Mission Sunday will be celebrated on Sunday 18 October. The theme this year “Together we can do more: Blessed are the peacemakers” (Mt. 5:9). During this month of October we seek to help everyone understand and respond to the call of mission. We respect all cultures and traditions by treating everyone as brothers and sisters under one loving God. And we serve those most in need, in some of the most impoverished, inaccessible areas of the world. But help is needed! This need for help and solidarity is made more acute by the onset of Covid-19 and its devastating effects on families, communities and churches. That is why we are being asked to make an extra effort his year.
The annual collection for World Missions will be held on Mission Sunday. Please give as generously as you can. You may also donate via the iDonate button on the Homepage of this website – https://www.idonate.ie/donation_widget/register-donor-anonymous.php?pid=4389. You can indicate World Missions / Propagation of the Faith fund as your choice at Step 3.
Through your ongoing support of World Mission Sunday you are providing basic infrastructure from which the Church can thrive overseas by helping communities to build schools, clinics, churches and parish halls; by preparing the future leaders, teachers and carers of our Church and by supporting the training of sisters, priests, religious brothers and catechists. Supporting programmes that protect and care for children’s spiritual and physical well-being, offering them safe shelter, healthcare and education is also vital. Above all, we offer hope for the future. Together we are mission. Together we can do more!
Click on the link below to see a film about the work that is supported through the generosity of parishioners here in the Diocese of Clogher and throughout the world.
https://www.wmi.ie/wms?mc_cid=3e16fafd70&mc_eid=9b0e7d8a9b
For further information visit www.wmi.ie
Press Release from the Diocese of Clogher – 14 October 2020
This coming Sunday is World Missions Sunday, better known as Mission Sunday, when Catholics mark the work done by missionaries across the world. The theme for World Mission Sunday 2020 is Together we can do more: blessed are the peacemakers. It calls for solidarity with missionaries and their communities as best as possible. There will be a special collection in each parish and parishioners are asked to return their contributions to the parish as soon as possible or to make an online donation via www.clogherdiocese.ie iDonate facility (on the homepage).
Speaking this week, the Bishop of Clogher, Bishop Larry Duffy, said that this year’s Mission Sunday was different. ‘This year, the circumstances in which we mark this Sunday are so different, here in Ireland and all over the world. Parishes everywhere are facing financial pressures due to reduced income and continuing costs. Communities and missionaries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are also struggling, even to a much greater extent, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, we are called to make an extra-special effort to support them this year’ , he said.
The funds raised from the annual World Missions collection in each parish is sent on in full from the diocese to form part of the Holy Father’s Universal Solidarity Fund. This is a lifeline for some of the most marginalised communities, helping them to build schools, healthcare facilities and churches and to provide future leaders – priests and lay – of the local church communities.
Bishop Duffy has recently set up a Mission Support Team in the diocese to work closely with the Diocesan Director of Mission Awareness, Fr Brian Early in promoting not just World Mission Sunday but the missions generally.
Ends
A reflection on Mission in Parish by Deacon Martin Donnelly, Enniskillen:
Being a Missionary in Parish!
October has been designated as a month to remember ‘#Mission’. From an early age I associated the word Mission with faraway places like Africa, the Philippines and the far East. I remember bringing in a ‘penny’ in old money every Friday to put in the Mission Box in school. Every time we gave a penny my teacher, Sister Philip- a saintly Presentation sister- would say ‘Thank you for being a Missionary today’. I have to admit I never really understood how that could be. For me ,Missionaries were Priests or Sisters who came to the Parish each year to talk about their work in far off places, so how on earth could I -a child- be a Missionary?
As I reflect now on what it means to be a Missionary, I really believe my P1,2 and 3 teacher’s words. We are called to be missionaries from the day of our Baptism and we don’t have to travel abroad to fulfil that calling. I often think of Columbanus, the greatest of all Irish missionaries to help us give meaning to our own pilgrim journey. More than half of Columbanus’s life was spent at home and there he lived out what would have been considered “green martyrdom”. Columbanus embraced the challenges of everyday life, something that each of us is called to. It was only in late middle-age years that he felt called to leave his monastery in Bangor to spread the Gospel as a migrant in Europe.
Columbanus’s tremendous love and respect for nature was an important part of his life. As a student of the great teacher and Abbot St Sinnell on the island of Cleenish in Clogher Diocese he lived simply. While the monks lived off the land, rivers and seas, they did not devastate the forests, neither did they deplete the rivers of fish. They befriended the wilderness and even made friends with the wild beasts and animals. They were the precursors of that inspirational deacon St. Francis of Assisi and his love for nature and calls us to a new respect for ecology in Ireland. This is a mission that is grounded in our own particular reality and the ground we walk on today. It is a mission that recognises the presence of God in our midst, who speaks to us in the telling of our story, who connects with us through those with whom we live at home and who touches us through people we meet in our community and workplaces. As missionaries we show respect for our land, our heritage our common home.
Being a missionary means taking seriously the words of St Ignatius of Loyola to see God in all things and in all people. It means reaching out to people, putting the needs of others before our own. In our homes we put the needs of our family members before our own tending and caring for them. We do not have to look far form our own front door to find people in need of nourishment. By nourishment I mean not only food to sustain the body but food for the soul. The food for the soul is to be found in the Word of God and the sacraments.
As Missionaries today in our parish community, each time we perform a kindly action for someone , offer a word of encouragement , put a coin in the SVP or Mission box , visit someone who is sick or lonely, comfort someone who is bereaved or is a victim of cruelty or injustice . When we pray for a priest or sister in far off places and share some of our own resources with them we are living out the Mission of proclaiming the Gospel in action.
October is also a month dedicated to the Rosary. As a child I remember serving October devotions in the Church and kneeling every evening at 6pm to say the Family Rosary in May and October. In our October devotion this year let us ask Mary our Mother to intercede to Jesus for the work of all Missionaries. Sr Philip was correct back in the 1960’s it took me a while to realise her message that I was indeed a missionary. You are too!
