Firstly, it is rather odd to name this weekend Mission Sunday, as if the task of evangelisation is extraneous to the Church’s own self-definition. Mission cannot be simply one amongst her diverse activities. At the Ascension, the Great Commission given by Christ to the gathered Apostles to go baptise all nations has, from the Church’s inception, clearly marked her roadmap. She has been sent by the Saviour to draw the entire world into His Kingdom under His Lordship.
Thus, evangelisation is who we should always be because every minute of our Christian existence is supposed to be missionary. If anything, “Mission Sunday” merely highlights our identity making sure that we never forget who we fundamentally are—evangelical. When Jesus asked Peter, “Who do people say I am?”, the answer was resoundingly, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God”. Therefore the Church derives her meaning from the unchanging proclamation of Jesus who stands at the centre of history and life.
In the context of this mission, the idea of prayer and its purpose fits very well into the Church’s enterprise. The prayer we make is both for the success of our endeavours as well as to remain ever faithful to the task we have before us. St Paul in the 2nd Reading gave details of the struggles he encountered along the way. Tenaciously, he held on to the faith. Using the metaphor of sports, he saw himself as faithfully running the race to its logical conclusion, to a life that culminates with Christ.
Indeed, evangelisation is a crucial race only because there is a world hungering for the grace of the Gospel. If the scope for the Church is to evangelise, then both the Pharisee and the Publican are important. We might think that the central theme of the narrative surrounding these two men is humility or the lack of it, which is, arrogance. After all, one of them walked in and immediately began virtue signalling before God. But it is not about humility and if it concerns arrogance, then it is the pride of not needing salvation.
More than humility, the postures and prayers of these two men standing before God fundamentally underscore the connexion between sin and salvation, between the truth of redemption and the necessity of justification. Desiring to be justified is desiring salvation. Whereas the Pharisee felt himself justified as he declared his self-sufficiency. In short, he had no need of God for he believed himself justified in his behaviour. God could not save the Pharisee not because he was perfect but because he had no need of the Lord.
On the other hand, the Publican stood at a distance and dumbstruck before God, conscious of his abject sinfulness and his utter need for salvation. He who has need of God was justified and saved by God Himself. We see in these two men, the Church’s missionary thrust played out, which therefore begs the question, “What is salvation for?”. Or better still, “What is there is to save if one were not a sinner?”.
What is it to be justified and saved? Is this not a conundrum of our age and generation that we MAY have forgotten that Christ came to save sinners. Why? Even if we were to accept the connexion between the reality of sin and the necessity for redemption, the problem might still arise as we struggle to see ourselves as wretched sinners. A priest told me that he often encountered people who enter the confessional without sin only to leave with four sins. (1) They lie that they are sinless which is (2) itself also a sin against the Holy Spirit (for to claim that one is sinless is to call the Holy Spirit a liar). (3) They abuse the Sacrament of Confession while (4) complaining about others. In other words, it is easier to accept that we are sinners in a generic sense rather than a sinner in one’s personal capacity. To announce a salvation without acknowledging the truth that we are miserable sinners sorely in need of redemption is to proclaim a vacuous god of therapy. To be saved is merely to feel good about ourselves.[1]
Perhaps we are lukewarm with regard to our mission only because there is no more sin. We cannot “judge” not because there are no faults but rather because we are already perfect. In that case, why would we want to proclaim salvation when no one has need of it.
In a sense, another focus of this Sunday is on two Pharisees. The one in the Gospel was unnamed and proud. The other, in the 2nd Reading, was Paul, the tyrannical persecutor of Christians. Justified by Christ, he became the chief evangelist of the Church. Saved from his sins, he ardently preached the Gospel of salvation. The example of St Paul showed the role forgiveness played in his evangelical drive. He was the great evangeliser and preacher because he was forgiven much. To “Christify” the world, we would need to acknowledge the reality of sin, not just systemic or structural out there but also personal sin within.
So, if there is a race, it is not a competition as to who would be first but rather a race to be saved by Christ. A civilisation that is deeply enamoured with the spirit of science and enchanted by the god of technical conquest is also a world deeply scarred in the effort to reorganise itself by excluding God and the necessity of His redemption. The mission of the Church is to lead humanity to an encounter with the Risen Saviour. Friendship with Christ is not only salvific but it offers the remedy and cure we need in a society that is confused and searching for its soul. Only the Church has the answer to the world’s deepest longing and He is none other than Jesus, the Saviour and the Lord.
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[1] A tell-tale sign of the therapeutic god is the facility of receiving Holy Communion and the avoidance of Confession.
