WHAT IS YOUR MISSION IN LIFE?

“The task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church.” Evangelii Nuntiandi (EN) 14.

“The Christian family ought to be a place where the gospel is transmitted and from which the Gospel radiates.” (EN 71 and Ecclesia in Africa 92)

On my fairly frequent travels around the country in the last few months I have met a good number of missionaries. Were they Irish, American, Polish, Sudanese or locals you may ask? Yes, some were ordained ministers from other parts of the world and some were local priests but a great number too were of different kinds. What is a missionary really in today’s terms? Anyone with sense of mission could be called a missionary and even many of the traditional missionaries who originally came primarily to spread the word of God have developed a sense of mission that is now much wider. Justice, combating corruption, women’s empowerment, poverty alleviation, HIV/AIDS care all take up much of the time of the missionaries. See references below.

But our focus here is the mission of the church in the family, the little church of the home.

We can speak of the mission of the family, in, to, for and about the family, as “the future of the church and of the world is through the family” according to the late Pope John Paul II.

It is helpful to tease this statement out somewhat to grasp its deeper implications.

The mission of the family is the mission of the Church, because a family is a domestic church.

The African Synod in 1994 adopted the image of Church as Family to highlight that the qualities of an (albeit ideal) family are the qualities of the ideal Church, as a community of God’s people. Qualities mentioned are care for others, solidarity, warmth in human relationships, acceptance, dialogue and trust. Ecclesia in Africa 63

The mission in the family consists of catechesis in the faith but also family enrichment on a human and relational level. This involves aspects of marriage, parenting and other familial relationships. It also includes addressing the stresses that impact on these relationships, alcohol, drugs, violence, gender imbalance issues and just purely relationship management matters. One dare not forget external social factors such as poverty and unemployment that make family life so much more difficult. What drives human beings to abduct and murder little girls or alternatively to go out of their way to help other families facing loss and devastation from hurricanes and typhoons?

The mission of the Church then too is to promote and support family life as strongly as possible on a general and on a more personal level. This involves promotion of marriage as a sacramental way of life and as the alternative to cohabitation, teaching parenting skills, peer ministry to couples, hurting couples, widowed and divorced. It includes reflection and formation around human sexuality and the impact of HIV/AIDS on family life.

Those leadership couples and priests from 5 different countries representing Catholic Engaged Encounter International who met in Cape Town last month to discern about effective marriage preparation are missionaries. Those who led the Couples for Christ Men’s Conference held in Durban are missionaries. Those of us who minister in the family apostolate in our various ways are missionaries of our time. Those families who share their lives and resources and minister to other families are missionaries.

There was a time when missionaries were outsiders called to evangelise Africa. There is a stage in the process of becoming evangelized when local needs and resources emerge and the mission changes focus. Ultimately the People of God are called to become a self-sustaining Church. That obviously has huge financial implications but must be addressed on other levels too. The laity, family people, must take their rightful place in building the Kingdom of God, starting here and now.

Not everything can be reduced to family matters one could say. But, with a vision of community, Trinity, relationships rather than individualism, we can ask ourselves, why do we work, what drives the economy? We want to have houses for our families. We work to give our children a good education. Consumers are family people. We want gold jewellery for our wives and fiancés, cars for transporting families and furniture for our homes. Interesting thoughts but there is a question too, “Is this too idealistic?” Do I rather want my own computer, TV set, sports car, health and fitness programmes, purely for myself? Do we want to build homes in which to really live or just houses as places of shelter? As it seems that this month I am still in musical mode, could we make this song a motto for the mission of the family,

“I’d like to build the world a home and furnish it with love,

grow apple trees and honey bees and snow-white turtle doves.

I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

I’d like to hold it in my arms and keep it company.

I’d like to see the world for once all standing hand in hand

And hear them echo through the hills for peace through the land.”

Toni Rowland

Magazine No 4 for 2005 is now available at R7,00. It covers the themes for October to December around the FAMILIES LOVE LIFE theme for 2005. October = Mission, November = Death and bereavement and December = Family life – a gift of love, family love – a gift for life. Some material will be posted on our website at www.marfam.org.za

Weekly liturgical reflections in English are published on the web and also available in Afrikaans, Zulu, Sotho and Sepedi from us by email.

DAY OF REFLECTION FOR WIDOWED PEOPLE – 9th OCTOBER, JOHANNESBURG AREA.
Telephone 011 789 5449

FAMILY LIFE DESK NEWS

A number of promotional and training visits have been undertaken to various dioceses.  Much of the  work of the Family Life Desk is seen to be general awareness-raising of the needs and place of the family as the domestic church and a real part of parish life. This concept seems to be difficult to concretize.  An outline for Family Ministry in the Parish is contained in the current Marriage and Family Living magazine.

Information about the various family life movements active in South Africa and dates of their programmes can be obtained from them. See links on the Marfam website.

2006 MARRIAGE PROJECT

This extensive project aims to focus on marriage particularly in different ways through use of the monthly themes below. Parishes, groups and communities are invited to use these themes, develop them, apply them as relevant in their own context and use resources provided. A resource package is being developed for parish use and various items will be posted on the Marfam website to be downloaded and printed off as required.

During weeks 21-27 i.e. 27th August – 8th October 2006 there will be a more specific focus on marriage.

