The same should be true of us.  If our religion is really important and valuable to us, we shall want others to share it too.  If Our Lord really matters to us more than anyone or anything else in the world, we shall not be content until we bring others to love him too.

When we have found Our Lord and our life is bound up with him in a way we cannot describe but only experience, then we have discovered the secret and the purpose of life.  But that secret is not to be kept to ourselves.

We must not imagine that people were brought to know and worship Our Lord in the early days of Christianity by the Apostles and their successors alone.  Christian congregations sprang up in places before the Apostles ever reached them.  For our holy religion was spread very largely by a cross-section of the Roman Empire – high placed officials, members of the Imperial household, professional and business men, housewives, soldiers, and often slaves.  It was the efforts of these people to win over their friends and acquaintances to the practice of the Christian religion which was the cause of the astonishing spread of Christianity in the 100 years following the Resurrection – that, and the exemplary lives they led.

The lesson we can draw from this is plain enough.  Every Christian worshipper today is also called to be a missionary in his or her own parish.  There must be many people who, with encouragement from their friends, might well be brought to Our Lord.

The need for such missionary work is as great now as ever it was, and, as St Matthew and countless others have showed, in what truer way can we prove our love for Our Lord than by bringing others to love him too?