p. 65The Sacred Heart and the Catholic Missions

It is very difficult to see how anyone, who is truly devoted to the Heart of our Lord and wishes to imitate that Divine Heart, can fail to be most interested in, and active in behalf of the foreign missions. Among the many griefs which the ingratitude of mankind has inflicted upon the Heart of our Lord, surely one of the greatest must be this, that, after He has done everything to save and sanctify the whole world, so many of His own followers show so little zeal in helping to spread His faith throughout the earth. It is now nearly nineteen hundred years since our Lord died on the Cross for the salvation of all mankind. To the last throb of His Sacred Heart, He prayed for and desired that every human soul should come to the knowledge of His truth. Some wicked heresies have taught that our Lord died only for certain ones among the race of Adam. The Church rejects such teaching and condemns it. She declares that our Lord died for all mankind.

Since He gave His life, therefore, for all men, He must desire with all the love of His Sacred Heart that all men may come to the knowledge of His truth. He must wish that all His followers will do everything they can to spread that holy faith. The work of the missions must be specially dear to Him. Yet at the present time, when nineteen centuries have rolled along, when nearly thirty generations of mankind have come and gone, there are still a thousand million pagans left in the world!

Only one out of every five of the earth’s swarming populations is Catholic. Only about one out of four is Christian. Two thirds of the entire human race are still sunk in paganism, and many of these wretched souls have never yet had the Gospel of Christ preached to them, they know nothing of the love of His Sacred Heart. They do not even know that God has become Man and has died for their salvation. They have received no sacraments, they have heard no Catholic teaching, they dwell in a spiritual darkness, which it is difficult for us even to conceive.

Try to imagine how the Sacred Heart of Jesus yearns over these brothers and sisters of His who are disinherited of their part in His redemption which they would receive were they members of the Church. Think how He must desire to see them all converted and come to the knowledge of the truth. But His heavenly Father has decreed that the salvation of man shall come through the ministry of man. In order that the sad thousands of millions of pagans now on earth may be converted, or may even learn the good tidings of salvation, it is necessary that we, the Catholic faithful, shall send to them missionaries who will preach the gospel, administer the sacraments, and bring those peoples into the communion of the one true Church founded by Christ.

It is we, who are already Catholic, who must become apostles of the faith to the immense multitude still outside the fold. It is we who have in our hands the salvation of millions. Everyone, without exception, can help and should help to satisfy the burning thirst of the Sacred Heart for the souls of men. Everyone can pray, can offer up good works and sacrifices for the welfare of the missions, and thus can win the immense graces which are necessary to beat down the dark barriers of superstition and pride and melt the frozen hearts of the pagan nations, so that they may welcome the meek yoke of Jesus, their Saviour.

We can speak of the missions—how immense is the power of human speech to stir up interest, to spread appreciation, to convince everyone of the need and the great importance of work like that of the missions. If we are well informed ourselves and enthusiastic about mission work, we can stir up tens and hundreds of others so that they will be helpers of the missions. Then we shall participate in the immense merit which they will gain by helping a cause which is so dear to the Heart of Christ. Of course, to do this, we must ourselves read about the missions, take an interest in mission magazines and mission societies, help on the work which is being done in our parish and our city in behalf of missions.

The opportunities in the mission field of today are absolutely unlimited. We have often repeated the significant phrase, that this is the “hour of God” on the foreign missions. In former days, Catholic missionaries had to enter missionary lands in the face of fierce opposition from the pagan governments. Many of them laid down their lives as the penalty for having dared to venture into missionary lands. The preaching of the gospel was often carried on in the face of intolerable difficulties. The missionary had to hide like a hunted animal and to gather his flock at night and in secret, to avoid death.

How changed are conditions now! Many pagan governments welcome the coming of missionaries and encourage mission activities. Many pagan hospitals have been placed, by these governments, in the care of Catholic Sisters. Schools may be opened almost everywhere and hundreds of thousands of children may be brought up in the Catholic faith. Catechists can go about and prepare whole villages for baptism, giving them preliminary instruction in the true religion, so that when the priest comes, he finds them ready for baptism.

Some of these once pagan villages have, in a few years, been raised to such a state of fervor that practically all the inhabitants go daily to Holy Communion. Indeed, some of these newly made converts put to shame, by their fervor, the carelessness of many who are born in Catholic surroundings, just as the freedom of the Church in pagan lands to conduct its schools and hospitals puts to shame the tyranny of some governments once called Christian, which persecute Catholic education.

Thus, the gate is opened to Catholic missionaries in pagan lands. Already a little army of priests, Sisters, and Brothers are embarked on the work of the missions in every pagan country. But how many, many more are needed to accomplish all that can and should be done for the help of the missions! Every priest who goes forth into some of the more fertile fields of missionary lands means thousands of converts to the Church. Where the scholars in missionary schools are now counted by the thousand, they might number hundreds of thousands if funds were at hand to build the schools required to contain them. Where the catechists are counted by scores, they might be numbered by thousands, on the one condition that more means were at hand to pay their scanty salaries.

In many of these mission lands, the Sisters’ orphanages receive great numbers of babies, some of them given to the Sisters by their almost destitute parents, others picked up from the wayside, where they have been abandoned to die. These babies are all baptized and some of their pure souls go straight to heaven, for they die in infancy because of the dreadful treatment to which they have been subjected, before they reach the Sisters’ orphanages. Others survive and are brought up good Catholics to be the founders of Catholic families. For every baby now in the orphanages, hundreds might be received and cared for if more means were at hand. Sums which seem trifling to us, which we waste on mere superfluities, would be a precious gift to the missions.

How many are there, even among the friends of the Sacred Heart, who are doing all they can, or even all they should for the welfare of the missions? Yet, if we consider the love of that Sacred Heart for souls and the sad plight of these pagan peoples, we ought to realize how much He desires us to help them. The women and children especially are in a state of the most terrible oppression, darkness, and often misery. Women are despised in these lands, which have never known the beautiful and humanizing influences of devotion to the Blessed Virgin. All that Christianity means of hope, faith, love, gentleness, and pity is wanting in these dark nations, which worship hideous idols and credit the fictions of false mythologies.

Every true follower and lover of the Sacred Heart should search his own conscience frankly and look about honestly to determine what he or she should do for the aid of the missions. Then, having summed up the worth of prayer, of zealous conversation, and of active aid of the missions which each one considers the right measure of personal effort, let us all with great, sincere self-sacrifice offer this measure of prayer, of talk, and of service to the Sacred Heart. This is genuine love for that adorable Heart; this is precious friendship, to help the foreign missions and thus satisfy Christ’s thirst for souls.