NEW HORIZONS IN MISSION FOR 21ST CENTURY

The annual meeting of the Texas Mission Council (TMC) will explore the new dimension in Catholic Missionary efforts in its annual meeting at Cedarbrake, the Austin Diocese Retreat Center, on February 16-18, 2007. (REGISTER NOW)

Every age in the development of the human race has fashioned new priorities to guide the life and the activities of its people. So this year, TMC, recognizing the reality of profound changes in our modern life style, will highlight a new dimension in missionary labors, to investigate how ordinary people can become active missioners in today’s world. In modern jargon, we can say that this is “A how to do it program”.

Historically, active Catholic missionary efforts were limited to a certain few men and women, vowed members of religious orders and congregations, who spent their life spreading the Gospel of Jesus, either in places where the Gospel had never been heard, or where the faith was weak and in need of help to survive and grow.

In those times, the great majority of people, including most of our own ancestors, struggled to simply survive; and they hardly ever traveled more than a few miles from the place where they were born until the day that they died. Most of our ancestors were also unable to read or write. So their only real contribution to the active missions of the Church was to pray and offer small sacrifices that would physically support those special persons whose entire life was spent in active missionary work, what we might call: Professional Missioners”.

But the world has changed dramatically.

Today, most of the Catholic population of the United States, for example, is literate and quite mobile. We no longer need to spend most of our lives in manual labor, working to simply survive. We are free to travel and we have resources that only kings and nobles enjoyed in times past.

And along with these dramatic changes, a new concept of the role of ordinary Catholics in mission has evolved. And this change is the subject of TMC’s annual conference in 2007.

To bring the Catholic people of Texas into the new world of missionary activity, TMC has invited Julie Lupien, author of the book, “What About Short-Term Mission?” to our annual conference. (VIEW SCHEDULE)

Julie, as Keynote Speaker and director of dialogue on modern mission activities, will lead us and help all of us to understand the nuances and practical applications of modern missionary activities that are available to all baptized Catholics. We no longer are exclusively limited to activities that fit the lifestyle of stay-at-home missioners.

We who are blessed to be able to live in a world that offers us the ability to travel, and to understand the needs of our sisters and brothers around the globe, can now share our Faith with those others, giving and receiving from our neighbor around the world, the blessings that our Faith offers. Now we can also find our God in the eyes of new and different cultures. 

Short term mission-immersion trips and parish twinning programs are two of the ways that Catholics can participate actively in the mission of the Church in the 21st Century.

Each of the areas of modern mission, including Preparation, Immersion and Return, will be examined in depth and presented so that new missioners can enter into the world of mission, foreign and local, with a satisfactory understanding of their new life as missioners.

TMC invites all Catholics who wish to know the possibilities for their own life as missioners, to join us at Cedarbrake and step into the world of modern missions.

MISSIONER TALES FROM MARYKNOLL
THE CATHOLIC FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF AMERICA

 In a particular section of Kigali, Rwanda, where people from the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups lived together, genocidal war broke out with a bloody vengeance. Neighbors attacked neighbors. In one area, a Hutu man murdered his Tutsi neighbor.

Some time later, after the Rwandan Patriotic Front had won the war and taken over the government, local investigations of atrocities started. The wife of the dead Tutsi man was asked to identify her husband’s murderer. She refused, knowing that the Hutu man would be arrested, imprisoned, and probably killed. The woman preferred to remain silent to save another life.

 “This is enough”, she said. The killing has to stop somewhere. One murder does not justify another killing. We have to break this cycle of violence and end this genocide.”

So she chose to forgive.

Fr Joseph Healey, MM

TMC INVITES ALL WHO LOVE MISSIONS TO JOIN US
TO CELEBRATE OUR ANNUAL MISSION CONFERENCE

TEXAS MISSION CONFERENCE 2007

Short Term Mission ~ Life Long Conversion

WHERE: CEDARBRAKE (The Austin Diocese Retreat Center)
WHEN: FEBRUARY 16-18, 2007
SPEAKER: Julie Lupien - Director of From Mission to Mission,
an organization that offers support to cross-cultural missioners
when they return to their home culture

From Mission to Mission, established by re-entering missioners in 1980, is a Roman Catholic non-profit organization which provides a network for laity, religious, priests and ministers who have been involved in cross-cultural ministry, either overseas or domestically. From Mission to Mission members, in professionally facilitated environments, explore ways of rediscovering the gifts of their mission experience within their current reality.

Register now.

View Schedule.

For more information, contact:
Awanda Whitworth 713-688-1060
Or texasmissioncouncil.org