A monthly letter from the Glenmary Vocation Office

January 2008

A Sacrifice Worth Making

How much would you need to sacrifice in order to become a Glenmary Home Missioner?

Each student that joins Glenmary has to make sacrifices. No one sacrifice is quite the same. Oh yes, every student goes through a similar formation process, receives the same allowance and eventually takes the Glenmary Oath that commits the man to living a life of poverty, chastity, obedience and prayer. Yet the family and personal sacrifices vary.

I admire these sacrifices and recognize that regardless of how large or small they may appear to others, they are significant for the one making them. Recently, I was visiting one of our Mexican aspirants who lives in Chiapas. Though I have visited Mexico many times and have traveled to a variety of the 36 states of Mexico, I had never been south to Chiapas. Through this experience I discovered what sacrifices this student makes just to get to the seminary. Though I highlight his sacrifice, it in reality is no greater or more important than the sacrifices of others. It is just a bit more dramatic.

The seminary that our Mexican aspirants attend is located in Arandas, Jallisco, which is not on a direct bus route. Our student has never complained about the difficulty of travel and has always been gracious for the opportunity to become a home missioner. Yet, in my four-day visit, I became aware of what he is sacrificing to become a home missioner.

He has very large and beautiful family with several younger brothers and sisters. But when the rest of his classmates get a free weekend to visit family, he cannot because of the cost and the distance. It takes him two days to return home—and he travels by bus, car and by foot! I met up with him in Tapachula, where we took a bus, then a small van, then a pickup truck and then had a two-kilometer walk up the mountain across several small streams. His home is a very beautiful place, with tropical birds, banana trees and other tropical flowers and plants; yet, it was certainly not easy to get to.

It’s also expensive to call his family, so he does so only occasionally. He is the only student from his state at the seminary and the food, music and climate are all different from what he knows. Even the weather is different for him. He comes from a tropical mountain climate and now lives in a semi-arid colder climate.

His home reminds me of a Glenmary mission area. Less than three percent of the population is Catholic. There is no church in his village, so the people walk three kilometers to the mission where Mass is offered once a month on whatever day of the week the priest can come. It is an hour to the church and that involves a long walk plus a ride in a pick up truck-style taxi. Yet his faith is strong. It may be this experience plus the fact that he has family who are immigrants that motivates him to become a Glenmary missioner.

During those days spent in Mexico, I asked myself: I had to walk that far, change at least five buses and travel for two days to study in the seminary, would I choose to do so? I hope so.

My friends, I encourage you to accept whatever the sacrifices required to follow the spirit. I pray that you will find the courage to abandon all you know and are familiar with for the sake of the poor in rural America. I hope you will be willing to risk much in order to share the good news of Jesus Christ, the strength of the Catholic way of life and your own personal relationship of Christ with those searching for the Spirit in Mission Land, U.S.A.

Take some time to reflect over Mark 8:34-37:

He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? What could one give in exchange for his life?