12 October 2018 – Friday of 27th week in Ordinary Time – Galatians 3:7-14

      We continue to hear from Paul’s letter to the Galatians today.  Paul explains that those who have faith receive the same blessing as Abraham, for Abraham is our father in faith.  We receive this blessing regardless of being Jew or Gentile. Paul goes on to explain that Christ came to free us from the covenant of the Jewish law in order to give us the path of faith under our new covenant in Christ.  God has made the covenant available to all as a freely given gift.

     Paul, as we know, thought Christianity was open to all, not just to those who were under the Jewish covenant with God. Paul’s missionary spirit and the spirit of the many great missionaries in our Church have inspired many to bring the Gospel to others.  Back in 1996, I left the United States to spend three years in the country of Ecuador as a missionary, an experience that definitely shaped the way I approach the priesthood. I served as a consecrated lay missionary with the Comboni Missionaries, founded by Father Daniel Comboni, who was born in Italy in 1831. His dream was to bring Christianity to the people of Africa.  Comboni was ordained the Bishop of Khartoum in the Sudan in Africa in 1877. He established a missionary institute for priests and brothers and one for religious sisters to bring the Gospel to Africa.  He wrote about his work as a missionary in his journal: “Blessed be the Lord. Have no fear. Our lives are in God’s hands. Let God do with them what God wills: we have irrevocably sacrificed them to The Lord. May God be blessed….In baptism we promise and dedicate ourselves to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We are called to be a missionary, to spread the good news to all we meet each day through everything we do and to love and serve others.” Comboni died in 1881 after an illness at the young age of 50, yet he had this to say: “I am dying, but my work will not die.”  Today there are more than 1,800 Comboni missionaries – priests, brothers, and sisters – working in the mission field throughout the world. Daniel Comboni’s feast day is celebrated on October 10.  I see Daniel Comboni in the spirit of St Paul, in bringing the Gospel to the world. May we live in that same spirit.