Are You Called to Be a Missionary?
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
Ascension
4.9 • 7.7K Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2021
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are you called to be a missionary? You may be one already!
Saint Francis Xavier and Saint Therese of Lisieux are co-patrons of missionaries, although they lived very different lives. While St. Francis traveled all over the world proclaiming the gospel of Christ, St. Therese was unable to travel and did what she could in her own town. Both were missionaries in their own right.
Being a missionary isn’t about traveling or living a crazy and unpredictable life. It’s about spreading the word of God to those who need to hear it. So the question is, are you called to be a missionary?
As baptized Christians, we are all called to be missionaries in our own unique way. By living the life God has laid out for us, we can evangelize exactly who God wants us to reach, just by doing our best to live according to his commandments. This is also a part of the universal call to holiness, which not only states that every person is called to be a saint, but also that every person is called to be an apostle—or missionary—of Christ.
St. Francis Xavier lived in a Christian era, and had to leave his home in order to evangelize. We, however, live in a post-Christian era, where the majority of people are not God loving people. The era we are living in right now holds the same kind of ignorance of Christ that the apostles lived in. This means that we don’t have to go anywhere to evangelize. We can start being missionaries right in our own home towns.
St. Francis and St. Therese weren’t missionaries because of where they went—they were missionaries because of their hearts. There are so many people in our daily lives that don’t know God. Let us live out our call as missionaries and bring Christ to those God has given us.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Okay, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right. |
| 0:05.0 | Here we go. |
| 0:06.0 | How's my name's Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents. |
| 0:16.8 | I might have shared before that Saint Francis Xavier is my patron saint. |
| 0:20.8 | When I was confirmed, I was told you can get a confirmation saint and I'm like, well, |
| 0:24.5 | who do I choose because there are a lot of saints. |
| 0:26.9 | There are so many different saints. |
| 0:28.2 | What I really like Saint Francis Xavier because of a couple of reasons. |
| 0:31.4 | One is he was a track star at the University of Paris and I thought, I want to be a track |
| 0:36.1 | star, even if it's not in Paris somewhere. |
| 0:38.1 | Secondly, he's because he was the patron saint of missionaries. |
| 0:42.3 | Saint Francis Xavier has these stories of him going to India and it is said that when |
| 0:47.5 | he was in India, he baptized over 40,000 people. |
| 0:50.7 | It's just incredible. |
| 0:51.7 | In fact, when you read Saint Francis Xavier's letters back to Ignatius Voloila, the founder |
| 0:56.1 | of the Jesuits, Francis Xavier was a Jesuit. |
| 0:58.0 | He talks about this. |
| 0:59.0 | He just talks about how there were so many people who just wanted to know Christ. |
| 1:06.5 | That in fact, when he arrived, there were some people who he said the only thing they |
| 1:10.4 | know about being a Christian is that they are Christians. |
| 1:12.6 | They don't know what it means, though. |
| 1:13.8 | And he just would teach constantly and baptize constantly and just like, it's amazing. |
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