From: Joachim Omolo Ouko
News Dispatch with Omolo Joachim
ST JOHN PAUL II THE GREAT MISSIONARY
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015
October 18, 2015 is World Mission Sunday, usually celebrated third Sunday in October every year. Since Obambo Parish is named after St Paul II and his feast celebrated October 22, Liturgical committee agreed that instead of October 22 the day be celebrated on Sunday October 18, given that, despite being our patron saint he was also a great missionary.
During his reign Pope John Paul made 104 foreign trips, more than all previous popes combined. In total he logged more than 1,167,000 km (725,000 ml). He consistently attracted large crowds on his travels, some among the largest ever assembled.
He travelled to Kenya in 1980, 1985vand 1995 respectively. In 2000, he became the first modern Catholic pope to visit Egypt, where he met with the Coptic Pope and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria.
World Mission Sunday is a day set aside for the Catholic Church throughout the world to publicly renew its commitment to the missionary movement. It was created by Pope Pius XI in 1926 as the day of prayer and propaganda of missions.
Throughout the world the faithful will reflect on the universal call to Mission of all the baptized and they will be invited to contribute what they can to support the development and growth of the young churches throughout the world.
In Australia, Catholic Mission has designated Wednesday 21 October 2015 as Children’s Mission Day to promote mission in a manner appropriate and relevant to students, and to celebrate the wonderful fundraising efforts to support Catholic Mission’s work with children worldwide.
My colleagues Apostles of Jesus Missionaries working in Australia are telling me they have already begun talking with children the important of this day. When we allow God to act through us in love for others, bringing the fruits of the spirit into the world—reconciliation, forgiveness, justice, peace, harmony, joy, and love—we build God’s family and help everyone experience fullness of life.
Children can all act to reduce poverty around the world and improve the quality of life for all our brothers and sisters of God’s family. We can stand in solidarity with all who suffer exclusion, poverty and injustice and whose life is in some way diminished.
In his message, Pope Francis says that being a missionary is not about proselytizing or mere strategy; mission is part of the “grammar” of faith, something essential for those who listen to the voice of the Spirit who whispers “Come” and “Go forth”.
Mission is a passion for Jesus and at the same time a passion for his people. When we pray before Jesus crucified, we see the depth of his love which gives us dignity and sustains us. At the same time, we realize that the love flowing from Jesus’ pierced heart expands to embrace the People of God and all humanity.
Today the pope says in his message, the Church’s mission is faced by the challenge of meeting the needs of all people to return to their roots and to protect the values ??of their respective cultures.
This means knowing and respecting other traditions and philosophical systems, and realizing that all peoples and cultures have the right to be helped from within their own traditions to enter into the mystery of God’s wisdom and to accept the Gospel of Jesus, who is light and transforming strength for all cultures.
Within this complex dynamic, we ask ourselves: “Who are the first to whom the Gospel message must be proclaimed?” The answer, found so often throughout the Gospel, is clear: it is the poor, the little ones and the sick, those who are often looked down upon or forgotten, those who cannot repay us (cf. Lk 14:13-14).
Evangelization directed preferentially to the least among us is a sign of the Kingdom that Jesus came to bring: “There is an inseparable bond between our faith and the poor. This must be clear above all to those who embrace the consecrated missionary life.
By the vow of poverty, they choose to follow Christ in his preference for the poor, not ideologically, but in the same way that he identified himself with the poor: by living like them amid the uncertainties of everyday life and renouncing all claims to power, and in this way to become brothers and sisters of the poor, bringing them the witness of the joy of the Gospel and a sign of God’s love.
The day is being celebrated at the time an Austrian nun who spent over 60 years caring for poor children has been killed. Sister Stefani Tiefenbacher of the Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood, 86, was killed in her room in the night in June.
The nun who tirelessly dedicated herself to the poor children of the local community was staying at the mission of the Sacred Heart of Ixopo, in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, in the east of South Africa.
It is also at the time a nun in India has been raped in March this year during the robbery. A 72-year-old sister was raped when she tried to stop a robbery, she was raped and hospitalized.
It is the time worry continues to mount in Ukraine as a priest and a nun, both members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, were murdered within days of each other in the early hours of July 26. Father Roman Nikolayev, prior of the Church of the Great Martyr Tatiana in Kiev, was shot twice in the head by unknown assailants.
A Nigerian Catholic priest has also been killed in an attempted robbery. Father Goodwill Onyeka of the Diocese of Oyo, along with his younger brother, Onyeka Obi, died the evening of June 1 on the way to Owo-Oba-Akoko, in the state of Ondo, in southern Nigeria.
According to Fide report, bandits tried to stop the vehicle in which the priest and his brother were traveling to Lagos. A young priest was also shot dead during a burglary at a Catholic church in Phoenix, Arizona.
Father Kenneth Walker, 28, associate pastor of Mater Misericordiae (Mother of Mercy) Mission Church was attacked along with the pastor, Father Joseph Terra, during a break-in. Fr. Walker later died in, while Fr. Terra, 56, remains in critical but stable condition.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578 E-mail obolobeste@gmail.com
Omolo_ouko@outlook.com
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