Diocesan Missions Collection To be taken up in parishes throughout the diocese July 15-16, 2023

Consider your own call to be a missionary disciple of Christ, to be a neighbor, one who loves God by helping those in need.”

Bishop W. Shawn McKnight

A tide rises and recedes on one shore just as it cycles back on another.

Such are the bonds of mission among the people of central and northern Missouri and several dioceses thousands of miles away.

“We work in partnership with dioceses in Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana and India,” said Jake Seifert, director of the diocesan Missions Office.

“They have an abundance of priests that they send us to help build up the Kingdom of God here,” he said.

“We have access to financial resources they do not have in their home dioceses, and we’re sending it there to help them build up the Kingdom of God among their people,” he stated.

The bulk of this support comes from the Diocesan Missions Collection, which will be taken up in parishes throughout the diocese the weekend of July 15-16.

“We’re helping thousands of people lift themselves out of poverty and make a hopeful future for themselves and their families,” said Mr. Seifert.

Projects include building and expanding schools, digging water wells, installing solar-powered generators, establishing youth centers and building and renovating churches.

Building up the Kingdom

Early this year, Mr. Seifert accompanied Bishop W. Shawn McKnight and Father Boniface Nzabonimpa on a pastoral visit to the Diocese of Kampala, Uganda.

Fr. Nzabonimpa, pastor of St. Boniface Parish in Brunswick, St. Joseph Parish in Salisbury and St. Mary of the Angels Parish in Wien, is one of four priests serving here from the Kampala diocese.

They are among the 18 missionary priests serving here from dioceses overseas.

“They’ve been ministering here with great success, and we’re very grateful for that relationship,” said Bishop McKnight.

He noted that the Church in central and northeastern Missouri has been depending for generations on mission priests helping to provide the Sacraments.

“And in keeping with the spirituality of stewardship, it’s not only about what we receive, it’s also about what we can do to share and participate in the life and mission of the Church,” he said. 

“So, in the exchange of gifts that we have between the diocese of Jefferson City and the Diocese of Kampala, they are sending us priests and we are giving them something that we have to share with them, which is our ability to support some of their programming and some of their capital improvement needs,” he said.

Far and away

The Missions Collection also bolsters the work of the Merida Foundation, founded by Jefferson City parishioners the late Dorothy and Rudy Lemke, which helps residents of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

Assistance includes providing eyeglasses and sunglasses to people who cannot afford them, nutritious meals to more than 600 schoolchildren in need each day, and improvements to local schools.

A delegation from the foundation visits the area around Merida twice a year, delivering eyeglasses and meeting with foundation employees and volunteers.

Missionary discipleship

The Diocesan Missions Collection is one of three special collections that will be taken up each year in this diocese under the stewardship model of supporting the Church.

The others are the Christmas special collection for seminarians and infirm priests, and the Easter special collection in support of retired priests and religious.

A special envelope for this collection was inserted into the July 7, 2023, issue of The Catholic Missourian.

Parishioners should write a separate check to their parishes and place it in the collection basket in that or another envelope marked “Mission Collection.”

Funds brought into the parish for this collection are considered extraordinary income and thus not subject to the tithe.

“I ask that you reach into your hearts and prayerfully consider joining personally in the Church’s missionary efforts through this special collection,” Bishop McKnight wrote to the people of this diocese.

“Consider your own call to be a missionary disciple of Christ, to be a neighbor, one who loves God by helping those in need,” the bishop stated.

In union with the whole Church

The Missions Office was founded in the early 1960s in response to Pope St. John XXIII’s plea to the Church in Europe and North America to help stem the spread of Communism in developing countries.

For 40 years, as many as 10 percent of the priests of this diocese were serving in the diocese’s missions in Peru. They helped cultivate throughout this diocese a sense of shared mission and renewal of the worldwide Church.

The diocese’s mission work has diversified over the past two decades in proportion to the number of missionary priests from other countries who now serve here.

“It’s about understanding that we’re a part of the whole,” said Bishop McKnight. “The more we work together, the better we’re able to fulfill what the Lord asks us to do, and that is ultimately to invite more brothers and sisters to the table of the Lord.”

This version of this article is updated from the version that was published in the July 7, 2023, edition of The Catholic Missourian.