest caste, the Untouchables (about 16 percent of the people), should be seriously considered in the light of the message of Christ for justice and liberation. Untouchables had not been allowed to minister as readers or altar servers and had to receive Communion from a separate line.

The challenge is to preach the gospel within this situation and to assist people to live the gospel in every culture. For Sister Rani Maria and Father Thomas Anchanickal, their active involvement in challenging the caste system led to martyrdom in this very decade. Inculturation is not merely a multisyllable word; it is a multipart challenge.

The second example of a unique mission land may surprise you: It is our own United States. Yes, we need missionaries, especially in the Southeast, Southwest and far West. Home missions are places where the local church does not have its own clergy, staff and resources necessary to begin and to sustain the faith community.

Over 500 U.S. parishes have no priests. The Glenmary Home Mission Society is the only group solely devoted to working in what it calls “no-priest land.” The Catholic Church Extension Society raises and distributes money to assist missions and missionaries serving in the United States.

A recent and serious problem for the American Catholic Church is the defection or departure of Hispanic Catholics after years of loyalty to the Church. Their Catholic religious roots go all the way back to the 16th century when Spain and Portugal, who colonized Latin America, brought missionaries with them.

In the early 1970’s, 78 percent of Hispanic Americans were Catholic. By the middle of the 1990’s, that proportion had fallen to 67 percent. One out of seven Hispanics has left Catholicism in less than a quarter of a century. It is predicted that if this trend continues for the next 25 years, half of all American Hispanics will not be Catholic. Most of those who have left have joined Protestant denominations.

Two reasons for these defections have been proposed. The first is that some Protestant denominations whose ministers are more “grass-roots clergy” than “clerical clergy” are more appealing to the Hispanic sense of faith community. Also, Protestantism is seen as a step up in society.

The Church needs to reverse this trend among Hispanic American Catholics. Inculturation—or situating the gospel message within the Hispanic community with its culture and values—is an essential component of Catholic missionary effort.

Making the Team

If you have ever been part of a team, you know that each member has a specific responsibility but that all must work together in order to be successful.

The “team approach” describes life at one mission station in Peru. With donations from many generous Catholics, one priest provides priestly formation, education, room and board to local candidates for the priesthood, thus building a native clergy.

Another priest employs new technology in raising chickens, guinea pigs and agriculturally beneficial worms to aid poor farmers. A third priest maintains a soup kitchen that provides a hot lunch to 150 children five days a week.

A Brother distributes sugar and eggs to the parish elderly and infirm. A Sister cares for a patient with a brain tumor who needs another operation. A lay missionary aids victims of violence, injustice and corruption by helping them present their cases to the proper authorities with the goal of promoting peace and justice in the region.

The team’s ministry flows from their relationship with Christ, frequent celebration of Eucharist and daily private and community prayer. The difference between the work done in this Peruvian mission station and the work done by Peace Corps and Americorps volunteers is that the missionaries are motivated by gospel charity while secular organizations were not established to serve the gospel—even though individuals in such organizations may have such motives.

Most missionary societies are depending more and more on nonreligious (lay) help in their work. These volunteer workers are trained at the home base and utilized as part of a team ministry. Volunteers may be single persons, married couples, families, religious from non-missionary communities and priests ordained to serve in a specific diocese.

The time that one is expected to serve varies: For example, Glenmary’s is one year, Maryknoll asks for three and one half years, Franciscan Mission Service is three years. What a great opportunity for a young adult to work building up God’s Kingdom before beginning work to build one’s personal career!

The Bottom Line

In the Gospels, Jesus went around to all the towns and villages, teaching, curing illness and proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom. At the sight of the crowds his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.

Jesus said to his disciples, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the Master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest” (Matthew 9:37-38).

Are you willing to give of yourself to answer this call?

Sister Nancy Bourk is a Dominican Sister living in Caldwell, New Jersey. She has taught religion and English in elementary and high school and at Caldwell College. She has also served as a parish director of religious education. Her present ministry is writing for Catholic youth publications.