Then Jesus approached and said to them, "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age." 

Introductory Prayer: My Lord and my God, You are sheer goodness and infinite mercy. I thank you with all my heart for the countless gifts you have given me, especially for creating and redeeming me, for freeing me from so many dangers of soul and body, for calling me to the Catholic faith, and especially for the great gift of my Baptism. I believe that when I was baptized I came to share in the great mission of bringing all people to know and love you, the one true God, and the one you sent, Jesus Christ. Help me to find, know, understand, and embrace generously the particular mission you have given me within the Church. Let me be with you today, let me speak with you, listen to you, and conform my entire life wholly to your Will. I ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord. Amen. 

Petition: Heavenly Father, help me to understand more with my heart than with just my head - that an essential part of my Christian vocation is to accomplish throughout my life the mission I have received from you. Give me the grace I need to grasp what that mission is, to embrace it generously, and to fulfill it faithfully. In Jesus' name. Amen. 

1.  Christ Makes His Disciples Sharers in the Mission.  During his public ministry, Jesus sent out the twelve apostles; he later sent out the seventy-two disciples. Furthermore, the effect of encountering Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospel narratives, is one of excitement, of a desire to go and find others that they might come and have a similar experience: Andrew goes and finds Peter; Philip goes and finds Nathaniel; the man from Gadara, once freed from the oppression of demons, goes and tells everyone in his town what Jesus had done for him; the Samaritan woman goes back into her village of Sychar and tells everyone to come and see a man who told her everything she ever did! An authentic encounter with Christ impels us to bring others to him. And just as with his disciples, Jesus sends each one of us to go and work for the establishment of his Kingdom. The mission entrusted to the apostles on Ascension Thursday - "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations!" - is a mission entrusted, not only to the apostles and their successors, but to the whole Church and to each and every member incorporated into the Church through Baptism. 

2.  Awareness of the Mission in Our Lives.  "Go therefore, and make disciples of all the nations." Those words are addressed to you and me! We should feel those words penetrate us deeply, personally. Christ is calling me, with all my peculiarities, with all of my defects and inadequacies, to collaborate with him in spreading the Kingdom. He has in mind a very particular way that he wants me to do this: through the responsibilities of my state in life and through specific apostolic activity. 

The mission is essential to the Christian life: the Father sends Christ to fulfill a mission; Christ sends the baptized to fulfill a mission. 

But this realization will only carry the weight that it should if we consider it frequently, if we make it a part of our daily examination of conscience, if we talk to Christ about it and contemplate Christ, the great conqueror of hearts, who continues to conquer those hearts from every tabernacle in every Catholic Church in the world! 

Jesus wants to light a fire within us: "I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!" (Lk 12: 49). Sensing the urgency of this mission must stem from frequent and profound consideration of the tragic state of secularized culture, and of the agonizingly slow pace with which Christ's truth makes progress in the world, while, to the contrary, the forces of darkness - aided by the mass media - make their product so readily and immediately available! 

3. The Ssense of Urgency to Fulfill the Mission.  An essential aspect of Christianity, of which the Pope John Paul II often reminded us, is the sense of urgency its members are called to cultivate with regard to the mission. There is a lot of work to be done, and everyone has to take an active role. An authentic Catholic cannot be passive. Such a person is not given to sterile lamentations, or pessimism, but characteristically "says little and does much", and leads by example. This kind of apostle actively looks for ways to establish the values of the Gospel in the immediate surroundings: home, work, local community. He or she is driven by a sense that there is so much to do for Christ, so many people who need to encounter Christ but have the same complaint as the traveler the deacon Philip met in Samaria: "How can I, unless someone instructs me?" (Acts 8:31) 

What would the world be like if ALL of its 1,005,254,000 Catholics were on fire for the mission? What would America (North and South) be like if ALL of its 495,756,000 Catholics were alive to the mission? 

Christ calls us to act urgently. The need is so great, and there are so few hands generous enough to collaborate! We must work urgently for the cause of Christ. Millions of our brothers and sisters are waiting for us to bring the bread of the Gospel to soothe their hunger for God. We are sorely mistaken if we believe that passivity is the fruit of Christianity. To be a Christian means to do violence to oneself, to confront and take on the enemies of God (one's own passions, the devil, the world - in a word, all those who place obstacles to the coming of the Kingdom)... Christianity moves us at all times to work actively and specifically for the service of God and neighbor. This is not to say we should be all activism and no prayer, but rather that our prayer too should be marked by the urgency of the coming of the kingdom. 

Christ has his hope placed on us in a very special way. We know well that he came to bring fire to the world, and that he wants that fire to burn everywhere, but we should also know that he has placed the torch in our hands. The world will not burn if we don't make the first move; there might even be some corner of this world where that flame doesn't reach because we don't get there... We are Christ's hope, we are his fire, his hands. In a very real way, this cold and ignorant world is crying out for us to bring it that fire which we carry in our heart. 

Conversation: Lord Jesus, I give you my hands to do your work. I give you my feet to follow your path. I give you my eyes to see as you see. I give you my tongue to speak your words. I give you my mind so you can think in me. I give you my spirit so you can pray in me. Above all I give you my heart so in me you can love your Father and all people. I give you my whole self so you can grow in me; till it is you, Christ, who live and work and pray in me. Amen. 

Questionnaire

1. Do I possess a sense of urgency about doing something for Christ and the Church? If not, why is this lacking in me? 

2. As I listen to the command "Go therefore, and make disciples of all the nations" what do I feel Christ is calling me to do? What is the particular mission that I am called to in the circumstances of my life as a Christian? Have I really embraced that mission? How well am I fulfilling it? 

3. Do I engage actively in some apostolic activity? Have I considered before God the possibility of placing my time and talents at his disposal in accord with my realistic possibilities?