By Amanda Murthy and Monica Wescombe
The Wescombe family have set out to start a new life as a Mission Family in Perth with three of their six children on 6 January, on the Feast of the Epiphany.
“It was a little like the coming of the Magi you could say – we came from the East and headed towards the West to witness the greatness that is our Saviour!” Monica exclaimed.
With excitement, fear of the unknown and bittersweet goodbyes, Dale (51), Monica (48) and three of their six children – Asher (23), Shayna (19), and Sebastian (17) – jumped into their eight-seater van, embarking on a six-day journey.
“We had planned to drive the journey in five and a half days but were held back by the bushfires that closed the SA-WA borders in December/January,” Monica shared.
“The drive gave us an idea of the enormity and diversity of this great land of Australia, we arrived in Perth on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, warmly embraced by the Neocatechumenal Way communities of the Good Shepherd Church in Kelmscott.
“As we prayed together on the journey that day, the Church gave us a beautiful reading from Saint Gregory Nazianzen, on the Baptism of the Lord – ‘Christ is bathed in light; let us also be bathed in light. Christ is baptised; let us also go down with Him and rise with Him’.
“What a fitting start to our mission! What a strange series of events to start this special year; little did we know what was still to come,” she acclaimed.
Answering the call to mission was a 25 year-long process for Monica, filled with much soul-searching, beginning with her involvement with the Neocatechumenal Way in an Melbourne Anglican community in 1977.
“I turned my back on God and the Church for many years, finding myself directionless, sad and out of communion in my marriage.”
Monica eventually came back to the Church, with Dale following a few years later.
“Our marriage started to change and grow through God’s power and our vocations as parents were truly confirmed.”
The couple were officially received into the Catholic Church in 1995.
“Looking back now, I believe that God was preparing us to trust in the Church’s baptismal promise: that we could receive faith and through faith, Eternal life,” she stated.
“This has given us the courage, confidence and sometimes fearlessness to live a life a little ‘left of field’.”
As the years went by and the family grew in numbers, Monica recalled often feeling that God wanted them to live a life of total reliance on Him, as a family.
In 2003, the couple responded with zeal to a call for couples who felt called to be itinerant catechists, who could take time away from their jobs to evangelise throughout Australia, bringing this ”itinerary of faith” to any parishes and diocese who had requested it. They spent the next 11 years in Adelaide.
In 2019, the Wescombe couple, now grandparents, responded to yet another interior call from God, to offer up themselves again for “whatever work God may have in mind or us”.
As it turns out, the call this time around was to be a Mission Family.
“This is a different service, in that once again, open to go anywhere in the world, we leave everything behind and go to a place that has a need for an authentic witness of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead,” Monica explained.
“But this time, instead of moving to and from our city and community of origin, we go to live indefinitely in the area in which we have been called.
“We are to integrate into the parish area in which we live and share our simple witness with the people around us, of the power of God’s victory over death in our lives and in the lives of our family,” she explained.
Although their plans have been postponed for now, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the family hope to be a living example through their daily life by heralding a message that life is not all about “tearing down barns and building bigger ones”.
“In our mission here, we have very simple work: How will the people of Kelmscott and Perth know they are loved unconditionally? If they can see a person or couple who can love visibly and without fear or limits,” Monica questioned.
“How will they know they are forgiven? If they see a witness to forgiveness in us.”
Why send an Australian family on mission within Australia, one might ask?
“Only God knows, but there is definitely work to be done in proclaiming the Good News, through the witness of our lives, wherever we go,” Monica affirmed.
“We know that we are not in our hometown, surrounded by the comfort and attachments we once relied upon, so there is no doubt for us about feeling that we have been sent on a mission.
“We also know that it is not about us. We are simple servants and it is God who must be seen.”