Before becoming a
priest, I was a lay missionary. I worked
in a soup kitchen and a food bank in Winnipeg Canada for two years. I working in various ministries with the
Oblates of Mary Immaculate in the province of Alberta, Canada, while discerning
a vocation with them. I was a
consecrated lay missionary with the Comboni Missionaries, for four years,
having served for three years in a rainforest jungle on the northern province
of Esmeraldas in the country of Ecuador near its border with Columbia. And then I taught for a year at a missionary
school in Robstown, Texas near the city of Corpus Christi. During that very challenging work, my heroes
were the great missionaries of our Church: Jean de Brebeuf, Daniel Comboni,
Frances Xavier, Peter Claver, and Isaac Jogues.
The liberation theologians of our Church also inspired me with their
call to social justice: Oscar Romero, Leonardo Boff, Gustavo Gutierrez, Paulo
Freire, Jon Sobrino, Ernesto Cardenal.
Archbishop Oscar Romero is now Blessed Oscar Romero. Pope Francis quoted a prayer attributed to
Blessed Oscar Romero in his Christmas message to the Curia this year. A friend pointed out this prayer to me as it was posted to a blog that both of us reads - Whispers in the Loggia. Our Church needs heroes, which is a lot of the reason we celebrate the community of saints in the way that we do. As Advent comes to a close, I am thankful for this holy people who have inspired me in my ministry and in my priest. What a wonderful message the Pope was giving the Curia by quoting this prayer.
Every now and then
it helps us to take a step back
and to see things
from a distance.
The Kingdom is not
only beyond our efforts, it is also beyond our visions.
In our lives, we
manage to achieve only a small part
of the marvelous
plan that is God’s work.
Nothing that we do
is complete,
which is to say that
the Kingdom is greater than ourselves.
No statement says
everything that can be said.
No prayer completely
expresses the faith.
No Creed brings
perfection.
No pastoral visit
solves every problem.
No program fully
accomplishes the mission of the Church.
No goal or purpose
ever reaches completion.
This is what it is
about:
We plant seeds that
one day will grow.
We water seeds
already planted,
knowing that others
will watch over them.
We lay the
foundations of something that will develop.
We add the yeast
which will multiply our possibilities.
We cannot do
everything,
yet it is liberating
to begin.
This gives us the
strength to do something and to do it well.
It may remain
incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way.
It is an opportunity
for the grace of God to enter
and to do the rest.
It may be that we
will never see its completion,
but that is the
difference between the master and the laborer.
We are laborers, not
master builders,
servants, not the
Messiah.
We are prophets of a
future that does not belong to us.
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