18-May-2003
Missionaries
I didn´t want to be a missionary, just a volunteer. The word
missionary brought up the image of a street preacher (even though I´d never
actually seen one) shouting at people about their sins, threatening them
with hell, and assuring them they could escape it all by acknowledging
somebody named Jesus. The whole setup just didn´t seem right, and even
if it did, I knew that I wasn´t the person for the job. Who was I to
claim that I could save souls?
So, I joined the Volunteer Missionary Movement despite the "Missionary"
part, not because of it. Perhaps out of a sense of guilt, I thought
that perhaps I should try to become a little more like those evangelizing
preachers. Or, failing that, I could at least make sure I followed all
the rules very carefully: don’t eat meat on Friday during lent, fast
for an hour before receiving communion, attend church every Sunday, etc.
While I still believe that all of our traditions can be very valuable,
my understanding of what a missionary is, or should be, has gone much
further.
I think it began while living with the Brothers of the Sacred Heart in
Mississippi. For a year, I was a part of their volunteer (not
missionary!) program, working as a teacher and technology coordinator for their
middle and high school. I was quite certain that I wanted to be
treated just like any other teacher; I didn’t want any special treatment or
exceptions made for me because I was a "volunteer", and I definitely
didn’t want people to make a big deal about it. But, part-way through the
year, when I realized that I was getting my wish, I started to wonder.
If I was just like all the other teachers, why was I volunteering? Why
didn’t I get a paying job? I could have made a lot more money as a
computer programmer and donated the difference to charity, if I wished.
Sure, I went to prayer and ate meals with the Brothers, but how was my
work different from any other teacher’s?
I joined VMM (Volunteer Missionary Movement) without having answered
that question, and they sent me to Guatemala to be a teacher. Again. If
I had wanted to be a teacher, I would have studied education, not
computer science! This time, I knew that I didn’t want to be just another
teacher, but what could I do to set myself apart?
Fortunately, my first priority was not my occupation. I looked upon
the time I would be spending in Guatemala as a chance to improve my own
spiritual life while doing a little bit of good at the same time. I
knew that some big changes might be in store for me, but did I really
understand how big? I had agreed to send some newsletters about my
experiences to the family and friends who were supporting my mission through
their prayers and donations (as well as others who weren’t supporting
me, and probably delete all those mass emails as soon as they see my
name). I was immediately surprised at the positive feedback I received
from so many people, and I began to understand what VMM had been talking
about when they told us that our real mission was to the people at home.
It sounded like just a bunch of nice-sounding talk at the time, but now
I began to take my article writing very seriously, realizing that it
was a way for others to participate in my mission and benefit from my
experiences, even though they were unable to accompany me physically.
Meanwhile, I found myself in an even more confusing situation than when I
was in Mississippi. I turned out to be, more or less, just another
teacher on the staff at Centro Fautino Villanueva. On top of that, I, a
single young man, was paid by the school roughly the same amount as
middle aged teachers with families! Sure, it was a big pay cut for ME, but
I earned more than the county’s average family! And I was supposed to
be a "volunteer."
So, once again, I was confronted with the question of just what I was
supposed to be doing. If I wasn’t a volunteer, did that mean I had to
be a missionary? I had been trying to accustom myself to the word
missionary, telling my fellow Volunteer Missioners that we ought to change
the meaning of the word by our example (they vehemently refused to be
called missionaries, based on the word’s troubled past), and now that I
was forced to confront the fact that I couldn’t really consider myself a
volunteer, about the only thing I could use to set myself apart was to
say I was a missionary. And, surprisingly enough, I discovered that
because my own concept of "missionary" had changed, the word no longer
freaked me out.
As I met more and more missionaries who had come, not to preach, but to
serve the poor as Jesus served the poor, I gained a better
understanding of what being a missionary ought to mean. Jesus worked among
society’s outcasts, saving people’s souls and bodies, but not by binding them
to observe certain rites and ceremonies. All the proper words of
devotion or theology that I could teach somebody would not tell them as much
about God’s love as a single act of mercy. Being a missionary means
serving while struggling to make yourself a better person, trying to come
closer to God. Sometimes, mission is merely being present. If we
preach, we do so as suggested by St. Frances of Assisi, "Preach the gospel
at all times...If necessary, use words." And if we convert anybody, the
first to be converted is the missionary himself.
Perhaps I have now been given an answer to the questions I first
confronted in Mississippi. Your work and your life make you a missionary,
not a special ceremony or an ordination. I was never just a volunteer;
whether I knew it or not, I was a missionary, and always will be. All
of us are missionaries through our lives and work, even if we never
leave our home town or speak of religion. The question is, "What message
are we preaching?"
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