Mission Mum-day

Times of India: Middle:
Mission Mum-day
By MAXWELL PEREIRA

THE Sunday before the feast of Christ the King in October has always been observed as Mission Sunday. As I remember, for us kids in those days it had nothing to do with missions, the meaning of `missionary' perhaps totally lost on us.
We looked on Mission Sunday then, as a `fun' day because of the fete organised after morning mass on the chapel grounds of St Aloysius, my alma mater. Obviously, it's objective must have been to collect funds for the missions. But such laudable objectives never registered on our minds. All that interested us was the chance to participate in games of skill and lucky-dips at the fete. We got a certain amount of spending money that our parents judiciously earmarked perhaps as their contribution towards the missions - through our spending hands of course.
There were the usual games. The elders making a beeline to fish beer bottles by competing with each other to slip the ring over the bottlenecks. The rings hung from a string at the tip of a fishing rod. Among games for us was the one where blindfolded we had to draw a tail to the pig on the blackboard; and the one with the coin on a plate in a tub of water. If you managed to throw your own coin to land on the coin in the tub, you walked away with double the amount. Rarely did one manage this, because of optical illusion caused while viewing the coin through the mass of water. And then, the de-husked coconuts placed atop the hollows of bamboo stumps buried in the ground - may be three, four or more in number - spaced about two feet apart. One tried knocking the nut down with tennis balls from a distance of 15 to 20 yards.
It was years later that the meaning of Mission Sunday really sunk in. At this year's service, my eyes opened to yet another lovely rendition on who is a missionary. Among the supportive readings was this story of a girl who was asked to write an essay about any missionary she knew. A few great missionaries came to mind, such as Mother Teresa, St Thomas and St Francis who had come to India, and so on. Then she thought, ``I can't do justice; It is true, I have heard their names and read about them, but I don't really know them''.
The girl then said to herself, ``I know who is a true missionary. My mother''. She wrote in her essay: ``My Mum's Mission is to be a good housewife and a mother. My mother has never been selfish nor put herself before her family. On the table she never served herself first, and she carried out duties and obligations faithfully. There were problems and difficulties, at times things had gone from bad to worse. Yet she had the courage to face them all...and make supreme sacrifices. Just like the famous missionaries, my Mum too needed a lot of courage. I am very lucky to have a Missionary Mother''.
It may come as a surprise, but one doesn't have to be a priest or religious to be a `missionary'.
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published in the editorial page of The Times of India: Friday, 3 November 2000