FOCUS in the DR

This article was featured on http://www.ewtnnews.com.

Ben Loughman, a baseball player at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, said he didn't want to let another amazing opportunity pass him by.

So when he was recently invited to travel to the Dominican Republic with a team of Catholic athletes and help lead a baseball camp for impoverished kids, he jumped at the opportunity.

“You only get so many chances to enjoy the culture of a foreign country and also make a difference by helping those living there that are less fortunate than yourself,” said Loughman, an outfielder for Benedictine's Ravens.

From Dec. 27 to Jan. 5, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) led a group of 10 men through the organization's Varsity Catholic division to Banica – a small town on the border of Dominican Republic and Haiti.

The team, many of them collegiate and minor league baseball players, set up a sports-based mission camp in conjunction with a mission parish run by the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia.

Loughman participated in the project run by FOCUS geared toward helping college athletes – who live in a world often beset by status and materialism – to use their talents in humble works of service.

“It can be very easy for college athletes to fall to the temptation that they have it all,” Thomas Wurtz, director of Varsity Catholic, explained to EWTN News.

He added that the mission experiences help students who strive to be rooted in Christ to “step out of their world and into a completely foreign environment.”

Although FOCUS has been running foreign mission trips for a number of years, Varsity Catholic launched a branch of FOCUS Missions called “Varsity Catholic Mission Camps” within this last year. 

“The thought here is to harness the great influence of sports all over the world,” Wurtz said. “We want to provide college athletes with an opportunity to use a sport they love to proclaim a faith they believe. Our goal is the serve Christ and His poor through the language and influence of sports.”

The mission experience for college athletes, he continued, “can be uncomfortable, overwhelming, purifying, and extremely grace-filled.”

And grace-filled it was.

Loughman said he was struck by the people of Banica, who “had so little in regard to possessions and wealth,”  but were “so much happier than people in the United States.” 

“You could see God in everything they did and all their actions,” Loughman said, adding that the locals invited the team “into their homes like we were family.”

Jeff Runyan, director of FOCUS Missions who helped lead the team, said in a Jan. 26 phone interview that the trip was a “phenomenal” and “notably transformational experience for the student athletes who were involved.”

“Exposing them to the realities of a third world country just helped them to really have a great encounter with the person of Christ.”

Wurtz agreed that the experience was invaluable for all involved, especially the college athletes.

“Seeing the joy and the excitement, as well as the struggles these young men go through on these trips is a great blessing and part of the growth. They were all touched by how people down there just seek to live, and worry so little about the fickle things of life that can often exhaust our energies here in the States.”

“The men all set up various goals once they got back to continue to allow God's grace to work in their lives. I am excited to see the fruit continue to develop in them.”

Wurtz cited the billions of dollars raked in annually by the sports industry in America, noting that the nation's love for sports is a “large piece of our culture.” He added that college athletes can be hugely influential and said that and reaching them “with the fullness of the Gospel message is a task we need to take seriously, for the sake of the athletes as well as the millions of young people they influence.”

He described the love the Dominican Republic children have for sports as “powerful.”

“We had a total of 50-70 boys come each day,” Wurtz continued. “The amazing thing is that many of these boys wouldn't have shown up if it wasn't for baseball.”

He said that every day, the team would challenge the boys to respect God, each other, baseball and to work hard.

“During the last day of camp, we prayed with the boys for the grace to make Jesus Christ number one in their lives and to always seek to glorify Him above all things.”

Wurtz said that the Dominican Republic has a “great love” for the Catholic faith and for the game of baseball, “America's sport.”

“They truly embrace living in the moment with a joy and inner peace that is inspiring. They put a great emphasis on relationships rather than efficiency, which can be challenging for us Americans,” Wurtz added. 

“In a lot of ways, they live more fully the human experience, even if they don' have much. They treated us like kings, which is a very humbling experience since they have so little yet give so much.”

Read more: http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/US.php?id=2523#ixzz1CMBqYNw1

The Missionary Call

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, St. Francis Xavier, St. Paul, The North American Martyrs....The list of famous missionary saints goes on and on. 

Over the centuries, thousands of missionaries have given their lives for the sake of the Kingdom. Today, that call for missionaries is as evident as ever.

Read below to see how one man radically answered that call only a little over one century ago.

