Continuing the Mission
Our Call to Holiness – Our Call to Mission
Not too long ago we celebrated the Feast of Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. That is when the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles and our Blessed Mother, Mary and they were sent forth on their mission. The Holy Spirit gave them the help – the grace – to do that mission. Because they used that grace, the Church was started and continued to grow and grow and grow. We see the results of that effort in all the parishes and churches worldwide.
Do you know that at our baptism we were called to holiness and to a mission? Our call to holiness came when through the cleansing waters of baptism our sins were washed away and we were given our clean, spotless baptismal garment and were told (perhaps through our parents) to bring that garment unstained into the everlasting life of heaven. That was our call to holiness – turning away from sin and faithfully following the teachings of Jesus Christ. As we know that is an awesome task and this call to holiness is our life-long mission.
It is good for us to dwell on this every now and then. We really don’t like to be reminded of this call to holiness. It makes many of us uncomfortable. Priests and nuns and old people are supposed to be holy. How am I supposed to be holy when I have to go to school or work or live in the world?
To be “holy” might make me look weak, or strange, or different from the others – after all we live in a world, a culture which does not exactly follow Christian values. The fact of the matter is Christian culture is dwindling and pagan culture, or maybe you prefer “godless” culture, seems to prevail.
We live in a culture that has eliminated God from the marketplace and His moral standards by which to live and act. It is not hard to comprehend how our young find it difficult to distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong. Jesus calls us to be “perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This call came to us in baptism – it’s our mission. Baptism brought us into a living relationship with God and it is up to us to keep that relationship alive, healthy, and on mark. Jesus baptized us in the Holy Spirit and so we have all those gifts of the Spirit to help us in our quest for holiness, our most important mission.
When Jesus came into the world He had a mission – to seek and to save that which is lost – so He preached repentance for the forgiveness of sins. His mission is our mission. As on an airplane where you must first put the oxygen mask on yourself to help another – so too we must strive for holiness first and then we are able to bring others to Christ. We do that by taking Jesus to school, to the office, to our homes and families and to the marketplace.
This is our baptismal call, our mission. It’s our everyday “stuff” that renders us holy or not. So, “if today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” Amen.
Father Donald Fest, SSJ, is pastor of St. Joseph church in Alexandria, Virginia.