Luceat!

Greetings from the frontline! I hope to write some short letters in the next few weeks entitled “From the Heart of a Missionary.” These letters will consist in my own experience as a missionary living on the frontlines of the new evangelization. I live among our future, our hope: Today’s university students. Each day I am surrounded by some of the brightest and most promising young people one could ever imagine — their study habits and intensity put my own collegiate mediocrity to shame.

Yet in all of this, I do not lose my call. For not all are called to be scholars among men. It is the missionary who goes out among those who are wiser, stronger, and more powerful than him to proclaim with the strength of the Holy Spirit that Jesus is Lord, even during the university years.

But in the midst of living the privilege of evangelization we still seem to become restless: We think we need more education. We think we need more time. We think we need more friends. And not one of us would ever deny the good of each of these. But they fall short of what is in the depths of all our desiring.

Have you felt this way before? What causes such great grief in the midst of fighting heroic battles? The heart of this missionary is one that has been pierced, pierced by the great sword of love that causes each person to strive beyond what he thinks he is capable of doing. The world bows in awe before such love. It is a love that is contagious, and drives a soul to desire more than this world…to desire God!

In is in the heart of this missionary to help you desire God more. I hope to do this by writing about some of my victories and crosses that I have experienced while serving as a missionary on the frontline. I hope to reveal to you my heart, where I pray that you will see our Lord Jesus. What do you want to know about the heart of a missionary? I pray that my heart will speak to yours.