Mission Sunday 2026
This weekend we celebrate Mission Sunday the day when we celebrate the missionary effort of the church in the world. Today, World Mission Day is celebrated in Ireland in October. Our annual celebration of Mission Sunday gives us the opportunity to acknowledge all the missionary men and women who left everything behind in order to bring the light of faith to the far corners of the world. All of us will have heard of someone who has joined one of the missionary orders such as Columbans, Mill Hill Fathers, St. Patricks Fathers the Medical Missionaries of Mary there are many other missionary religious orders who along with the Lay Missionary movements have gone out into the world to bring the message of the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
In our first reading the trauma of the Babylonian exile was ended by the Persian king, Cyrus. After conquering the power of Babylon, he issued a decree that all the peoples who had been taken should be allowed to return to their home country. The author of this section of Isaiah sees God working through the king for the sake of the Chosen People. In our Second reading from the letter to the Thessalonians suggests that Paul had spent some time in Thessalonika. His companions, Timothy and Silvanus, join him in sending greetings to the largely Gentile Christian community that he had established. From the exuberant tone of the final verse, we get the impression that Paul’s teaching had been received with much enthusiasm. In a pagan world, the message that there was a God of love must have come as an exhilarating force for transformation in their lives. This Sundays Gospel passage is built around the saying in verse 21, “Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God”. It is a “wisdom saying” and the passage invites us to enter into it with our feelings. Its truth should touch us so deeply that we are filled with humility as we realise that we do not live up to it as individuals, as Church and as communities when we put Cesar before God. Perhaps Jesus’ words that the coin which bears Caesar’s image belongs to Caesar means also that those things which bear the image of God belong to God.
We have the responsibility as people of faith to speak the truth with charity, clarity and conviction. We also have the responsibility to work and pray for peace especially when so much of the world is currently at war. God wants all of us to experience his saving presence in our lives. It is through God’s grace that we have received the Gospel Message of faith and then we are sent by the Holy Spirit to be ambassadors of heavenly Father. Will we accept the invitation to join in God’s mission by our prayers and support for those who are out there on the missions as well as those who need our help closer to home on the mission fields that sadly many of our countries have become. When we think about the three parables we have heard over recent weeks, we can say that the idea of giving back to God what belongs to God can be understood as giving back the love, generosity, justice and goodness we have received from our father in heaven. Just as God did not lose anything by giving us these gifts, we don’t lose anything by making them real in our lives, so that others may also see them and share in God’s life through us. Our prayer today is that the Lord will continue to inspire many people to join the missionary effort of the Church locally and throughout the world so that the love of God may be passed on to each generation in its turn as it has been passed on to all of us in our own time and place.
