PROSPECT HEIGHTS — At the Diocese of Brooklyn’s annual Mass for World Mission Sunday on Oct. 20, Father Thomas Ahern spoke of how the late Bishop Thomas Daily (1927-2017) would rush to join the missionary field in remote areas of Peru, where he often traveled in a dilapidated Volkswagen Beetle, or on horseback.
“[Bishop Daily] often told the priests of the diocese these were the happiest years of his priesthood,” said Father Ahern, the diocese’s director of the Propagation of the Faith Office. “Why? Because the people were thirsting for Christ.”
World Mission Sunday, created in 1926 at the direction of Pope Pius XI to help the global mission of the Church, is an annual observance held on the third Sunday in October. It includes a mandatory second collection in parishes worldwide to help the Pontifical Mission Societies.
The theme of this World Mission Sunday is “Go and invite everyone to the banquet,” based on the parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 28:19, where Jesus issued the Great Commission — “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”
Father Ahern, who celebrated the diocese’s Mass in the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph, said everyone evangelized comes to the banquet of God’s love. The money, he added, helps missionaries “create an atmosphere where people can come to the banquet.”
“The goal is to come to know and love Christ, in the Eucharist, in the scriptures,” said Father Ahern, pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in South Ozone Park, Queens.
According to information from the Propagation of the Faith Office, the diocese raised about $180,080 in last year’s World Mission Sunday Collection for the Pontifical Mission Societies. This year’s numbers have not yet been finalized.
Vital to last year’s total were St. Sebastian Catholic Academy in Woodside, Queens, and St. Bernadette Catholic Academy in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, each raising more than $12,000 for the pontifical mission, according to Father Ahern.
Specifically, the schools’ donations funded the Missionary Childhood Association, one of the three groups that comprise the pontifical mission. Following Mass, students from both academies received framed “high donor” awards.
Among them was Jeremy Amare, a seventh grader at St. Sebastian Catholic Academy.
“I didn’t know much about mission before,” he said. “We have to help raise money for the poor people, that’s it.”
While St. Sebastian and St. Bernadette perennially lead the way in raising mission funds, St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Academy in Woodhaven received the Banner Award for donating at least $1,000 in 2023.
In Father Ahern’s homily, he conveyed the importance of donations by describing the meaningful work of missionaries worldwide. He noted missionaries travel to some of the world’s most dangerous places to evangelize people yearning to know God.
Father Ahern spoke from personal experience, as he mentioned that he often visits with missionaries from Nigeria and Kenya, where “the churches are packed.”
“They can’t build them quick enough,” he said, noting that priests from those countries become missionaries to people in the United States.
Father Ahern also explained that parishioners in these locations also collect money for the pontifical mission, even though they live in impoverished areas and difficult situations. He recalled asking one African missionary why the poor parishioners donated, to which the missionary replied that the people insisted on doing so.
“They said, ‘We want to receive a blessing for giving, even though we don’t have anything. We want to help those who have even less than we do,’ ” according to Father Ahern. “That’s a beautiful sentiment.”
That attitude, he added, shows “the Church is alive.”
“So,” Father Ahern concluded, “World Mission Sunday reminds us not only of its needs but also its vibrancy in other parts of the world.”