MISSION AND THE YEAR OF THE PRIEST
With great pleasure, and at the request of my Pastor Archbishop Terrence, I have agreed to write a few lines on the meaning of mission in the Year of the Priest. My name is Gilles Poirier, and I have been a missionary Ad Gentes for more than 40 years. Although I belong to the Société des missions étrangères, I am also a Diocesan priest of Ottawa. For 10 years now, I have been working in Kenya.
Traditionally, the word “mission” meant “going abroad”. Today, mission has no boundaries: here in Canada and in every other country. And everywhere, too, pastors experience both hope and powerlessness.
Mission today is not centered on liturgy, but rather on transmitting values. In a world where many values are shattered and people live in deep isolation, no one is indifferent to the values of justice, sharing, dialogue, equality, and love.
In this Year of the Priest, an opportunity for “interior renewal” and “to invigorate our witnessing to the world”, we could remain very frustrated if the focus is set on religious practice, but it can become a source of dynamism, if we see the world and our Church through the eyes of Jesus Christ.
Indeed, looking at humanity as Jesus did, we can see things very differently. Jesus was born and died in a world full of corruption and violence, but he always believed that in the heart of humans was found more beauty than ugliness, and also that our daily actions produced more good than evil. In mission, we often see the negative, but if we go beyond first impressions, the effects of our work can be observed.
I often see this in the eyes of people in Kibera (near Nairobi, Kenya), one of the largest shanty towns of Africa. In their smiles, their faces, bursting with joy in spite of the daily dramas in their lives. If they feel we love them, that we respect them, they commit to live the Gospel values, and they begin to grow.
I say once more: today, mission is not a place, but much more a way of being. And again, through the eyes of Jesus we can look at the reality of our own diocesan Church. We can see the decrease in numbers as a negative reality, but we can also see it as the Church becoming a missionary Church. The presence of non-Canadian priests and pastoral workers is not the result of the whims of fate, but a new sign of the presence of the Spirit among us, a presence demonstrating the beauty and the universality of our Church.
Indeed, as Canadian missionaries, we have helped new Churches to grow, to open up new horizons and to become adult. Now, they can help us to be enriched and become truly universal and intercultural as the whole of society is.
I strongly believe that this Year of the Priest can truly be an opportunity for renewal, for hope and interiority, for a sudden flourish of the Gospel values before all men and women.
Let this Year of the Priest help us love our priesthood, because we can communicate to others only the things we love. Priesthood belongs to the Spirit, who can work marvellous deeds through us.
Gilles Poirier, smé