We beg you, come and give us Jesus Christ!

"One night Paul had a vision: a Macedonian appeared and kept urging him in these words, ‘Come across to Macedonia and help us.’ Once he had seen this vision we lost no time in arranging a passage to Macedonia, convinced that God had called us to bring them the good news." (Acts 16:9-10)

The first sound a baby makes is a cry! He or she cries and cries. When the baby cries, the mother flies to its assistance, knowing that it needs milk. In the same way, souls all over the world cry out for receving the milk of the Gospel, which alone can help them to "grow up to salvation". (1 Peter 2:2) 

A true missionary cannot ignore these cries. When a missionary is born (or born again), he is sure to hear voices of souls crying out to him for the saving words of the Gospel, "Come and help us!" One such great missionary who generously responded to God's call was St. Patrick. Here is an excerpt from the story of how St. Patrick answered God's call: 

"God called and Patrick listened. "In a vision of the night," he said, "I saw a man coming as if from Ireland with innumerable letters, and he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter: The Voice of the Irish. I seemed at that moment to hear many voices crying as if with one voice: We beg you, holy youth, that you shall come and shall walk again among us." Others who wrote of Patrick’s call to teach Christianity to the Irish said the voices were the voices of children, those born and yet unborn, thousands of youthful voices crying out for the truths, the parables, the solace, and the hope of Jesus’ life and teachings. "I was stung intensely in my heart so that I could read no more and thus I awoke." "

The holy youth speedily made his preparations for a life of mission to feed his hearers with Jesus Christ. All of us, baptised Christians are called to be missionaries in our own way, giving Jesus to all whom we meet, most importantly through our love. Can we ignore the cries of the souls around us, in our homes, in our work places? Let us become missionaries, people who, in the words of Saint Therese, make Christ known and loved!