Matt Moran, formerly of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart and Misean Cara, plants a tree on a mission project in Africa.
Matt Moran, former fundraising manager at the MSC Missions Office in Cork, recently spoke to The Irish World about the ongoing importance of missionary work in todayâs world.
Speaking about the fact that Irish missionaries are still making a real difference in the lives of some of the worldâs poorest people, Matt states: âWe need to debunk the notion that the missionary era is over. Done. History.â He goes to say, âThe work is being continued by local and indigenous missionaries that the Irish trained and recruited. Across Africa, Asia, and South America, the people of the communities are following the work that the Irish started.â
Matt spent a decade working the with Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in Cork, before taking up the post of director and chairman of Misean Cara. Now retired, Matt has since written a book highlighting the huge impact that Irish missionaries have had across the world. His book, The Legacy of Irish Missionaries Lives On, was released in 2016, with a foreword by former Irish President Mary Robinson.
In his book, Matt studies the changing role of Irish missionaries abroad, and analyses the effects of their lasting influence. âThe overriding consideration of missionary work is the alleviation of poverty by creating sustainable livelihoods,â he says. âEducation is key. If someone is educated, they are more equipped to pull themselves out of the cycle of poverty.â
“Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.”
Self-sufficiency is a major element of the ethos that drives missionary work, where both religious and lay missionaries work to empower local people and help them to help themselves. âTheir whole rationale is empowerment,â Matt emphasises. âYou canât keep providing services. âGive a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.â That is the basic principle missionaries operate on.â
âItâs now about sustainability, itâs not just about feeding the hungry. Thatâs todayâs work. Tomorrowâs work and next yearâs work is making those people sustainable to be able to feed themselves.â
The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart have been working to promote positive change in the KKSV9 district in Pinugay, a resettlement area for families who have been displaced from their homes in the Philippines. Poverty is a serious issue in this isolated region, and many families struggle with hunger, unemployment, and illness as a result.
In 2016, the Irish Province of the MSC donated funds to help the establishment of a number of different self-sufficiency programmes in the area, including a local consumer store, a beekeeping project, and a sewing and tailoring programme.
The KKSV9 Sewing Livelihood Project is now up and running, with great success to date. Phase One of the project involved training locals in sewing and tailoring skills, and the group now have regular clients who order items such as shirts, shorts, and aprons. The project has been such a success to date that the group are now looking to broaden their reach by welcoming new members, so that they can take on new clients and bigger orders.
Life Sharing Programme: Growing together in faith
At the beginning of June 2017, the MSC group in the Philippines visited the sewing project to assess their progress and establish what needs to be done to allow for further growth. In the course of the visit, a new project was proposed: a Life Sharing Programme, which will allow local people to share and explore their life experiences and their faith.
Fr Richie Gomez MSC meets with members of the Sewing Livelihood Programme in Pinugay
âSomehow, the discussion became very inspiring and motivating,â says Jahms Morga, one of the organisers of the sewing project. âFor the people here, this is a real need. Everybody involved in this programme will be able to grow as a person, and more importantly, as a community. We will invite lay missionaries to visit the group, and we hope that this will be a great opportunity for the people of KKSV9 to share their stories and grow in faith with their neighbours.â
As the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart work to create security and self-sufficiency for the people of KKSV9, the community is clearly growing in strength and spirit. With the help of mission friends in the Irish Province and around the world, residents of KKSV9 are already enjoying the advantages of both social and personal development that will benefit the area for generations to come.
A gathering in the Scottish Highlands celebrating the Catholic faith
A Youth 2000 Retreat is always going to be special, but the last regional gathering in Craig Lodge in the Scottish Highlands was wonderful. This is the home of Maryâs Meals, the dynamic charity that provides over a million meals every day to children living in poverty around the world. This time we had almost 200 young people from around Scotland and beyond. Some even bussed it up from London. It didn’t matter where you came from. It was just fantastic to be there. We had those who have been at the last twenty Youth 2000 Retreats and others for whom it was their first time. All were equally welcome.
