Mission, abortion and crossing cultural borders

As we get ready to celebrate the great feast of Pentecost this coming weekend, we're reminded of how the Holy Spirit animated a small group of frightened and confused disciples to change the world. This first generation of missionaries took bold steps to cross barriers and leave their comfort zones to bring the message of God's love to a world that was parched and dry.

Mission has many paths. Witness and proclamation are the best known. But the paths also include offering the world the gift of Catholic social teaching to help make sense of difficult social issues. As Pope John Paul II reminded us, we are called to spread the Good New not only across geographic borders, but cultural ones as well. This brings mission into the thicket of the complex and controversial social and political issues of our day. Issues like immigration, poverty/development, death penalty and abortion. Even here, and perhaps especially here, we need to bring and proclaim love.

There is no one set way of doing this. We need to continue to explore the rich and diverse set of gifts that the Holy Spirit continues to shower down upon us to not only continue the mission, but keep it fresh, new and relevant.

Here's an example of how that might look.   Check out this link to Pastor Eugene Cho's blog on the Sojourner's webpage about a young man named Gowe — an emerging hip hop artist — and his song, “I Wonder,” which is dedicated to his biological mother.  Eugene offers Gowe's song and story as an alternative approach to looking at the abortion issue with fresh eyes.

Let us pray this Pentecost that we will be open to letting the Spirit moves us and takes us to new places to bring the message of God's love to the world.