Lord Jesus Christ,
you always did the will of your Father,
and you were always open to his call,
faithful to the end.
Through the power of the Eucharist,
inspire me this day with a heart like yours, ready, open and faithful.
Like Mary, your mother,
may I bring your love to those I meet.
I pray with the whole Church for the
Pope’s intentions this month:
That each may contribute to the common good and to the building of a society that places the human person at the centre.
That by participating in the Sacraments and meditating on Scripture, Christians may become more aware of their mission to evangelise.
Since we are all very much earthen vessels, before we can evangelise, we must first be evangelised ourselves. As Christians, we all need to be open to the changes for the better that God wants to work in us and through us. As Blessed John Henry Newman puts it, ‘here below to live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often’. The desire itself to evangelise is a gift of God that has to be nurtured if it is to produce lasting fruit.
The Sacraments are there to help us along the road. We might see them as our ‘spiritual filling station’. We grow weak without the Sacraments of Reconciliation, Eucharist and Anointing, available to us throughout the course of our lives. These Sacraments have been instituted to facilitate the holiness to which we have all been called. By meditating prayerfully on scripture, ordinary Christians – Catholic and Protestant – find themselves equipped to evangelise. Nothing need be lacking in their spiritual artillery.
Wherever we find ourselves in our daily lives is ‘mission territory’. In God’s plan each of one of us who has received the Sacrament of Baptism has been anointed as a carrier of Good News. ‘I will make you the light of the nations, so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth’. (Isaiah 49:6)
- Paula Murray, extracted from Living Prayer