Mission Week 2007
Challenged to Choose: The Courage to Act
February 2-10

Mission Reflection - Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Mary Pat Pfeil
Senior Director of University Communication

How often we must struggle with issues both big and small, choosing whether or not we will make the right decision.

I think with gratitude of those whose ethical decisions have profoundly affected my life. Mother Teresa, whom I was blessed to stand beside in 1981, fully aware of her saintliness and the good she did each day. The Marquette instructor who saw a struggling student and, perhaps moving into a gray area of privacy rights, subtly informed her parents that there may be a need to intervene. The teacher who put himself between a disturbed gunman and vulnerable students. The colleague who refused to accept that, for monetary reasons, services could not be provided to a child because that refusal wasn't right. The friend who, knowing that a child would be born with severe disabilities, bore and raised that child with love and, in the process, taught many others about human dignity and the joy of a child¹s smallest accomplishment.

Strong impressions, ones which make me question my own capacity to act with courage in the face of true adversity.

This week's Gospels tell the stories of Jesus' outreach healing the sick who touch his cloak (Mark 6:53-56), casting the demon out of a child (Mark 7: 24-30), curing the deaf man with a speech impediment (Mark 6: 31-37) and, finally, the story of the loaves and the fishes (Mark 8:1-10). We too are surrounded, both in our private lives and in our community, by those who are physically or mentally ill, those who are hungry or homeless, those who are scared and vulnerable. Will I, will we have The Courage to Act?

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