Ite Missa Est

A talk given at the Spring, 2024 meeting of the Palm Beach Diocese Southern Deanery Conference of Catholic Women.

Madame President, Honored Guests, Council Sisters:

I am sorry that I cannot be with you today, but I am on a long awaited and much needed retreat at Our Lady of Florida Spiritual Center. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our beloved president, Denise Lamberti, for conveying my message to you this month.

I taught a Lector Workshop at St. Bernadette’s in Port Saint Lucie last week. As you can imagine, the Workshop focuses on the practical matters of proclaiming the Word. One thing I talk about is that we are sent out to preach the Word by our very lives. At the end of the Latin Mass, we were told “Ite Missa Est.” That actually translates to “Go, you are sent.”

Unfortunately, when that was first translated into English, we were told “Go, the Mass is ended.” I was a teenager at the time, and my crowd always very enthusiastically responded “Thanks be to God!” Of course, that’s because we entirely missed the point: it didn’t mean “okay, time to go hang out.” We lost something in that first English translation!

Leaving St. Bernadette’s, where you would expect a stop sign, you instead find a sign that says, “You are now entering the Mission Field.”

What would life look like if we actually took that to heart, and lived like that every day? What if we actually lived our lives as missionaries?

I’ve talked before about how we need to live what we claim we believe; to live each moment as a witness of Christ. We do this in ways both small and large. We are not all called to stand on A1A and pray aloud – but some of us are. We are not all called to teach CCD – but some of us are. We are not all called to be Lectors – but some of us are.

But all of us are called to preach in an ordinary way by our very lives. St. Francis of Assisi is believed to have said: “Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.”

How do you preach wordlessly? By living a life that reflects the virtues illustrated in the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes turn our expectations of what is good from human terms to heavenly terms. We are called to be poor in spirit, and to be meek. In human terms, those are bad traits. In the world, to be meek is to be a pushover; to be easily imposed upon. In Biblical terms, to be meek is to be like Mary, to have an attitude or quality of heart that makes you willing to accept and submit without resistance to the will of God. To be poor in spirit means not only acknowledging our deep need for God, but to also grow in that longing every day, and to deepen our dependence on God throughout our lives.

Even the Beatitudes that are straightforward turn our minds heavenward. “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.” And what is it that comforts us? It is the knowledge that we have, through faith, that our loved ones have left behind earth to live in heaven; the knowledge that we will one day join them there; the knowledge that we are all called to eternal life in heaven.

And this is not only our own destined journey, but the journey of every soul ever born. God wants all of us, his children, to one day live with him in heaven for eternity. Our job on earth is to gain heaven for ourselves – and we best do that by both following others and leading others; by learning our faith, by practicing our faith, and by passing our faith on to all those we encounter.

So, as that sign at St. Bernadette’s reminds us, whenever we are out in the world, we are missionaries. Each of us has our own particular work of mission to fulfill. Each of us has been given a task by our heavenly father. We each have our own vocation, yet all of our vocations have the same goal – to live our lives for the greater glory of God.

I’ll end with a challenge. Over the next few months, consider this: What is your vocation? How do you live your vocation? What one thing did you do that day, that week, that month, to fulfill your work of mission?

You just might be surprised by what you find out about yourself – and about God.