I went
to Ecuador as a lay missionary with a Catholic religious order called the
Comboni Missionaries. They are
named after the saint we celebrate today, Daniel Comboni. Daniel
really captured my imagination when I was out in the jungles as a missionary. He was
born into a poor family of farmers in Italy in 1831. He is the only one of 8 children of his
parents who made it past adulthood. He
was ordained a priest in the year 1854, the same year the Immaculate Conception
was declared as dogma in our Church. He
always dreamed of being a missionary to Africa. He went
on his first trip to Africa to the Sudan, when he and his companions journeyed
for 4 months on camel from Egypt just to get to their mission site. Many of his missionary companions died along
the way, but Daniel was touched by the poverty and hardship that the people
there had to endure. Daniel eventually became the first bishop of
the Sudan in Africa. He died at the
young age of 50 from all of the hardships he went through as a missionary, but
his love for God lives on in all priests, brothers, and nuns of the Comboni
missionaries who work all over the world. I remember some of the Comboni priests
telling me how in 1964 all of the Comboni priests, brothers, and nuns were
expelled from the south of Sudan when an anti-Christian government took power
in the country. Thousands of
missionaries returned to Rome, many of whom had been in the Sudan most of their
adult lives serving the Lord. Like the
persistent man in the Gospel who does not give up in asking his neighbor for a
favor, Daniel Comboni and so many of our missionaries had such a strong faith
that never gave up. Many of them so
willingly gave up their lives for their love of their faith and in service to
the calling they received from God. We give thanks for the ways they have
enriched our lives, for the way they still speak to us today. All of us have a calling we receive to
God. And we are all called to be
missionaries wherever we are in life.
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