Who made you? God made me. Why did God make you? God made me to know, love and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next. Does that sound familiar to any of you old timers out there? It is, of course, from the Baltimore Catechism which was the source of religious education for my generation. Sister Mary Dermot, O.P., made sure that we memorized all the answers. The answers are good, as far as they go, but the message of Pope Francis implies that they don’t go far enough. For Pope Francis, it’s not just about getting ourselves into heaven to be happy with God forever, it’s also about dragging other people into heaven alongside of us. The Holy Father invites us to be, what he calls, “missionary disciples.” We have news too good to hoard. It is meant to be shared with others. People are starving for the good news we have – the Good News of God’s love, grace, mercy. So we must not be content merely in attending to our own salvation. We are called to share the message of gospel in some way with all of those woven into our lives.
We share good news because it was first shared with us. Saying this is not limited merely to those of our family and friends who made sure that we were baptized and received our First Communion and learned our catechism. No, good news was shared with us first of all and primarily by God. God did not remain above it all, glorying on the throne of grace but burst forth in the great act of creation in order to bring divine love to you and to me. And Jesus, Jesus did not remain in Nazareth living a decent and holy life. No, he spread abroad how blessed we all are as children of God, beloved of a Heavenly Father, filled with the Holy Spirit. This suggests that good news by its very nature is supposed to spill over into the lives of others. It only takes a spark to get the fire of God’s love going.
Okay, so how do we do it? How are we to become missionary disciples, apostles of the word, spreaders of good news, sparks? The first chapter of St. Mark shows Jesus at the first moments of his vocation as a missionary, as a good news bringer. He proclaimed the gospel of God, urged repentance and belief in the gospel. “This is the time of fulfillment.” St. Mark provides a brief summary of the inauguration of Jesus’ public ministry. But did you notice the sentence that preceded the announcement of the gospel? It described the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Just a few lines – the Spirit drove Jesus into the desert, he spent forty days there, he was tempted by Satan, he was among wild beasts and the angels ministered to him. Pretty spare outline of what happened. You get the impression, though, from how St. Mark structured this text that it was Jesus’ time in the desert that prepared him for his mission, that equipped him as a missionary. This scene, therefore, can model for us how we might prepare ourselves for our own vocation to become missionary disciples.
The first thing to notice is that the temptation, the trials, the testing is part of the package. We should not imagine that because we have temptations and trials that we are somehow exempt from being missionary disciples. Since Jesus was tested we should expect no less for ourselves. Unlike Matthew and Luke, St. Mark does not tell us the nature of the temptation that Jesus endured. But I suspect that it went something like this: who do you think you are? You are just a carpenter’s son from Nazareth. You are from a small back-water town. You have no position, no status, no social prominence. You aren’t all that educated. Who do you think you are to bring the good news into the world? Let the professionals handle it – the priests and levites, the Pharisees and Sadducees. They are better equipped to be missionaries than you are. But Jesus resisted that temptation because he understood that the message he was bringing was not his own but was given to him by his heavenly Father. In a similar way, we bring good news into our homes, our workplaces, our school, our gyms not because of how good we are but because of how good God is. The devil wants us to doubt ourselves. God wants us to trust.
The second thing about this passage – St. Mark says that Jesus was “among wild beasts.” He is the only evangelist who points out this detail. Who are the wild beasts that are part of our temptation? Maybe not lions and tigers and bears, oh my, but rather all those voices that critique and criticize. We have all had those moments when we are confronted by the fact that we live in an ugly world and the Church, despite its best efforts, is not doing a very good job in making it better. So that “wild beasts” of society come at us: if God is good why is there evil in the world? What is the Church doing about racism, and ill treatment of women, and hatred, and poverty, and war, and immigration? What do you intend to do about school children being killed and police commanders shot? The fact that we feel inadequate when confronted by questions like that should not shock us. The wild beasts are real. Only the counter message of the good news at work is just as real – the good news of charity, of forgiveness, of compassion, of love.
Which leads to the other experience of Jesus in the desert: “the angels ministered to him.” Well, how are the angels ministering to us? I haven’t noticed any cherubim hanging around. Maybe the best way to apply the experience of Jesus to our situation is simply to look around. While we don’t see any angelic beings with wings and haloes and harps, we do see right in our midst those who embody the presence of God. And isn’t that what an angel is, someone who brings God to others? So we do experience angels in this community as we gather together around the altar of the Lord.
Who made you? God made me – God made me to be filled with grace, to share the good news of mercy and compassion with every person that I meet, and to join with all God’s children on the great day of jubilee when all will be well, all manner of things will be well.
