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A Note From the Archbishop

After fifteen years, I returned in early January to the Basilian parish in Cali, Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion, for the ordination celebration of Father Juan Carlos Rojas. What enormous changes have taken place! The school now enrolls more than 800 students and, much to my liking, they are teaching Latin! It is a marvelous institution where the parents are deeply involved in the life of the school. The parish, as ever, is lively and apostolic. Visitors were well taken care of. The Liturgy was celebrated with devotion and fervor, and the church was filled to overflowing. For me, it was a particular privilege for my first ordination as a bishop to confer the sacred ministry on a fellow Basilian – a Colombian. The Church is ever one in its faith but diverse in its various expressions.

Like so many others I am profoundly grateful to Father Jack Whitley for all that he has done to foster the missionary spirit of Basilians and their friends during his tenure as Mission Director. Through his ministry the Lord has blessed countless people. Father John Boscoe is a worthy successor, and I add my prayers to those of many others in wishing him well as he keeps alive in us the Lord’s command that we bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth, with a special concern for those who are poor and marginalized.

+J. Michael Miller, CSB
Secretary, Congregation for Catholic Education

A Note from the Holy Father

Pope Benedict XVI prays that all Catholics “grow in mission awareness and offer support and collaboration to missionary work.” This was his mission intention in March as published by the Apostleship of Prayer. Pope Benedict asks us to collaborate with missionaries. He wants all Catholics to “be enlivened by a holy restlessness” that leads them to pray and work for the salvation of all souls. It is the deepest desire of Jesus’ Heart that all people come to know and share His love now and forever. Our desires, when joined to the desires of Jesus’ Heart, lead us to pray and work with missionaries to spread His love.

The Apostleship of Prayer began in 1844 with a group of frustrated Jesuit seminarians who wanted to be missionaries. The seminarians, eager to join their brothers on the missions and restless because they had to study philosophy and theology first, grumbled in frustration. Their spiritual director pointed out to them that the end they desired—the salvation of souls—was a supernatural end; therefore, supernatural means were the best way to accomplish that end. Thus, every moment of their day, could be offered in union with the perfect offering of Jesus which is renewed in every Mass. Such an offering would advance the work of the missions as much as their direct work in the field.

Just as the Patroness of the Missions, St. Therese, taught us, we can be missionaries even while remaining at home.