Every year on the 4th Sunday of October, we are invited by the Church community to celebrate Mission Sunday, a day that we focus on the Call to Mission that each of us has received through our Baptism.
Growing up I thought that folks called to do mission work in other countries were rather special in the eyes of the world. It wasn’t until I had my own lived experience with Scarboro Missions working in the Diocese of Mzuzu in Malawi that I looked at my experience in another country with different eyes.
Sister Ann in Malawi with former students
I was not special in responding to this call at all…I was blessed and graced to live among the people of Mzuzu offering my gifts to serve wherever I was needed. It was I who was transformed and renewed in spirit leaving behind my preconceived notion that I came to change the people I had been called to serve - after all, I was the missionary!
Sister Ann, left, with Sister Veronica and MIC postulants
Living in Malawi, I became sensitized to new themes of Christianity and certainly experienced a reverse culture shock and alienation from my own culture when I returned to Canada after 8 years away. Like other returned missionaries I faced into choosing between a couple of possibilities. I could settle back into old ways of consumerism and of exercising domination over others or I could channel that feeling of alienation to identify with people in our country who look different, who speak a different language, who experience racism every day. A quote from an author, Cyril Powles has been an inspiration for me since my return from Africa. It reads: “One goes overseas so as to come back – to come back as an activist, a marginal person and a perpetual sojourner.” While I would not claim that I am fully living this invitation as I would like to, I continue to be reminded each day that it is impossible for me to unbecome what I learned and lived from my living with and among the people of Mzuzu Diocese for 7 years.
The invitation to be a missionary is a personal call to get involved here in our own country in some of the many issues facing us as a Nation. We read daily in our papers and online about addressing with others the impact of climate change; about refugees fleeing their country of origin coming to live in a safer country; about offering support to our Indigenous brothers and sisters; about accompaniment with the hungry and homeless who perhaps live in our neighborhoods.
“Listening to God, to the universe, and to the world’s pulse, we trust whole making energies are released in ourselves as we use our skills, experience and knowledge to become a missionary in our own country and in the communities where we live.”
-Sister Ann MacDonald, csj