St. Pius X Roman Catholic Parish

29^th Sunday in Ordinary Time- World Mission Sunday

I’ve been reflecting often lately (in joy and thanksgiving, not despair) about how odd the life of a parish priest is. I’d like to express my admiration for you who work Monday to Friday 9-5; it’s the one lifestyle I’ve never lived. Nursing was 8-12 hour rotating shifts- I actually liked that because you could carve out a life around work, although I still missed out on some things from time to time.

Today, I work six out of seven days, set my own office hours, and am basically “on-call” all day and night. I have a lousy wage (I calculated it to be $2.61 per hour), but 30 days a year vacation, and I’m often expected to be an event planner, engineer, interior decorator, Master of Ceremonies, plumber, electrician, architect, banker, and janitor- all in one day, or even in one unlucky morning or afternoon. I’ve got people who are going to “leave the Church” because of me, and others who are begging to come into the Church. Some people think I’m working too hard, others not enough. I’m smiling and laughing as I preach and even write this because, honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing. I love the whole mess of the Church and the priesthood.

But I also smile because I know I am not special. Even you, without the clerics and collar, can say most of the same things about your own Monday to Friday, 9-5 life, or your 24 hours a day, 365 days a year life as a parent (and those lives often go together). And there are a few places where our lives and our vocations run alongside each other, whether you like me or not. In fact, I’d rather you be indifferent to me than about these shared worries. On this World Mission Sunday, I think it is important to highlight, not my mission or your mission, but our mission, maybe making it a little easier for all of us.

When we think of missionaries we automatically think of priests, religious, and lay people in the jungles of South America or Africa looking for people who have not met Jesus Christ yet. That’s not wrong, but it’s not the full picture either. After all, we are all missionaries.

In the early Church, the Gospel didn’t spread merely because apostles traveled on Roman roads. It spread because ordinary Roman merchants, slaves, bakers, and mothers lived differently. Their households became the mission stations. It made people stop and ask, “where did you learn to live like that, and with such hope and faith in this challenging world?”

My collar lets me into hospital rooms and sacristies. But there are rooms I can never enter that you walk into every single day: boardroom meetings, teachers’ lounges, factory floors, family group chats, and sidelines of soccer games- even your own living rooms and kitchens. You are the Church’s undercover operatives in places a priest will never set foot. That makes you essential missionaries to a culture that is drifting into spiritual loneliness.

Each and every one of our missions begins right where you’re sitting right now. Every time you turn your head to the person next to you, or turn around to the person behind you, how you present yourself may be- for some person in some place- how they see Jesus Christ in the world. The point of Christian community, such as a parish, is to make Jesus Christ visible to the unseeing and unbelieving world out there! We don’t get a day off from that; even on vacation we need to be aware that we are carrying Christ with us in our hearts and showing Him to others. It’s not just my job to fill the pews every Sunday…it’s equally your job as well.

Now, when I say it’s your job to fill the pews, I don’t mean you need to stand on street corners with a megaphone or start debating theology at the water cooler. That’s not how the Gospel spreads.

People don’t wander into church because they were argued into it. They come because someone who loved them showed them a glimpse of peace they couldn’t find anywhere else. In my nursing days, patients didn’t care about the medical jargon; they cared whether someone held their hand when they were afraid.

Out there in your offices, schools, and living rooms, people are spiritually starving for genuine kindness, patience, and hope. When you offer that, you aren’t just being ‘nice’—you are being Christ’s hands and feet. You are opening a doorway that eventually leads right back to this altar.”

So today we pray for the missionaries in the jungles and deserts of the world. But we need to include ourselves in those prayers too. The whole world is becoming a jungle of ideas and thoughts that are opposite to the Gospel message; there is a growing desert of despair and emptiness in the hearts of many people. You and I are the ones sent into that very desert. We don’t need a passport or a plane ticket to find souls thirsting for meaning, belonging, and peace—we just have to walk out the front doors of this church and into our own neighborhoods, workplaces, and kitchen tables.

Yet we do not enter this mission alone or empty-handed. The beauty of our faith is that Christ never commands us to do the impossible without first giving us the grace to endure it. Deserts can be intimidating, and the jungle can feel overwhelming, but history has shown time and again that the light shines brightest in the deepest dark. It doesn’t take an army to transform a culture; it takes small, persistent acts of Christian charity. It takes a parent who prays with patience, a worker who chooses integrity over cynicism, and a neighbor who offers genuine friendship to someone who is hurting. Faith assures us that no corner of this world is beyond the reach of the Gospel, and no heart is so parched that the living water of Jesus Christ cannot bring it back to life.

In just a few moments, our scattered missionary lives will gather around this altar. We bring the exhaustion of our week, our doubts, and our ordinary worries, and Christ meets us here to feed us with His very Self. When you receive Him today, remember that you are being sent back out into the field with a spark of the divine life burning within you. Take courage, trust in His promise, and go forward with joy. For the God who called you into this great mission is faithful, and through our humble, daily love, He is still quietly, wonderfully, renewing the face of the earth.