This Week's Mission Moment - December 7

When we leave the holy banquet of Communion, we are as happy as the wise men would have been if they could have carried away the Infant Jesus. St. John Vianney

This Week's Mission Moment - November 16, 2009

A world that is "beyond good and evil," in which nothing is either genuinely good or genuinely bad, and no truth, goodness, or beauty are revealed, is a world in which nothing is either intrinsically desirable or detestable. Such a world affords no possibility of seeing and using things as holy, which means to some degree letting them be, because in such a world there can be no holy things. Boredom is therefore the defining condition of a people uniquely in danger of losing their capacity to love, that is, a people uniquely in danger of failing to grasp "the mystery of [its] own being" and losing its very humanity. - Michael Hanby

This Week's Mission Moment - November 9, 2009

Music, great music, distends the spirit, arouses profound emotions and almost naturally invites us to raise our minds and hearts to God in all situations of human existence, the joyful and the sad. Music can become prayer. - Pope Benedict XVI

Mission Moment of the Week

"Without God the economy is only economy, nature is nothing more than a deposit of material, the family only a contract, life nothing more than a laboratory product, love only chemistry, and development nothing more than a form of growth."

- Archbishop Crepaldi

WHAT IS THE MISSION MOMENT? The Mission Moment began on World Mission Sunday, October 21, 2001. It's a weekly message that inspires, encourages, and challenges its readers to live life in the Presence of God. Sent across the United States and overseas to nearly every continent, it is inspiration for the New Evangelization. Simple truths in small doses! For more inspirational thoughts, visit the complete list of Mission Moments here.

This Week's Mission Moment - August 24, 2009

Bad times make good people, as mountainous pressures make diamonds or as fire tempers steel. - Dr. Peter Kreeft

This Week's Mission Moment

The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality. - G.K. Chesterton

Mission Moment

I chose this week's Mission Moment from a perhaps little known saint whose bio alone is food for a major motion picture. Here's the quote: Christ said, "I am the Truth"; he did not say "I am the custom." ...and here's the man: St. Toribio Alfonso Mogrovejo ________________________ St. Toribio Alfonso Mogrovejo Archbishop of Lima; b. at Mayorga, León, Spain, 1538; d. near Lima Peru, 23 March 1606. Of noble family and highly educated, he was professor of laws at the University of Salamanca, where his learning and virtue led to his appointment as Grand Inquisitor of Spain by Philip II and, though not of ecclesiastical rank, to his subsequent selection for the Archbishopric of Peru. He received Holy Orders in 1578 and two years later was consecrated bishop. He arrived at Payta, Peru, 600 miles from Lima, on 24 May, 1581. He began his mission work by travelling to Lima on foot, baptizing and teaching the natives. His favourite topic being: "Time is not our own, and we must give a strict account of it." Three times he traversed the eighteen thousand miles of his diocese, generally on foot, defenceless and often alone; exposed to tempests, torrents, deserts, wild beasts, tropical heat, fevers, and savage tribes; baptizing and confirming nearly one half million souls, among them St. Rose of Lima, St. Francis Solano, Blessed Martin of Porres, and Blessed Masias. He built roads, school houses, and chapels innumerable, and many hospitals and convents, and founded the first American seminary at Lima in 1591. He assembled thirteen diocesan synods and three provincial councils. Years before he died, he predicted the day and hour of his death. At Pacasmayo he contracted fever, but continued labouring to the last, arriving at Sana in a dying condition. Dragging himself to the sanctuary he received the Viaticum, expiring shortly after. He was beatified by Innocent XI in 1697 and canonized by Benedict XIII in 1726. His feast is celebrated on 27 April. - from New Advent.org