Faith

Early morning Mass in Port au Prince Haiti with the Missionaries of Charity Sisters.

Propagation of the Faith

Witnessing the Gospel at Work in the Missions

Friday, June 6, 2025Faith

As a teenager, my middle son once told me that he thought he could give me any vocabulary word and I'd make it into a "mission moment." (I think it was a compliment!) The same thing happens to me at Mass: words such as neighbor, hospitality, and persistence stand out in Scripture. They bring me back to the missions.
In the Gospel of the Good Samaritan, Jesus asks, "Which of these three...was a neighbor to the robbers' victim?" My thoughts go to my first mission trip to Haiti where I worked at a wound care clinic run by Saint Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. Truly just a back-alley stoop, the Sisters spent hours every Sunday cleaning and bandaging the various wounds of Port-au-Prince's homeless. While with them, I washed a child's rat bites, a gang member's knife wounds, and an erupted tumor on an elderly man. The Sisters showed Christ's mercy, love, and compassion to these needy neighbors.
Martha and Mary were friends and followers of Jesus. They were probably thrilled to have Him as a guest in their home. As Martha toiled away, Mary sat and listened to Jesus, choosing as He said "...the better part." How hard it is to be more like Mary in a Martha world! Every day I spent in Haiti, we walked to the Sisters' house for 5:30 am Mass, returned to our mission house for morning prayer in English and Haitian Creole, and stopped regularly to recite the Liturgy of the Hours. Our days were spent feeding orphaned babies and school children or caring for patients at an AIDS hospice. At night we discussed where we saw the face of Christ that day. While living the busyness of Martha's radical hospitality, the missionaries taught us never to forget to sit at Jesus' feet.
Jesus told His followers to "...knock and the door will be opened to you." Almost daily at the orphanage, an infant would arrive. Sometimes left on the doorstep with an anonymous knock, the child was always accepted. The Sisters told me that many of the little ones would not be alive in a year's time. Most had AIDS or tuberculosis; all were malnourished. The mother in me was shaken to the core. As I looked around the large room with wall-to-wall iron cribs, I asked one of the Sisters how she showed such persistence in the face of such incredible sadness and loss.
Her answer came with a beatific smile: "Why, with the grace of God, my dear!"
What word will you hear at Mass that will lead YOU to serve others?

- Maureen Crowley Heil is Director of Programs and Development for the Pontifical Mission Societies, Boston.