On the Mission of the Church

"Mission is putting love where love is not."

St. John of the Cross

Remembering Oscar Romero

Today on the Episcopal Church's calendar we remember Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador.  At Mass today, the priest read this "prayer" from Romero. 

A Prayer by Oscar Romero

"It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything,
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders;
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own."
Amen.

Christ of the Burnt Men

by Thomas Merton, OCSO

"Do not ask when it will be or how it will be:
On a mountain or in a prison,
in a desert or in a concentration camp
or in a hospital or at Gethsemani.
It does not matter.
So do not ask me, because I am not going to tell you.
You will not know until you are in it.

But you shall taste the true solitude of my anguish and my poverty
and I shall lead you into the high places of my joy and you shall
die in Me and find all things in My mercy which has created you
for this end. . .

That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ
of the burnt men."


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From Thomas Merton's seminal work, The Seven Storey Mountain (New York: Garden City Books, 1951), 422-423.