REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE MISSION ALIVE FESTIVAL KIMMAGE MISSION INSTITUTE
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE MISSION ALIVE FESTIVAL KIMMAGE MISSION INSTITUTE, DUBLIN WEDNESDAY, 16 OCTOBER, 2002
A Dhaoine Uaisle, tá lúcháir mhór orm bheith anseo libh tráthnóna ar an ócaid speisialta seo. Míle buíochas libh as an chaoin-chuireadh.
I am delighted to be here in Kimmage Parish Church this afternoon and to be part of this occasion of lively and vibrant debate on “Understanding Mission Today”. The Mission Alive Festival has provided an important opportunity to reflect and dwell on the prevailing realities for the missionary role. I know that over the past few days, you have been grappling with many issues, through examination of your mission statements and “drinking from your own wells”. Throughout the month of October a myriad of locally based organisations, parishes, schools and community groups will consider contemporary aspects of missions in society.
I would like to focus for a moment or two on one of the priorities identified by the Irish Missionary movement in ‘Mission Alive’ – Welcoming the Stranger. Welcoming the stranger is one of the much celebrated attributes of Irish people and throughout our history, we have been justifiably lauded for the warmth of our welcome to the visitor. However, in very recent times, the stranger has perhaps regrettably been confused with the intruder on occasion. And yet, in Ireland we are now provided with an opportunity to provide our most significant welcome to the stranger – the welcome that extends beyond a short visit, to one, which endures in the longer term. The tree-planting initiative throughout the country to celebrate the Mission Alive Festival, is symbolic of that very challenge to integrate our new citizens. As they put down roots in a new country we need to consider how we can best ensure they will feel that sense of participation, that sense of inclusion and belonging in all aspects of their future lives in this country.
The Irish Missionary Movement has for many generations travelled abroad to assist the stranger. I have had the wonderful experience of witnessing some of the great work done by those remarkable missionaries, both religious and lay, when I visited Kenya and Uganda just a year ago. Probably what struck me most was the absence of ego – nothing that those ambassadors of everything that is good and decent in the human person was done out of concern for themselves. Every ounce of energy and talent and resourcefulness was channelled towards helping others. It was a truly humbling experience for me and one I will never forget.
In my own childhood, the work of missionaries was never far away. I lived right beside the Passionist monastery in Belfast’s Ardoyne. The news and stories the Priests brought back from the developing world were of intense fascination to our small community. Our knowledge of the places you worked in was often better than our knowledge of other parts of Ireland. The remarkable development work which you have been doing in the poorest countries of the world has long been a source of intense pride to people at home. This pride continues today as we remember the 3,000 Irish missionaries working in developing countries.
Those of us at home can only try to imagine the level of personal sacrifice and difficult conditions which mark your work. But, for you, it must be with great pride that you witness the invaluable contribution you have made to the alleviation of poverty and suffering wherever you work. Similarly, the solidarity which has built up as a result of your work between Ireland and many developing countries has also played an important role in our own national development. The Irish Government’s official aid programme, Ireland Aid, is recognised internationally for its quality and success. This success has been facilitated by the groundwork already set by the missionary movement.
In the field, the challenges that continue to face Missionaries are now very familiar to us. We are deeply aware of the continuing catastrophe of HIV/AIDS, the prevalence of corruption and conflict and the burden of debt, all of which inhibit progress and prevent economic growth. Your determination in tackling these challenges has been a courageous development, for it has demanded new levels of flexibility as well as a rigorous faith in the future despite the forces that threaten to overwhelm hope. As the demographics of Irish vocations have changed, missionary orders have devoted much time to strengthening local capacity to enable their work to continue at field level. The evidence is in that the job has been well done, a new generation has been empowered to accept the baton so carefully carried by Irish missionaries for decades. Now they will shape a new future. Their work will bring a hint of God’s love to the broken and the broken-hearted of our planet whose lives are lived locked out from the rights and opportunities we in Ireland regard as routine. That hint keeps their hearts and hopes open to the possibility of change and to their own power to be makers of change.
As we look ahead from the close of this seminar, I am sure that the important debates you have started here will keep on provoking reflection and creative dialogue over the coming months and years. There are plenty of obvious difficulties but then even the most cruel difficulties never posed insurmountable obstacles to those who embraced the missionary vocation - often it seemed the opposite was the case. There is a wealth of solid achievement, of sound experience, of distilled wisdom and a wellspring of faith, all to be drawn upon as you try to discern the best way forward. Those things allow us to have confidence in the intrinsic strength of the missionary movement. The work to be done is as great if not greater than ever. The support of the Irish people is as solid as ever.
The road ahead need not be the lonely journey some fear. Rather it could yet be the most liberating and successful era of missionary endeavour. In some ways it simply has to be, if the work of all those who have gone before is to be vindicated, if all the half-lived lives of the poor are to be vindicated, if all the yet unborn children are to be vindicated. Mission has always been about facing into the worst chaos life has to offer and saying – we know where to begin making sense of this, we know a way out of this chaos. For that leadership you undertake in the cause of others, we thank you and wish you well. May you find a renewed zeal and passion through these debates and may you long continue the work that quietly, heroically makes our world a better place.
Go raibh maith agaibh.