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CHOOSE MISSION
The church must choose mission over maintenance. So says Pope Francis, from a seat that puts him in the most natural position to make the opposite determination. After all, if you're the CEO of an organization, it's your job to keep the institution up and running. This requires multiple trips to the boiler room and to accounting, before you can comfortably enter the boardroom.
Yet the pope chooses mission. He recommends we all do. To be sure, Francis has spent a good part of his papacy reorganizing the Curia, reprioritizing the leadership, and emphasizing synodality. This is maintenance, though with an eye to correcting the sense of mission. Encyclicals like Laudato si' on care for our common home are a bracing reminder of our mission to pursue comprehensive justice. We may think of it as a "Save the whales" encyclical, when it's so much more than that. It calls for a reexamination of politics and economics, social responsibility, and the use of technology. It recommends revisiting the anthropocentric worldview as well as our lifestyles. All of which have ramifications for how we celebrate—indeed, how we understand—our sacramental life.
As Catholics, we often default to maintenance mode. We go to church, say prayers, gather graces, perfect our personal moral code, and close the door on religion at that meager threshold. Church can't be reduced to going to church, or to ensuring the salvation of our individual souls. "God so loved the world" is a line that lingers. Anything less comprehensive is a neglect of the mission.
—Alice Camille,
reprinted with permission from TrueQuest Communications
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