The music ministry is always great, but this time is was extraordinary
We were blessed to have some of the most amazing music ministry, led by Kate and the team. Throughout the whole weekend we had Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. It was the perfect opportunity to raise hearts and minds to God, while putting up with the midges. I had heard about them, but honestly anything I was told didnât do them justice. They were relentless, as was the rain, but plagues of insects and floods of water couldnât dampen the spirits of all the people there. In fact it kind of made it better. In the River is now officially one of my top five favourite hymns, along with Kate Curran’s Pentecost Sequence that she sang for the first time that weekend.
Pope Francis has announced that the first World Day of the Poor will be observed this coming winter, on Sunday, 19th November 2017.
The Holy Father published a special message on Tuesday, June 13th, explaining that at the conclusion of the Jubilee of Mercy, he wished to launch a World Day of the Poor, âso that throughout the world, Christian communities can become an ever greater sign of Christâs charity for the least and those most in needâ.
The Jubilee of Mercy ended in November 2016, when Pope Francis celebrated a special Mass for the socially marginalised in St Peterâs Basilica. In the days leading up to this Mass, the Pope had heard many stories of people struggling with hardship and daily difficulties, and now he calls on us to âbring forth compassion and works of mercy for the benefit of our brothers and sisters in needâ.
âI invite the whole Church,â said Pope Francis, âand men and women of good will everywhere, to turn their gaze on this day to all those who stretch out their hands and plead for our help and solidarity. They are our brothers and sisters, created and loved by the one Heavenly Fatherâ.
âLet us love, not with words but with deeds.â
The message for the first World Day of the Poor is âLet us love, not with words but with deedsâ. In this message, Pope Francis invites âthe whole Church, and men and women of good will everywhere, to turn their gaze on this day to all those who stretch out their hands and plead for our help and solidarityâ.
Pope Francisâ message, which can be read in full on the official Vatican website, draws from the life of St Francis. The Holy Father speaks of St Francis in his message, nothing that âprecisely because he kept his gaze fixed on Christ, Francis was able to see and serve him in the poorâ.
The Pope went on to say that âif we want to help change history and promote real development, we need to hear the cry of the poor and commit ourselves to ending their marginalizationâ.
Poverty challenges us daily, writes the Pope, âin faces marked by suffering, marginalisation, oppression, violence, torture and imprisonment, war, deprivation of freedom and dignity, ignorance and illiteracy, medical emergencies and shortage of work, trafficking and slavery, exile, extreme poverty and forced migration.â
âPoverty has the face of women, men and children exploited by base interests, crushed by the machinations of power and money.â
Poverty also faces us in other ways, a poverty that âstifles the spirit of initiative of so many young people by keeping them from finding workâ, and one which âdulls the sense of personal responsibility and leaves others to do the work while we go looking for favoursâ. In todayâs world, Pope Francis says, âwe cannot remain passive, much less resignedâ.
The Holy Father concluded by stating: âThe poor are not a problem: they are a resource from which to draw as we strive to accept and practise in our lives the essence of the Gospelâ. With this in mind, we must now respond âwith a new vision of life and societyâ.
As the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart work to alleviate the hardship brought about in some of the worldâs most impoverished areas, we look with Pope Francis to a brighter future. Working alongside other missionary orders in the Misean Cara and AMRI groups, weâre glad to be part of a bigger picture as we work together for positive change.
“The words of Christ given as heading to todayâs Gospel call for reflection at two levels: the message of Christâs presence in the Eucharist in our own lives and in the society in which we live, and the problems encountered by the young people and others today regarding belief in Christâs presence in the Eucharist under the symbols, or the species, of bread and wine. Many find it hard to believe this, and fail to understand it. We can reflect on both points for a while.
The Eucharist has been at the source and centre of Christianity down through the ages, and still remains so. Reflection on it brings to mind many demands of Christian living, as many as belief in the living Christ himself does. Instituted at the Last Supper, the last of his meals with followers, it recalls the many meals during his life and the significance of these, eating with the marginalized and the outcast.
