More missions goodness!

we want YOU to learn the faith!

Suddenly, I am feeling so encouraged!!

After the missionary conversation I had with my children the other day, my kids wanted to talk about it more over lunch. They said they understood WHY the Church needs missionaries, but what they wanted to know was how to do it. So,  I asked them what they could do to be better at fulfilling the mission Pope Francis gave us all when he said:

 "We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a church that is wrapped up in its own world: when a church becomes like this, it grows sick. It is true that going out on to the street implies the risk of accidents happening, as they would to any ordinary man or woman. But if the church stays wrapped up in itself, it will age. And if I had to choose between a wounded church that goes out on to the streets and a sick, withdrawn church, I would definitely choose the first one."

The kids went as far as to get a piece of paper and to write / draw down a plan for how we would fulfill the mission better. Many of the things they talked about we already do, but there were fresh and new and good ideas in there that encouraged me a great deal.

They determined we were called to be missionaries in four ways.

The first, they said, was that we were supposed to pray and study ourselves,  and teach people to pray and study. So they set a specific time each day for our prayer times so that we wouldn't skip over them anymore (we often don't get around to evening prayer, for example, because we just forget).

They planned a family dinner/rosary night like we have had before with loved ones, and a family-only night to restore us(!)

The plan they came up with looked like this:

1. We go to mass and confession every week and invite people to come with us.
2. We say morning prayer (they chose 7 am "because by then everyone is kind of awake"), evening prayer (5 pm "because it's before dinner") and their father and I say night prayer (10 pm "before you go to bed.")  If people are over, we agreed,  the more the merrier.
3. We have dinner-and-a-rosary parties on Wednesdays and Saturdays and invite friends to participate whenever we can.
4. We have our regular family shabbat night, reserved for our own family and close relations when possible, where we talk about family business, bless each other and enjoy each other and pray for each other.
5. We spend time studying the faith every day, alone and together, and with others whenever we can.

I was amazed at their insight, and how they outlined many of the same goals I have tried to set for our family. But then it got better!

The second part, they said, was to do acts of mercy in our neighborhood. I, of course, agreed. The Church recommends that when we do good works, we use the following guidelines:

The 7 Corporal Works of Mercy
To feed the hungry
To give drink to the thirsty
To clothe the naked
To shelter the homeless
To visit the sick
To visit the imprisoned
To bury the dead

7 Spiritual Works of Mercy
To counsel the doubtful
To instruct the ignorant
To admonish the sinner
To comfort the sorrowful
To forgive all injuries
To bear wrongs patiently
To pray for the living and the dead

 Parts two and three of their plan involved good works and discipleship. They decided that each of us would have an assigned job in the community and that we would serve in that way. As a homeschooling family, we take education very seriously, and create educational pathways for those in our community at every opportunity. Also, their daddy is a firefighter/EMT, their mommy a student-midwife, my oldest wants to babysit for people and teach art lessons, my five year old said he wanted to do yard work for people and paint, and my three year old said she would be a storyteller for the littlest people.  As if that wasn't amazing enough, they each then identified a "friend" in their lives that they could have over regularly to help them grow in their walk with Jesus. They told me their friends' names, and how often they felt they should see them and what they would do together. Then they told me that "daddy and mommy's job was to do that for us, first, and then for other people that come over."

The fourth part of their plan was to live simply.
We talked about how missionaries have to be ready to go wherever God calls them, so that just as when we had to pack to go to California, and to France, and brought nothing but God provided everything we needed, so we would have to live very simply and have only what we needed, and God would provide the rest. I asked them what they thought constituted our "needs."
Some clothes (they got as specific as to tell me what types and styles to keep and which ones to get rid of... hooray for our plan to dump stuff!!) some books for school and work, and some DVDs "that teach people things." They decided to get rid of all their toys except a few dolls and---- get this---- a box of costumes so they could teach bible stories and the lives of the saints. (BRILLIANT!) They also mentioned eating small meals regularly so that we would have enough money to buy great foods to serve the people that came over on feast days...something I've never discussed with them that is in my personal plan.

