Saturday, April 13, 2013

Renew the Mission

Hi everyone,

It's been a long time, but I've realized I need to get back to blogging. Today, I saw a link to an article on my news feed and I just had to read it. It was about Pope Francis and reform in the Church. (Check out the article!)

In the article is this beautiful quote from the Holy Father: 

"The layperson is a layperson and has to live as a layperson with the power of baptism, which enables him to be a leaven of the love of God in society itself, to create and sow hope, to proclaim the faith, not from a pulpit but from his everyday life. And like all of us, the layperson is called to carry his daily cross — the cross of the layperson, not of the priest." 
I was set on fire by this statement. The power of baptism...a leaven of love of God in society...proclaim the faith...from his everyday life. Immediately, those words led me to the very name of this blog. The Stationary Mission. 

After months of sitting idly by in this life, the realization comes in an instance to remind me what our purpose is in this life. While I struggled with the lack of desire to get more involved inside the Church, our Pope is encouraging us to get involved outside the Church. 

While many of us are "stationary" in the sense that we frequent the same places most of our days (work, home, Church, local restaurants/stores, etc.), we are, in fact, missionaries. Why? Did we "feel the call" to missionary work? Did we receive some form of enlightenment or unique gift to serve in this way? 

Not exactly. We are baptized. We are baptized into family with God as priest, prophet, and king. We must bring grace to the people outside of the Church who so greatly need it. We must preach with loving words and humble example to those we meet everyday. Men who have answered the call to ordained ministry in the Church have their duties to attend to, and they need our prayers. We lay people have our duties, our mission, to attend to. I am certain we have their prayers as well.

Where are you lay people? Are you awake? Are you ready? Get going!

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