Fr. Damien was born Jozef De Veuster in the village of Tremelo in Flemish Brabant on Jan. 3, 1840. In his youth, he decided to enter a monastery to become a Priest. During his ecclesiastical studies, he would pray every day before a picture of St. Francis Xavier, patron of missionaries, to be sent on a mission. 

On March 19, 1864, Damien's missionary dream was fulfilled when he landed at Honolulu Harbor in downtown Honolulu as a missionary. There, Damien was ordained to the priesthood on May 21, 1864, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, a church established by his religious order. In 1865, he was assigned to the Catholic Mission in North Kohala on the island of Hawaiʻi.

While Father Damien was serving in several parishes on the island of Oʻahu, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi was facing a public health crisis. The Native Hawaiians became afflicted by diseases introduced to their islands by foreign traders and sailors. Thousands died of influenza, syphilis and other ailments which had never before affected them. This included the plight of leprosy (Hansen's disease). At the time, leprosy was thought to be highly contagious (we now know that 95% of the general population has immunity) and was thought to be incurable. In 1865, fearful of its spread, the Hawaiʻi Legislature passed and King Kamehameha V approved, the "Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy" which quarantined the lepers of the kingdom and moved them to settlement colonies known as Kalaupapa and Kalawao at the east end of the Kalaupapa peninsula on Molokaʻi. Kalawao County, where the village is situated, is divided from the rest of the island by a steep mountain ridge, and even today the only land access is by a mule track. Over 8,000 people were sent to the Kalaupapa peninsula from 1866 to 1969. The Royal Board of Health provided the quarantined people with supplies and food but did not yet have the resources to offer proper healthcare. According to documents from the time, the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi did not plan the settlement to be in disarray but did not provide sufficient resources and medical help. They planned on the inhabiting sufferers to grow their own crops, but because of the nature of the environment and their sickness, it was nearly impossible. By 1868, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1911), "Drunken and lewd conduct prevailed. The easy-going, good-natured people seemed wholly changed."

While Bishop Louis Désiré Maigret, vicar apostolic, believed that the lepers at the very least needed a priest to minister to their needs, he realized that this assignment could potentially be a death sentence, and thus did not want to send any one person "in the name of obedience". After prayerful thought, four priests volunteered. The bishop's plan was for the volunteers to take turns assisting the distressed. Father Damien was the first to volunteer and on May 10, 1873, Father Damien arrived at the secluded settlement at Kalaupapa, where Bishop Maigret presented him to the 816 lepers living there. Damien's first course of action was to build a church and establish the Parish of Saint Philomena. His role was not limited to being a priest: he dressed ulcers, built homes and beds, built coffins and dug graves^. Six months after his arrival at Kalawao he wrote his brother, Pamphile, in Europe:

...I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ.

Damien's arrival is seen by some as a turning point for the community. Under his leadership, basic laws were enforced, shacks became painted houses, working farms were organized and schools were erected. At his own request, and that of the lepers, Fr. Damien remained on Moloka'i.

n December 1884 while preparing to bathe, Damien inadvertently put his foot into scalding water, causing his skin to blister. He felt nothing. Damien had contracted leprosy. Despite this discovery, residents say that Damien worked vigorously to build as many homes as he could and planned for the continuation of the programs he created after he was gone.

Father Damien died of leprosy at 8:00 am on April 15, 1889, aged 49. The next day, after Mass by Father Moellers at St. Philomena's, the whole settlement followed the funeral cortège to the cemetery where Damien was laid to rest.

       -source


We are all called to serve as Fr. Damien served! His example serves as a prime model of the missionary spirit of the Church.


Pope Benedict XVI summed up the Missionary Call in his address to World Youth Day pilgrims in Australia in 2008.

"You must be holy and you must be missionaries since we can never separate holiness from mission. Do not be afraid to become holy missionaries like Saint Francis Xavier who traveled through the Far East proclaiming the Good News until every ounce of his strength was used up, or like Saint Therese of the Child Jesus who was a missionary even though she never left the Carmelite convent. Both of these are "Patrons of the Missions". Be prepared to put your life on the line in order to enlighten the world with the truth of Christ; to respond with love to hatred and disregard for life; to proclaim the hope of the risen Christ in every corner of the earth."