October 20, 2019 - "World Mission Sunday"

Last Sunday the Church celebrated World Mission Sunday.  This celebration goes all the way back to 1926 when Pope Pius XI instituted this commemoration.  The first worldwide Mission Sunday collection actually took place in October 1927.  Often this collection has been taken up on the next to the last Sunday in October—but this year it was celebrated on the second Sunday of October.  The day is celebrated in all local Catholic churches as the feast of catholicity and universal solidarity, so that Christians the world over will recognize their common responsibility with regard to the evangelization of the world.
 
Not only on World Mission Sunday, but during the whole month of October which has been designated an Extraordinary Missionary Month, we are called to a personal encounter with Jesus Christ and to offer our prayers and generous financial support through the Propagation of the Faith to continue the mission of Jesus.  The monies collected during the special collection on World Mission Sunday support priests, religious Sisters and Brothers, and lay catechists who are Christ’s witnesses to a world in need of His healing, love, and peace.  During this Extraordinary Missionary Month I think of our support of our sister parish in Haiti, particularly our support of the Bon Pasteur School there and the medical missions that we help to organize and fund each year there.  I think of Fr. Bill Ryan and his work in his parish in Togo.  These are missionary experiences with which we have a firsthand encounter.
 
As part of the celebrations of World Mission Sunday last week in Rome, Pope Francis canonized Blessed John Henry Newman along with that of Sister Mariam Thresia from India, Sister Giuseppina Vannini from Italy, Sister Dulce Lopes Pontes from Brazil, and Marguerite Bays from Switzerland.  Here is a little bit about each of them according to a press release from Vatican News.
 
· Blessed John Henry Newman was one of the most prominent converts to Catholicism from Anglicanism of the 19 ^th century.  He was already an esteemed Anglican theologian when he founded the Oxford Movement to return the Church of England to its Anglican roots, before himself converting to the Catholic faith.  He was renowned as a brilliant thinker and was made a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII.  He died in Birmingham, England in 1890, aged 89, after founding the Birmingham Oratory.
· Sister Mariam Thresia was the founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family.
· Sister Giuseppina Vannini was the founder of the Daughters of Saint Camillus.
· Sister Dulce Lopes Pontes was a member of the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God.
· Marguerite Bays was a Secular Franciscan.
 
I plan to write several columns over the coming weeks devoted to our most recently canonized saints.  As we think about these newly canonized saints who were heroically dedicated to the mission of evangelization both in word and deed, I leave you with the following thought:  May the love for Church’s mission, which is a passion for Jesus and a passion for his people “grow ever stronger?”
Until next week,
Fr. John