All in all, an amazing child-led conversation that ended up inspiring me. Surprise! From the mouths of babes...

Mission - a requirement of the Church's catholicity

849 The missionary mandate. "Having been divinely sent to the nations that she might be 'the universal sacrament of salvation,' the Church, in obedience to the command of her founder and because it is demanded by her own essential universality, strives to preach the Gospel to all men":[339] "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 Lo, I am with you always, until the close of the age."[340]

850 The origin and purpose of mission. The Lord's missionary mandate is ultimately grounded in the eternal love of the Most Holy Trinity: "The Church on earth is by her nature missionary since, according to the plan of the Father, she has as her origin the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit."[341] The ultimate purpose of mission is none other than to make men share in the communion between the Father and the Son in their Spirit of love.[342]

851 Missionary motivation. It is from God's love for all men that the Church in every age receives both the obligation and the vigor of her missionary dynamism, "for the love of Christ urges us on."[343] Indeed, God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth";[344] that is, God wills the salvation of everyone through the knowledge of the truth. Salvation is found in the truth. Those who obey the prompting of the Spirit of truth are already on the way of salvation. But the Church, to whom this truth has been entrusted, must go out to meet their desire, so as to bring them the truth. Because she believes in God's universal plan of salvation, the Church must be missionary.

852 Missionary paths. The Holy Spirit is the protagonist, "the principal agent of the whole of the Church's mission."[345] It is he who leads the Church on her missionary paths. "This mission continues and, in the course of history, unfolds the mission of Christ, who was sent to evangelize the poor; so the Church, urged on by the Spirit of Christ, must walk the road Christ himself walked, a way of poverty and obedience, of service and self-sacrifice even to death, a death from which he emerged victorious by his resurrection."[346] So it is that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians."[347]

853 On her pilgrimage, the Church has also experienced the "discrepancy existing between the message she proclaims and the human weakness of those to whom the Gospel has been entrusted."[348] Only by taking the "way of penance and renewal," the "narrow way of the cross," can the People of God extend Christ's reign.[349] For "just as Christ carried out the work of redemption in poverty and oppression, so the Church is called to follow the same path if she is to communicate the fruits of salvation to men."[350]

854 By her very mission, "the Church . . . travels the same journey as all humanity and shares the same earthly lot with the world: she is to be a leaven and, as it were, the soul of human society in its renewal by Christ and transformation into the family of God."[351] Missionary endeavor requires patience. It begins with the proclamation of the Gospel to peoples and groups who do not yet believe in Christ,[352] continues with the establishment of Christian communities that are "a sign of God's presence in the world,"[353] and leads to the foundation of local churches.[354] It must involve a process of inculturation if the Gospel is to take flesh in each people's culture.[355] There will be times of defeat. "With regard to individuals, groups, and peoples it is only by degrees that [the Church] touches and penetrates them and so receives them into a fullness which is Catholic."[356]

855 The Church's mission stimulates efforts towards Christian unity.[357] Indeed, "divisions among Christians prevent the Church from realizing in practice the fullness of catholicity proper to her in those of her sons who, though joined to her by Baptism, are yet separated from full communion with her. Furthermore, the Church herself finds it more difficult to express in actual life her full catholicity in all its aspects."[358]

856 The missionary task implies a respectful dialogue with those who do not yet accept the Gospel.[359] Believers can profit from this dialogue by learning to appreciate better "those elements of truth and grace which are found among peoples, and which are, as it were, a secret presence of God."[360] They proclaim the Good News to those who do not know it, in order to consolidate, complete, and raise up the truth and the goodness that God has distributed among men and nations, and to purify them from error and evil "for the glory of God, the confusion of the demon, and the happiness of man."[361]
-- Catechism of the Catholic Church