40 Days to Living Your
Mission with Christ

Day 23

You, Too, Go into My Vineyard!

“You go, too.” The call is a concern not only of pastors, clergy, and men and women religious. The call is addressed to everyone: lay people as well are personally called by the Lord, from whom they receive a mission on behalf of the Church and the world.  

— St. John Paul II, Christifideles Laici, 2

Deep within every human heart burns a desire for lasting purpose, for a truly meaningful life. In some hearts, this desire burns quietly, like a small ember waiting under thick layers of cold ash. People in that condition may try to fill their lives with earthly comforts and achievements, thinking that those things will be enough to satisfy them. They try to ignore or quench the deeper yearning. 

In other hearts the desire flames out violently, impatiently belittling anything that doesn’t directly contribute to whatever particular cause such individuals have dedicated themselves to. In this case, life can lose its balance and harmony, and people can turn even legitimate and necessary human works (i.e., curing cancer, ending world hunger) into a kind of idol. This can even lead to violence and destruction when the adopted cause or chosen means to promote it contradicts human dignity. Killing people in order to save an endangered animal or plant species, for example, is dangerously off-kilter.

The Source of Meaning

Neither earthly comforts and achievements nor ideological idols can fulfill the longings of the human heart. Our hearts are made for God and his kingdom, for everlasting life. Nothing on this side of eternity can truly satisfy them. Here we can only begin to experience the fullness of life to which God is leading us, but even that beginning is far superior to anything the secular world can give us. 

God wants us to find and follow that path of true meaning. He wants us to experience the growing fullness of life that comes with following that path. In fact, Jesus summed up his life’s mission in those terms: “I came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

Being evangelized by the Church gives us access to this path. It actually sets us on “the road that leads to life” (Matthew 7:14) by uniting us to the source of life himself — Jesus. 

Through baptism we become members of this Church that is Christ still present in the world, renewing and redeeming the human family from within. Our spiritual DNA is enhanced by baptism, so that in a sense every Christian becomes another Christ. As St. Cyprian put it way back in the third century: “Christianus alter Christus” — “Every Christian is another Christ.” The other sacraments nourish that divine life of Christ in each baptized person, as does the instruction and guidance that each receives from more mature members of the Church — parents, teachers, priests, and so on. 

Healthy Plants Bear Fruit

The healthy growth of this divine life of grace tends irresistibly to produce fruit. Healthy Christians naturally share with others the gifts of grace they have received. As they grow to spiritual maturity, they produce spiritual fruit analogous to how mature plants produce material fruit. Jesus used this image in Mark 4:26–29 to describe the growth of his kingdom.

A healthy seed grows and bears fruit — that’s what it does. The seed of grace, according to the Lord, is no different. The urge to help others live life to the fullest, the desire to help them discover the liberating truths of the gospel and experience the revitalizing mercy and love of Jesus Christ, surges up from within every mature Christian. It’s part of who we are. It’s a spiritual vital sign. 

The classic expressions of this yearning to spread the love we have been given are found strewn throughout the New Testament writings of St. Paul, the quintessential missionary. “For the love of Christ impels us,” he wrote to the Christians in Corinth (2 Corinthians 5:14). In a previous letter, he had explained his own sense of mission with another phrase that has been taken up by every Christian generation since: “If I preach the gospel, this is no reason for me to boast, for an obligation has been imposed on me, and woe to me if I do not preach it!” (1 Corinthians 9:16). 

People versus Plants

Of course, human beings are different than plants. Plants grow and bear fruit unconsciously. In the spiritual life, however, growth and fruitfulness are linked to our free cooperation, to our decision to listen and obey as “the voice of Lord clearly resounds in the depths” of our souls, to quote St. John Paul II again. As baptized Christians we are evangelizers in our very nature, but we are capable of denying that nature, of starving it or hiding it or otherwise acting against it. When we do so, we impede the Church’s mission, we fail in our call to love, and we deviate from the path of meaning that alone will satisfy the deepest longings of our heart.

Jesus’s description of this missionary aspect of our Christian identity illustrates both these dimensions — that we are evangelizers by nature ever since our baptism, but that we can act against that nature. During his Sermon on the Mount, for example, he explained:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.” (Matthew 5:13–16)

Christ’s followers are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Our identity involves bringing flavor and illumination to a world deadened and darkened by sin. As St. John Paul II said: 

God calls me and sends me forth as a laborer in his vineyard. He calls me and sends me forth to work for the coming of his Kingdom in history. This personal vocation and mission defines the dignity and the responsibility of each member of the lay faithful. 

And yet it is possible for us to become insipid salt or obscured light. As members of the Church, we are sharers in her mission, but we have to decide to live in accordance with that identity, to let our light shine before others and thus fulfill the commandment of love. That’s what we are created to do, that’s what we are called to do, that’s what the world needs us to do, and that’s what will satisfy our existential thirst for lasting fulfillment — for making a truly meaningful contribution to history. When the Lord of the vineyard looks at you and says, “You too go into my vineyard” (Matthew 20:4), he says it with a warm, eager, loving smile.

Questions for Personal Reflection or Group Discussion

What idea in this reflection struck you most and why?

When have you experienced most acutely the thirst for meaning and purpose God has placed in the depths of your soul? What did you do about it?

How deeply do you identify with this aspect of being a follower of Christ? How does your condition of being a missionary, being salt and light for the world, make you feel? Why?

Becoming aware of this missionary dimension can be overwhelming. We don’t always feel up to such a high calling. We don’t always feel properly equipped, trained, gifted, or talented. And yet the fact remains that we all share “the common vocation of all Christ’s disciples, a vocation to holiness and to the mission of evangelizing the world” (CCC, 1533). In the coming days we will explore the many different ways that mission can be lived out, which can help it be less overwhelming. 

But for today, how will you consciously express this core aspect of your deepest identity and deepest source of meaning?

• I will visit my parish church and take a few moments to reflect on all the artwork and decoration inside of it, asking myself what those images say to me about my identity as a Christian missionary.
• I will read a description of the life of my favorite saint, paying special attention to how that person lived out the missionary dimension of being a Christian.
• I will bring up my faith in a conversation where it wouldn’t usually come up, even if indirectly, and see how God uses that.
• (Write your own resolution) I will

Concluding Prayer

O God, you have willed that your Church
be the sacrament of salvation for all nations,so that Christ’s saving work may continue to the end of the ages;
stir up, we pray, the hearts of your faithful and grant that they may feel a more urgent call to work for the salvation of every creature, so that from all the peoples on earth one family and one people of your own may arise and increase.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

— Roman Missal, Collect for the Mass for the Evangelization of Peoples