The missionary in you and me. And Fr. Art.

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I keep on apologizing for my lack of time mylotting, this time, I did not just have a thousand and one errands but more so, there are important people to assist and keep up with. After all, they are what we are in this life for. I was starting to get depressed by the sad situations in life of people I know, especially the elderly. I was about to throw in the towel, conceding is the easy way out. But nay. This morning, I heard Fr. Emmanuel SVD talk about his classmate and fellow missionary Fr. Art, SVD., who was ordained with him 38 years ago. As it happened. Fr. Art was sent to Angola in South Africa at a time when there was civil unrest, famine, and all kinds of diseases, including malaria. In time, Fr. Art was afflicted with severe illness that the mission deemed it imperative to bring him back home. The journey, of course, was a difficult one for the ailing priest, that he had to be fetched by another priest in Hongkong. An ambulance awaited him at the Manila International Airport and delivered him right at Lourdes Hospital in Mandaluyong for what could have been really a last ditch effort to save the priest. Alas, it was not his time. After six months of recuperation in the hospital, he asked to be assigned in Bohol, a province with clean air, where he could regain his health. When he was in tip top condition, he enlisted in the mission to the Amazon in Brazil. That was much of his calling for several years. Now that he is fast getting old, he has been assigned in another province to help out in the mission work. Fr. Emmanuel said that not everyone is for the hazardous mission. Parents and teachers are missionaries in the own ways, as friends are who keep watch over their friends. Is my mission, I suppose, to lend that hand when one is in desperation. It's a corporal work of mercy.