PARISH MISSIONS
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What is the point of a parish mission?
Are parish missions necessary? Who benefits from parish missions?
A mission is an opportunity for a
parish to experience in a heightened and intense way spiritual services,
sermons, and Sacraments focusing on the major themes of our Faith.
We all know of parishes where we can
find people who habitually neglect Mass on Sunday and on feasts of obligation,
even though they could go without any difficulty. Such people, if they go to
their annual confession, manifest some kind of sorrow when questioned about
this point, and promise to amend. Yet, after having attended Mass twice or
three times, miss it again the same as before. Next year they make the same
promises, and the same relapses follow. Nothing but a good mission will bring
these people to a change of their stubborn dispositions and make practical
Catholics out of them.
In every parish, there is a smaller or
greater number of such as neglect the Sacraments for years, and all the efforts
of a zealous pastor, of a solicitous mother or wife, of committed relatives and
friends, all the prayers of pious souls, are unsuccessful in bringing them to
reconcile with God. Nothing but a well-conducted mission can bring about their
conversion.
In these cases, only the plain (but
forcible) exposition of the evil of sin and its terrible consequences on the
one hand, and the reflection on the mercy and goodness of God on the other,
made by experienced missionaries who have experience in dealing with such
cases, can make an irresistible impression upon their perverted hearts. Only a
good parish mission may be able to bring these souls back to God.
The benefits that grow from parish
missions in Christ’s vineyard cannot easily be overestimated. Parish missions
are times of extraordinary grace in which the kingdom of God is re-established
in the hearts of the faithful, sinners are restored to God’s friendship, tepid
souls are re-animated to a life of fervor, and the righteous are encouraged in
their efforts to aim at still greater perfection. In a word, a mission
well-made destroys the kingdom of Satan, purifies and renovates the parish, and
glorifies the Church of God.
With good parish missions, the better portion of
the parishioners are strengthened in their faith; they learn to appreciate
their religion in greater measure and to practice it more cheerfully; and they
are put on their guard against dangers that threaten them at the present, or
may rise up against them in the future. The weaker portion of the congregation
is animated to greater fervor; the wayward are brought back; the erring are
enlightened; the ignorant are instructed; and all classes of sinners are
brought to repentance and to true reconciliation with God and His Church.
