June 28
Weekend Bulletin
Children’s Bulletin
Deacon’s Digest
Being a missionary disciple...
A strong theme of our Bishop is that of missionary discipleship. He has spent a lot of time and has appointed a priest to work in the Chancery to oversee the efforts that could make us all into those disciples. Fr Scott Traynor (currently Pastor of St Benedict Church in Yankton) has been tasked with a big job and he needs our cooperation. Priests, Deacons, Bishops, theologians and Church ministers can only do so much. They can prepare each of us but then it is up to the “flock” to bring in more “sheep”.
Our informed witness to our friends, relatives, neighbors and coworkers is the most powerful sort of evangelization there is. When people here a Catholic Clergyman talking about the faith it might stir up something in the person’s heart but, let’s face it, they expect priests and deacons to talk in those ways. What works is when mom or dad or grandparents or good family friends live in ways that show the joy, the love and the peace of a life transformed and configured to Jesus Christ!
In my life I have had the blessing of many of those witnesses. Starting with my mother, my father, my aunt, a religious ed teacher, an English teacher (in a public school!) and some very good next door neighbors. As I went to college, got married and started a family I had the faith of my wife to keep me on track. But there were other, too. Coworkers named Ralph and George, a Baptist Pastor named Roger, and a man named Tim who constantly challenged my Catholic faith and made me learn and know it better. But that’s not all, I have a “heavenly host” of friends who pray for me and with me. I can think of people like Steve, Scott, Jim, John, Mo, Mario, Sylvia, Glenn, Nick, Terry, Chuck, Tom, and many, many others. All of these have been great witnesses to me of the many and varied ways that God’s love works in his people. I have a list of these people and many others at home that I call my own “Litany of Saints”.
In today’s Gospel Reading Jesus tells his followers that they cannot follow him rightly if they love anything or anyone more than they love him. Wow! That’s a tough statement but, if you think it through, it makes perfect sense. The bottom line is that the more we love God the more we can love mother, father, sister, brother, spouse and children.
Jesus also reminds us that we must “lose our lives in order to find them”. As counterintuitive as that sounds it makes sense in the context of missionary discipleship because it reminds us that life is NOT about us. Life is about serving God and his people and being a witness to the faith in love.
So I ask you - who would you put in your own “Litany of Saints”? Who are the people who have helped bring you to this point in your faith life? Who is challenging you to go deeper? Whose list might you be on? There are important questions to answer as we become more and more the disciples that God made us to be., that our Bishop needs us to be.