Hello, Christ the King Family,
This weekend, we hosted a friend and brother of mine in Holy Cross, Fr. Shohag Gabil, CSC, who shared with us the efforts of the Holy Cross Missions, particularly in his home country of Bangladesh. In fact, back in the summer of 2017, Fr. Shohag (who was still a seminarian at the time) came to Moreau Seminary here at Notre Dame and studied theology in the Master of Divinity programs with all of the American CSC seminarians. I was impressed by his willingness to come to the other side of the world far from his family and culture to study at a high level in a secondary language for him. On a funnier note, I was also incredibly impressed in the middle of the August heat one evening (most of Moreau was not air conditioned…) to see him watching TV with some of the guys in the rec room wrapped up in a comforter blanket—because it felt cooler to him than what he has been used to most of his life! That first winter was tough for him, but he adjusted, and is actually still over at Notre Dame now pursuing a doctorate in Theology. None of that was easy for him but he was willing to be an ambassador for his country and culture, and help breathe life into our formation program by helping us appreciate the global reality of our One Catholic Church.
The parable in our Gospel reading this Sunday provokes a deeper reflection on the use of the wealth we have been given. In a more current-day context, Pope Francis urged us in his still-timely encyclical Laudato Si’ (which celebrated its 10th anniversary this summer): “We need to strengthen the conviction that we are one single human family. There are no frontiers or barriers, political or social, behind which we can hide, still less is there room for the globalization of indifference” (Laudato Si’, Section 52). Or, as St. Paul puts it in our second reading from his Letter to the Colossians: “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all.”
I hope that the presence of Fr. Shohag this weekend helped to add a personal, embodied touch to the good and valuable work that happens in our Holy Cross Missions—valuable work that we can help support. We will probably never encounter the people who are served in those missions face-to-face in this lifetime on earth, but nevertheless we are one Body in Christ spanning across the globe, and we hold those heavenly treasures of God’s salvation in Christ Jesus as One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. In fact, that’s really what we acknowledge in our words towards the end of the Creed every Sunday! If you would like to learn more about the Holy Cross Missions in particular, including our Sister Parish Corpus Christi in Jalchatra, Bangladesh and other places around the globe, you can discover more and see ways to contribute at missionappeals.holycrossmissions.org & give.holycrossmissions.org .
In Christ,
Fr. David
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