Let me begin by posing a question. You have to choose a career for your son, but are limited to the following two choices: president and CEO of Microsoft or a brother/priest missioner working in the neglected regions of the United States. What would you choose?

My hunch: Most would choose the Microsoft position. The Microsoft job would certainly mean great prestige and financial success. But doesn’t such success often lead a person to forget this basic fact of life, that we are but pilgrims here on earth? The psalmist puts it bluntly: “Man in his prosperity forfeits intelligence” (Ps 49:20).

In making life decisions—for our children or for ourselves—how much weight do we give to what God wants? Confronted with death in his battle with AIDS, tennis pro Arthur Ashe insisted: “God’s will alone matters, not my personal wants or needs.”

Jesus Christ is our way, truth and life (Jn 14:6). In Jesus we find our call and the will of God. This is the same Jesus, the Good Shepherd, who has a special love and compassion for those who are lost and forgotten.

Which gets me to the problem: We need missioners. The mission need in our country is as great in 2003 as it was when Father Bishop founded Glenmary in 1939. Glenmary still needs men impelled by their love of God to give their lives in service of the Gospel in the mission regions of the United States.

The challenges are many and a missioner’s life is not always easy. There will certainly be little prestige and few material rewards compared to the Microsoft position. But as Father Bishop stated in his original plea to gain support for a new home mission society: We must respond to those “in our own backyard, those millions of rural people who are God’s creatures and our brethren and fellow citizens who are hungering for the truths of the Gospel and have a claim upon us” (The Ecclesiastical Review, April 1936).

Now I am going to ask you, our partners in mission, to do two things.

First, beg God daily to send men to serve as priests/brothers in the home missions. (If you don’t already have a copy of our Prayer for the Home Missions, drop me a self-addressed stamped envelope and I will send you one.)

Jesus tells us: “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest” (Lk 10:2; emphasis added). Let’s take Jesus at his word and beg Our Lord for laborers!

Second, ask a young man—a son, grandson, coworker, neighbor, fellow parishioner—if he has ever thought of serving God as a priest or brother in the home missions. Tell him of the great need, and invite him to contact our vocation director, Father Steve Pawelk (spawelk@glenmary.org). Just think what it could mean if each and every reader of Glenmary Challenge asked just one person to consider being a Glenmary missioner!

I invite you to go back to the question I posed in the opening paragraph with these words from Matthew’s Gospel in mind: “And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life” (19:29).