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The InterVIEW

Mission takes us ‘beyond the border of any contact’

A regular feature of The Catholic New World, The InterVIEW is an in-depth conversation with a person whose words, actions or ideas affect today's Catholic. It may be affirming of faith or confrontational. But it will always be stimulating.

Sister Magdalene (Madge) Karecki, a Sister of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis, spent 21 years working in South Africa, first with a congregation of Zulu Franciscan sisters and later teaching at St. John Vianney Seminary and establishing an Office of Worship in the Diocese of Johannesburg, among other projects. She also earned a doctorate in missiology while she was there. After returning to the Chicago area in 2005, she began working as her congregation’s historian, only to be asked last month to serve as director of the archdiocese’s Catholic Missions Office.

She spoke about the work of the office and her work in Africa with assistant editor Michelle Martin.

Catholic New World: What did you enjoy about your time in South Africa?

Sister Madge Karecki: I really enjoyed everything. The place, South Africa, was really very difficult, especially in the early years before the end of apartheid. It was painful to see and know that people that I had come to know and work with were treated harshly and unfairly, and not recognized for their inherent goodness and their worth simply because of the color of their skin. That was a very hard and painful time.

When I think of these sisters, they were really lovely and good people and they were deprived in so many ways of education, of opportunities to grow, simply because of race. But South Africa is a very beautiful country and its people are friendly and good. I had an opportunity to be with all kinds of people, and that was a blessing.

CNW: When you discovered you had a vocation to religious life, were you intending to do missionary work?

Karecki: Not really. I wasn’t awakened to mission until I really read St. Francis. He is of course the first founder to include a chapter about mission in his rule. I was set on fire by his writings and that opened me.

When I was in high school, before that, the sister who was in charge of the Third Order for young people had us doing a lot of projects for missions, collecting things, sending money, sending clothes and all kinds of things in that conception of mission. There was that rolling around inside of me. Then of course the Second Vatican Council came along and we saw mission in a wider sense. Then I moved into the inner city with a group of sisters and friars, and that was really an awakening to mission there. Then this opportunity to go to South Africa came and there I was.

CNW: How is it different on this side of the desk?

Karecki: I think they’re related because the experience of being in another country and seeing the church in another country and meeting people from still other countries helped me to widen my sense of the church and of mission, so that now I see the importance of what’s being done here.

When I first came and had a meeting with the staff, I said, “Whatever we do here we can’t do in any old way, or hesitate in what we’re doing or delay in what we’re doing because there are real people waiting to be helped.”

I think that’s how they are connected: being a missionary, being sent out, and yet being here trying to help those who are in other countries. It gives you a sense of the interconnectedness of the church. We indeed are very related.

Two weeks ago a bishop came in here from Northern India, and he introduced himself as a baby bishop from a baby diocese. The diocese had just been formed two years ago, and he explained that most people in his diocese were dalits, the lowest class in the Indian caste system. They were struggling and he wanted to know how we could help. He did not have a cathedral church, or this or that. We were able to help, but it was because missionary awareness had been done and has been strong in the diocese for a very long time.

CNW: What does the Catholic Missions Office do?

Karecki: The first responsibility is to keep bringing to the attention of the Catholics in the archdiocese the fact that we are called to baptism, and that mission comes through baptism, and we have a responsibility to share in Christ’s mission through prayer, through a sense of solidarity with others and through financial help.

The second thing is that we are the local representative for the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, for the Holy Childhood Society, for the Society of St. Peter the Apostle, the pontifical missionary societies. We have that link with the national office, and the national office has that link with Rome.

Chicago is outstanding because of our support for missionary priests especially because of our Mass stipends. We get a lot of Mass stipends. We share them — we do that each month. We send out Mass stipends, or if someone comes here and asks, we try to help immediately. Those are the main works.

The work of the Holy Childhood Society is to engender in children a sense of mission, and we’re going to really concentrate on that within the coming year. We want to concentrate on that, with the emphasis on evangelization, because if children themselves are not evangelized properly, how will they take up this mission to evangelize?

Then we promote the missionary cooperation program. Every summer, we have people come in and make appeals in parishes for help for mission causes, mission projects and World Mission Sunday in October.

The education component is something the cardinal wants to be highlighted, so hopefully I’ll get to visit the episcopal vicars and go to deaneries to see what could be done to offer some workshops or study days about mission.

CNW: How do you make people understand that mission is constant and ongoing?

Karecki: That’s why we have to look deeply at, what does it mean to be baptized? I don’t think we’ve given enough attention to baptism. What does it mean to be one in Christ? Vatican II and Pope John Paul II’s letter Redemptoris Missio (“Mission of the Redeemer”) say very clearly that we are all on mission for our entire lives.

The image of Vatican II of a pilgrim people — pilgrims are on the move, and that’s what we are, on the move in our growing sense of, what does it mean to share in the mission of Christ to make God known and loved? How do we do it? It depends on our circumstances. That never ends.

I was just praying the Rosary on the train this morning and a guy sat down next to me and he looked at me and said, “Is that one of those Catholic things?” and I said yes, it’s a rosary. I had a mission rosary with the different color decades (for the different regions of the world), and he asked, “What’s the significance of the colors?” I told him what each color signified, and he said, “That’s kind of neat thing. I thought it was just kind of a pious thing. I didn’t see it connected to anybody else.”

In that exchange, mission was going on. Mission takes us beyond the border: beyond the border of a relationship, beyond the border of a country, beyond the border of a city, beyond the border of any contact.

I don’t think we think about that. I connect it with baptism because we in the United States have privatized religion. When we do that, we lose our sense of being together in this and our need to reach out to others. Otherwise, we just keep our faith to ourselves and that’s the end of it. We have a responsibility to make God known in love. That’s not a choice.

Once we enter into the community of the Trinity, it is in us. We are communal and we’ve got to keep expressing that. If living in the life of the Trinity is a good thing, then we want other people to share it.