2006 MONTHLY THEMES

Grace and Truth, the South African Theological Journal will be devoting an issue to the subject of marriage too.

A list of parish suggestions and resources will be published soon.

Some of our Family Life monthly themes are taken from local, government or even commercial use, e.g. Mother for May. SEPTEMBER WAS HERITAGE MONTH for us and in South Africa. One parish I visited had a multi-cultural day. A touching experience was having different members of the congregation praying the Our Father in their own mother-tongue. Frightening too was the fact that many of us couldn’t pray it in our mother-tongue any more. We’ve been away too long.

YEAR OF THE EUCHARIST – draws to a close in October. We have devoted various articles to this subject “Marriage and the Eucharist” in Marriage and Family Living No 1 and “Meeting Jesus in the Sacraments – the Mass, the Family Meal of God’s Family, an article for children in magazine No 3.

OCTOBER – THE MONTH OF THE ROSARY. See article in magazine No 4 listing scripture references for the mysteries of the Rosary, including the mysteries of light. Searching with google can turn up many interesting articles. www.virtualrosary.org allows one to pray the rosary on line.

MISSION MONTH AND MISSIONARIES

"Mission: Bread Broken for the World" is the Holy Father’s Message for Mission Sunday. To read the message visit www.vatican.va

To find out more about missionary organizations visit www.google.co.za and explore. This can be quite an eyeopener, especially for Catholics who have tended to believe that missionary work belonged to the Catholic Church. You will find Baptists, members of the Church of the Nazarene, independent missionaries as well as other mainline denominations and their work. See also Fides, Zenit, SJS Headlines, Franciscans International

Below are a few links.
www.misna.org Missionary service News Agency
www.fides.org
Pontifical Mission Societies at www.vatican.va

OTHER LINKS.

http://www.catholiceducation.org - Catholic Educators Resource Centre always has a host of interesting references and articles.

www.wmf2006.org - 5TH WORLD MEETING OF FAMILIES WITH THE HOLY FATHER POPE BENEDICT XVI IN VALENCIA IN JULY 2006. Meeting preceded by a Family Congress.

“More than a hundred thousand leaflets and brochures about the next WMF have been distributed by the majority of the 2,000 young valencians, who participated at the World Youth Day in Cologne (Germany) with Benedict XVI in august. The young valencians handed the promotional flyers in some twenty locations around France and Germany, as well as among the participants of the WYD.

The brochures invite to attend the WMF in Valencia and offer information about the contents of the Meeting, planned activities, the website and useful addresses. Also it contains information about the city of Valencia, which will host the WMF.” Read more.

“Family Matters” is also the name of the programme hosted by me, Toni on Radio Veritas, the only Catholic radio station in South Africa. At present broadcasting on DSTV on channel 71. “Family Matters” is broadcast every Sunday from 11 – 12 noon. Tune in for information and inspiration; interviews, articles, stories and poems for families and about family life.

LETTERS

Dear Marfam,
I have recently launched our Catholic website called www.Catholicfriends.co.za and would like to know if you might be interested in advertising or sponsoring our website.
In order to keep this site going we would need a few sponsors or advertisers.
The website is to inform and to bring together single like-minded Catholics. This has been done with the blessing of our Local bishop Michael Coleman.
We would look forward to hearing from you soon.
Thank you and God Bless.
Charmane Waldner.

Hi Toni
Keep up the great wo0rk.
Your magazine just gets better and better.
Do you have any statistics for the couples who live together before they get married? I suspect the divorce rate is higher in that group.
God bless, Alex Niven

There were marriage and divorce statistics issued by www.statss.gov.za in relation to the 2001 census but it is not possible to extrapolate from that. A recent Zenit article claims that prior cohabitation is a higher risk. This is a subject to be explored in 2006.

Wise words:
Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or designs it or not. He may be a blot radiating his dark influence outward to the very circumference of society, or he may be a blessing spreading benediction over the length and breadth of the world.
Thomas Chalmers

A missionary who had spent years showing a tribe of natives how to farm and build things to be self-sufficient gets word that he is to return home.
He realizes that the one thing he never taught the natives was how to speak English, so he takes the chief and starts walking in the forest.
He points to a tree and says to the chief, "This is a tree."
The chief looks at the tree and grunts, "Tree."
The missionary is pleased with the response.
They walk a little farther and the padre points to a rock and says, "This is a rock."
Hearing this, the chief looks and grunts, "Rock."
The padre is really getting enthusiastic about the results when he hears a rustling in the bushes. As he peeks over the top, he sees a couple in the midst of heavy romantic activity. The padre is really flustered and quickly responds, "Riding a bike."
The chief looks at the couple briefly, pulls out his blow gun and kills them.
The padre goes ballistic and yells at the chief that he has spent years teaching the tribe how to be civilized and kind to each other, so how could he just kill these people in cold blood that way?
The chief replied, "My bike."

Cleveland Amory
A missionary was walking in Africa when he heard the ominous sound of a lion behind him. "Oh Lord," prayed the missionary, "Grant in Thy goodness that the lion walking behind me is a good Christian lion." And then, in the silence that followed, the missionary heard the lion praying too: "Oh Lord," he prayed, "We thank Thee for the food which we are about to receive."

Answer to the ecumenical conundrum published in September

Rearrange the letters of the word PRESBYTERIAN and you get BEST IN PRAYER