Out of its own needs, our USA Province continues to send its members as missionaries to far away countries. Three were sent last summer, Fr. Vasco Milani to the Amazon, Fr. Jesus R. E. Garcia to Sierra Leone, and Fr. Lino Sgarbossa to Mexico. Fr. Vasco and Fr. Lino, after several years of service in the USA, returned to their old mission fields, while Fr. Jesus left for his first mission assignment. This summer, two more confreres, Fr. Eugene Montensi and Fr. Horacio Perez, have left for the mission field, a veteran and a freshman.
n July 13th, at a moving ceremony held at Our Lady of Fatima Shrine, of which he
had been Director for the past three years, Fr. Eugene Montesi, s.x., received the Mission Cross and the Bible at the hands of Bishop Daniel Reilly of Worcester, MA. The bishop, who presided at the celebration of the Mass and the Candlelight Procession, was very gracious and "proud" to give Father Eugene the symbols of his mission, and prayed: "Lord, keep him close to your heart and bless him by the power of your Spirit, so that he may be a blessing and a source of hope to all people."
Fr. Eugene has served in the States for the past six years. After a short period of rest at home with his mom in Italy, he will return to Sierra Leone, West Africa, where he already worked for many years. His heart is still there and, even at the cost of leaving many new friends here, he has rejoined the heart he had entrusted to the people that a most cruel and violent civil war obliged him to leave behind.
Fr. Horacio Perez Padilla, s.x., is on his way to Mozambique, on the Indian Ocean's Mozambique Channel in southern Africa. Fr. Horacio was ordained a priest in his home parish of "Espiritu Santo" in Tepatitlan, Jalisco, Mexico, only this past August 23rd after completing five years of studies at Chicago's Theological Union (CTU).
Along the road to ordination his people, and especially his family, encouraged Horacio to keep going and said how happy they were that he was becoming a missionary priest.
Like Eucharistic fragments detached from the host of the Xaverian Congregation, have been deposited to become yeast of new Christian communities. Isn't it a beautiful image? "Eucharistic fragments!"… like so many particles which the wind of the Spirit, blowing upon our altar, has sowed far and wide. And yet, the table is not deprived.
As a Deacon he did ministry at St. Therese Chinese Mission, in Chicago, where in particular he served the youth, prepared some persons for the sacraments of Baptism and Marriage and preached the Word of God on a regular basis. Before his diaconate year, Horacio, was in the Amazon for a two-year training mission Experience, learned Portuguese, which will be his language in Mozambique, once a colony of Portugal.
The occasion of these mission sendings provokes a reflection: our missionaries, scattered in so many countries, from Indonesia, to Colombia, from Brazil to Spain, Mexico to Sierra Leone, Italy to Japan, Taiwan to USA, United Kingdom to the Philippines, Chad to the Republic of the Congo, Burundi to Cameroon, Bangladesh to China to Mozambique… like Eucharistic fragments detached from the host of the Xaverian Congregation, have been deposited to become yeast of new Christian communities. Isn't it a beautiful image? ‘Eucharistic fragments!’… like so many particles which the wind of the Spirit, blowing upon our altar, has sowed far and wide. And yet, the table is not deprived. Indeed, it is not the Eucharist that diminishes; it is the altar that becomes larger. So also our missionaries: taken apparently at random by the wind of Pentecost and landed on remote shores, have not impoverished the ‘fold’ but have widened the 'tabernacle’.
Our gratitude goes to them all, wherever they are… In the safety of their mission and in the thick of the forest. In a wee field hospital or in the shadow of bamboos. In a school classroom, or on the threshold of a shanty… In the whirlwind of a metropolis, or in the silence of a chapel… where HE is. We are grateful to them all, priests, sisters, brothers, lay… who spend themselves as lamps in mission lands. We are grateful to them because they contribute to making of our world one family.
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)