October 18th is World Mission Sunday and comes with a reminder of our mission given us by Christ himself to spread the Gospel to the whole world. We should pray for the missions and all missionaries, but also remember God has sent us to the mission field of our family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers.
Thinking about this, I’m reminded of the concept of social distance. Right now that term evokes our current COVID-19 pandemic and how we need to maintain physical distance between people to prevent the spread of the virus. The closer the proximity and the longer amount of time two or more people spend with each other, the more likely something (if present) would spread from one person to another. Oddly, this concept works exactly the same for spreading the Gospel in a more figurative way. The Gospel does not spread if we are distant from others. The distance is not physical, but heart to heart. The closer two persons’ hearts are, the more likely that what is in the heart of one could spread to the heart of the other. It also takes a lot of time to spread the Gospel. But when we think about it this way, evangelizing is not so difficult, just as it is not difficult to spread a virus (which we don’t want to do obviously). To pass on the faith we just have to be close
(not necessarily physically) to family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers; to spend quality time with them; and then what is dear in our heart can more easily pass from one to another.
I encourage you to think about this other form of social-distancing. In this case we want to shrink the spiritual distance between our own heart and the hearts of those around us. This is really what Jesus has done for us. Even though God is always near and God is present everywhere, it certainly was possible to feel a sense of distance, especially when sin enters the picture. God has sent His only begotten Son to us, to take our flesh, to walk our walk on earth, to die our death, and to rise, to shrink the distance between God and us. St. John Henry Newman had as a motto a phrase he borrowed from St. Francis de Sales, “Cor ad cor loquitur”, ”Heart speaks to heart”. It is true that our mission to spread the Gospel is all about the heart and not a program or a technique. If we have faith and love of God burning in our hearts, and we draw near to the hearts of others, it will spread like wildfire or a virus. Yes, not the best analogies as those are bad things, but the lesson works. Let us take seriously the mission God has given us and shrink the spiritual social distance between our hearts.