Collection supports missionary work

In the poorest parish of the poorest diocese in Korea, Rev. Joseph Veneroso, a Maryknoll missionary, once met an elderly widow who had spent years saving up her money for a simple dream: a hip replacement operation.

The Amsterdam-born missionary, now editor of Maryknoll Magazine, had a dream as well: to build a church for the community.

Donors to the missions and local villagers had given what they could; but when the widow decided to donate all of her savings to the project, Father Veneroso and his peers protested.

"I'm an old woman," the widow told them. "Why are you rubbing my poverty in my face?"

Sacrifice

At her insistence, the money was accepted, and eventually the church was built. At the dedication Mass, Father Veneroso asked that the widow be led up the aisle. As she walked, he read the biblical story of the widow's mite.

"There was not a dry eye in the house," he told The Evangelist.

But the story didn't end there: A Catholic newspaper heard of the woman's generosity and wrote a story about her, and a Catholic hospital offered to perform her much-needed operation for free.

The widow refused, saying, "Give it to a young person who will get more out of it."

Teaching us

"We tend to think of the poor as people who receive us," whether they are receiving donations or missionary help, said Father Veneroso. "But the poor also teach us about God, about survival, about faith."

This weekend, Catholics of the Albany Diocese will have the chance to demonstrate how well the lessons of the poor have been learned, when the collection is taken up for the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, which supports missions around the world.

The collection is divided among the Propagation society and two other organizations -- the American Board of Catholic Missions and the Catholic Near East Welfare Association. The majority of the donations support missions in Asia, Africa, parts of Latin America and islands in the Pacific; 31 percent of the collection goes to missions in the U.S.

Many good works

About 1,000 mission dioceses worldwide receive annual financial assistance to keep their day-to-day pastoral and evangelizing activities alive. They also receive funds for catechetical programs, to educate seminarians and future women religious, and to support the work of religious communities.

Funds help to build churches and chapels and assist the missionaries who staff them with transportation.

For Father Veneroso, who grew up attending St. Michael's parish in Amsterdam and entered the Maryknolls after a stint in the Peace Corps, donations to the missions meant that his own work in Korea could continue -- and flourish.

Between 1970 and '85, he helped to found a parish in the village of Masan, started weekly gatherings for senior citizens and opened a social service center where local residents could bring their children for day care.

Inspired

He told The Evangelist that he was continually inspired by the enthusiasm of the Koreans he worked with, who shared all they had despite their material poverty.

"Once a year, on Palm Sunday after the final Mass, we had a blood drive in the church," he remembered. "What can the poor teach us? They have family and hospitality. The Tanzanian will sacrifice his last chicken to welcome a guest into his home; the Thais have a philosophy: `If it's not fun, why do it?'

"You look at people who live in mud shacks, who have nothing, and they seem happy. In the missions, we say that we have to be open to receiving their faith."

Generosity

However, in order to share the faith of those around the world, the missions depend on the generosity of Catholics here at home.

In his pulpit letter to parishes of the Diocese on the collection, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard asked parishioners to "be as generous as your financial resources permit" in donating to the Mission Sunday collection.

In doing so, the Bishop wrote, Catholics of the Albany Diocese can fulfill the Scriptural message to "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations."

(10-16-97)