World Mission Sunday

Today, the world’s population is about 8 billion. About 1 billion are Catholics and about 300 million are protestants. 500 years after, Magellan reached Limasawa Island, all other Asian nations (China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand, etc.) have not been Christianized. Since the 1960’s many churches, convents, seminaries in USA, Europe have been closed. Since the 1960’s, religious orders and congregations have opened convents, schools in our nation to recruit priests, nuns, brothers. Since the 1980’s, the Archdiocese of Davao have been sending priests to Papua New Guinea, Solomons Islands because of priest shortage. The 2020 COVID19 pandemic closed our seminaries. The September 2022 reopening of Seminaries showed a sharp drop in returnees. The 2022 economic meltdown means a great reduction of new seminaries. It is important to stress always the importance of world mission Sunday. Christ is clear about the harvest being great (8 billion people) but the workers being few. Christ expects all, not only the priests, nuns, missionary volunteers to work in the vineyard. We can do our share through prayers, good works, and donations. Christ reminds us of the poor widow who gave her few cents to help and support others. The frontliners in Mission work/evangelization are the priests, nuns, brothers, mission volunteers. Our self-sacrifice of hours/minutes for prayers, rosaries, novenas, good works can inspire our own families, neighbors and friends to do in this never ending crusade of evangelization/mission work which Christ began 2000 years ago. He expects us to do our share to support World Mission Sunday. Give till it hurts.