To be disciples of Christ according to His heart, through ongoing conversion, sanctification, and mission

The title is the first mission of The Emmaus. We can try to break down this statement and see what we can do to achieve this mission statement. I will refer to articles made by Archbishop Fulton Sheen in many parts of this reflection.

To be disciples of Christ

There do we get the word "disciples" from the story of Emmaus? It is mentioned in the beginning of the story.

And behold, two of them went, the same day, to a town which was sixty furlongs from Jerusalem, named Emmaus.

Disciples means the one that sits at the feet. I got that description when I attended Logos (bible study) session. The first time I heard of that definition, there was one bible passage that came to my mind. It is the story about Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42).

Mary was listening to Jesus' words at the feet while Martha was distracted by serving many things. Here we are presented with two type of work, active work and contemplative work. Mary was highly associated with contemplative work while Martha was with active work. Both type of work are good and complement each other. In fact, we need to be balanced in both type of works in our daily life.

Mary was also listening to Jesus' words attentively. How often do we listen to God? Do we always do all the talking and give no chance to God to speak to us? Do we say, "Speak Lord, your servant listens." or do we change it the other way around, "Listen Lord, your servant speaks."?

St Paul also said that faith comes from listening. If we only do all the talking, it is similar to sick person who goes to physician and rattles all the symptoms to the physician, and right away dashes out of the place without waiting to listen to the diagnose.

Some people say that their prayers are not answered by God. The fact is that they do not wait to hear the answers from God.

According to His heart.

And they said one to the other: Was not our heart burning within us, whilst he spoke in this way, and opened to us the scriptures? (Luke 24:3)

I would treat here that "according to His heart" is similar to "according to His will". But then comes another question. How do we know God's will?

It's stated in the Emmaus story, that Jesus explained the Scripture to them. It is by frequent reading of Scripture that we will be able to know God's will. Scripture is God's word or to be more precise it is God's letter to each one of us. When we read Scripture, it does not only speak to us but it also speaks about us. We should be able to identify the story in the Scripture with our daily stories.

We can also depends on the Catholic Church teaching on the Scripture. It has stood for 2000 years.

And also, how do we know someone's will? For example, I know what my mother wants me to do from her commands. Maybe I should do this or that or I should refrain from doing certain things. In the same way, we will be able to know God's will by what He commands us to do.

I will take one of the commandments: to love one another as He has loved us. This is really important. According to the tradition handed down by St Jerome, when the beloved disciple John was very old, he always told the faithful to love one another. And one day, one of the disciples asked him why it was so important. He answered, "Because it is Lord's commandment, and if you keep just this, it will suffice."

So when we love one another, we do God's will. We have been loved first by God and we should extend our love to our parents, siblings, friends, and our neighbors.

And sometimes, we doubt what God's will is in certain events in our life. We will ask "Why?" to God. But according to Archbishop Fulton Sheen, one question is never asked by Love, and that is "Why?". That word is used only by three d's of doubt, deceit, and the devil. How is that so?

Well, when we face misfortunes, our reaction will depend on who give the misfortune. If I stand inside the MRT and it is very crowded, and then someone accidently steps on my toes, and that person is the Pope (!), I won't be angry. I think I will ask for blessings first. Haha. But if that person is not anyone that I know of, I would resent it very much.

It is the same in our misfortunes. We will be able to respond more positively when we recognize God's will behind our misfortunes and disappointments in life. It is similar when a sick person gets medicine from physician, he should not complain if the medicine is bitter, but he will believe in the physician's knowledge and and wisdom.

And since our Lord did not make His cross, neither do we make ours. We should take what God gives to us and make the supernatural best out of it.

Through ongoing conversion and sanctification

Conversion means to turn away from sin and turn to God. Sanctification is the process of making holy. I think these two terms are quite similar and I will combine these two while reflecting on them.

How do we give up on our sins and turn to God? How do we change our bad habits that seem to be already engraved in our doings? To give up something, there should be something better to replace it. It is an exchange based on what we are willing to surrender.

And we should realize that we are weak, we could not change our bad habits by our own power. A folded paper could not make itself straight by itself, but it will need hands to fix it back. A ball rolling in one direction would not be able to change its direction except when someone kicks it to the other direction. It's the same with us, we need external power, outside power to change us. And that is the grace of God.

After that, we should cooperate with our act of will too.

When an unclean spirit goes out of a person it roams through arid regions searching for rest but finds none. Then it says, 'I will return to my home from which I came.' But upon returning, it finds it empty, swept clean, and put in order. Then it goes and brings back with itself seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they move in and dwell there; and the last condition of that person is worse than the first. Thus it will be with this evil generation. (Mt 12:43-45)

The story on unclean spirit above is related to this topic. What is wrong with the house? I could not figure out anything when I read the story for the first time.

But the house is empty. The emptiness is the reason why the evil spirit could come back to the house, and the person is worse than before. It is the same for me when I try to kick out certain bad habit or addiction. I try to just avoid the addiction but I do not try to look for God. I do not try to fill myself with God, and in the end, all my efforts are futile. The addiction came back and I was in worse shape than before.

So for sanctification to take place, I should fill myself with God. And I should focus on His healing power and mercy. It is similar to sick person, he will not focus on his sickness, but he will focus on the wisdom of the physician and believe in him. And students will not focus on their ignorance but they will focus on the knowledge of the teacher so that they will learn new things and dispel their ignorance.

Sanctification is about character building because in the contrary of focusing of gifts, character building focus on our weakest spots, our bad habits, our bad characters. By detecting the weakness, and overcome it, we build our character. One's defect, once overcome with cooperation with God's grace, can be the greatest strength.

Just take a look at the apostle John. He is always mentioned as the beloved disciple, and he was well known to excel in charity. But he was not always loving. Once he played politics with his mother to ask Jesus to give the left and right seats in the Kingdom of God. And when one city rejected Jesus, John and Thomas asked Jesus to rain down fire on the city. That is not really an example of charity. But he was able to overcome his weakness with grace from God and became the greatest apostle of charity.

A practical advice for breaking bad habits: there should be abrupt change. If someone is beating his wife always, it could not be stopped by limiting him to beat the wife only on Thursday and Friday. And when we sin, we hurt God, and that is a real issue, a real problem. So there should be abrupt change to change our bad habits.

There will be times when we fall down, fall to temptations. There are two things we can do, either to stay on the ground or to wake up. We should wake up and continue carrying our cross. Staying on the ground won't change anything.

Through ongoing mission

The first time I heard the word "mission", I thought it is only for missionaries. But Catholic church is missionary in nature. All of us are involved in it. We should stand up both for faith and justice. Be tolerant to the erring, but intolerance is for the error.

And we should live our faith through our actions. If we believe that pornography, embryonic stem cell research, contraception, and abortion are wrong, then we should really live it in our lives.

Quite a long and dense first mission statement of The Emmaus. I think this will be really challenging to live this mission statement, but we can always depend on God's grace to fulfill it.

View the complete vision and mission of the Emmaus