Called to Mission

“The question is, do we let God draw us in, and do we embrace Jesus and let Him feed our soul, or do we take it all for granted, get lost in the distractions, and pass Him by?”

“That is why the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul resonate with me. They had strengths and weaknesses and met with overwhelming difficulties. Jesus mandated that they both to lead the Church despite their shortcomings. Am I, too, worthy?”

“The knowledge of Christ is given not seized and can be given to all, even to a traitor and a persecutor. And not only that, but the Church can be built on such people.”

“from very early in the second century, and with Ignatius already late in the first, the local church in Rome had precedence, a ‘presidency of love’, within the communion of all the churches, something that a bishop from Syria like Ignatius took for granted, unchallenged”

“We may suffer like St Peter and St Paul, but our sufferings because we are members of God’s holy people are united mystically to the sufferings of Jesus Our Lord for the redemption of the world”

“When the sense of mission is lost in a community then numbers dwindle and the parish declines, and we become museum keepers rather than evangelisers”

“The lives of Peter and Paul witness to the truth that the Church is founded upon, and held together by, the forgiveness of God. The Church is never a community of the perfect, but always a community of sinners who need forgiveness.”

“St Peter and St Paul are not lawless. They are impelled by a specific impulse to tell a specific truth that cannot be hidden, or suppressed.”

“This Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul is about how faith in Jesus Christ engages each of us”

“Peter and Paul both died for the truth and the truth is beyond the grasp of any ideology. Both these saints, with their different missions, invite us to continue our pilgrimage towards it.”

“With so much in the world seeming to be against it, the love of God has to be shown in a ‘greater love’; in being willing to dedicate, or even give up, our lives, for it”

“If we cannot see any difference between ourselves and others in the way that we love, in the way that we forgive, in the way that we vote, in the way that we use our money, then we are not really disciples of Jesus.”

“The core of the Christian message can only be communicated really effectively from heart to heart, by people who have a lively faith themselves”

“Let us hope, then, that there will be given to us, as was given to Peter and Paul, the courage and the patience to rest within the creative hands of God, however slow and painful our progress towards perfection seems”

“The Church has to be bothguardian and prophet”