Diocese of Joliet's Missionary Disciples Newsletter
Diocese of Joliet's Missionary Disciples Newsletter
A Pathway to Missionary Discipleship
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A Pathway to Missionary Discipleship

Welcome to the second issue of the Diocese of Joliet’s Missionary Discipleship newsletter. In this issue, Fr. Burke Masters, the diocesan secretary for Christian Formation and diocesan director of the Office of Adult Formation, shares a short audio reflection (less than five minutes) on a pathway to missionary discipleship. (Click above to hear it.) Please note that this pathway is a work-in-progress, and it’s offered here as a way to help you have a visual sense of a possible way to become a missionary disciple.

To fully understand what Fr. Burke shares, check out the image below, which he refers to:

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To inspire you to understand some aspects of the pathway, such as invitational friendship and encounter, here are two excerpts from content on the internet:

From a November 2018 issue of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis’ newspaper, The Criterion:

Father Todd Riebe, pastor of Christ the King Parish in Indianapolis, gave a [short anecdote] during the workshop. His personal story drove home the importance of the simplest of evangelization: inviting someone to Mass.

He spoke of how, when growing up, his family would “pile into the car” and head off to Mass every Sunday morning. And every Sunday morning a neighbor was there on her porch. She would wave to them, and they would wave to her.

Decades later, Father Riebe visited her in the hospital shortly before she died. She shared the memory of waving to his family every Sunday morning, and how she had longed each time that they would stop and invite her to Mass.

She was welcomed into full communion of the Church before she died.

“But how sad that she spent her whole life longing for Christ, when all she needed was for us to invite her,” Father Riebe reflected. “Just an invitation.”

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From a homily by Fr. Dohrman Byers, a priest in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati:

At the beginning of The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis quotes words of Pope Benedict XVI, which he says he never tires of repeating, because they take us to the very heart of the Gospel: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” Of course, the Person to whom he refers is Jesus Christ.

But the encounter with Christ most often takes place in the encounter with another. More and more I am becoming convinced that in all our efforts at evangelization, we must more and more focus on facilitating personal encounters, whether in the RCIA, marriage ministry, or social action. Such an approach is utterly low-tech and glacially slow— barely endurable in our high-speed, high-tech culture of instant mass communication and results. But the Lord was remarkably low-tech in his approach. He gave us Himself—nothing even so high-tech as a book. And He gave us a small band of disciples, whom He said He would:

  • Anoint when they anoint one another,

  • Feed when they feed one another,

  • Forgive when they forgive one another,

  • Embrace when they embrace one another,

  • Awaken when they awaken one another.

Meeting another face-to-face is a meeting with Christ, and it—perhaps it alone—can give our life a new horizon and a decisive direction. [What’s also important] is the simple openness of our encounter with one another. It—perhaps it alone—will turn us and any and every Christian into true missionary disciples.

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