In Markâs Gospel, after the multiplications of the loaves, in a journey across the Sea of Galilee the evangelist notes that the apostles had forgotten to bring bread with them, having only one loaf. Jesus warns of the danger of certain leaven (yeast). The apostles think that he is referring to their lack of bread. Jesus reminds them of his multiplication of the loaves, and of their lack of understanding of the significance of the miracle (Mark 8:14-21). It is a curious text, but the point seems to be that Jesus is calling on his apostles (and the church) to reflect on the miracle of the loaves, his meals; eventually, the bread and wine become Eucharist, and we reflect on their significance as a sign and pledge of his saving and encouraging presence with the church, in times of need and always. There are so many aspects of the Eucharistic mystery that call for reflection.
The real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine is a mystery, to be understood by faith. Already in Christâs day, as represented in Johnâs Gospel, his Jewish listeners objected: ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ Jesus replies, insisting on his teaching. Many of his disciples said, ‘This is a hard teaching; who can listen to it?’, and Jesus replied, ‘What if you were to see the Sin of Man ascending where he was before?’ (John 6:52-65).
We grasp the mystery of his Eucharistic presence better when we consider it in the context of Jesus, true man and true God, his ascent into heaven, and enthronement at Godâs right hand. Down through the centuries, the Church has taken Jesusâ words on the bread and wine as his body and blood literally and lived with the mystery, a mystery as ever hard to put in human words. She has refused the view that the bread and wine only represent the body and blood of Christ. At the consecration, there is a transformation, in some way, of the elements involved – the bread and the wine. Her belief was incarnated in the respect for the bread and wine after the consecration, in the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament and in Eucharistic devotion. These were the manners in which the faithful expressed, and continue to express, their faith in Christâs Eucharistic presence.
When the belief was challenged by Berengarius, the Church formally responded in 1079 that at the consecration the bread and wine were substantially changed into the body and blood of Christ. In the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), this change was referred to as transubstantiation. The Council of Trent (1551) took up the question once again at the Reformation, affirming that this change at the consecration the ‘holy Catholic Church properly and appropriately calls transubstantiation’, words repeated in the more recent (1994) Catechism of the Catholic Church (Paragraph 1376). Such Christian and Catholic beliefs as ‘consubstantial’ and ‘transubstantiation’, not being words current in ordinary discourse, should not be the subjects of popular opinion polls. They are terms chosen by the Church to make clear her position on certain mysteries.”
We are delighted to announce that the MSC Plant, Book & Cake Sale run by the Sacred Heart Parish in Cork has raised a grand total of âŹ3,821.82 in aid of the Holy Family Care Centre in South Africa.
The Bring & Buy Sales ran after Saturday and Sunday Masses at the Sacred Heart Parish Centre on the Western Road, Cork, on 27th and 28th May 2017 â and it seems like the summer sunshine brought the parish out in force!
We would like to sincerely thank everybody who contributed so generously and with such goodwill. All funds raised will go to the Holy Family Care Centre in South Africa, where the Sacred Heart Family provide essential medical care and educational facilities to children who have been orphaned or are otherwise suffering as a result of HIV/AIDS and TB. The staff and volunteers at Holy Family are giving hope to children who have nowhere else to turn, and the generosity of our mission friends in Cork will be a great boost to the entire community.
Thank you!
âAlthough we are halfway across the world, kindness knows no boundaries. The generosity of our parishioners and mission friends in Cork will give great encouragement to the Holy Family community in South Africa. Thank you to everybody who attended our Bring & Buy Sales for your enthusiasm and your contribution.â Fr Michael OâConnell MSC Missions Office Director
Self-sufficiency is a major element of the ethos that drives missionary work, where both religious and lay missionaries work to empower local people and help them to help themselves. âTheir whole rationale is empowerment,â Matt emphasises. âYou canât keep providing services. âGive a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.â That is the basic principle missionaries operate on.â
hunger, unemployment, and illness as a result.
Pope Francis has announced that the first World Day of the Poor will be observed this coming winter, on Sunday, 19th November 2017.
Fr Martin writes…
âAlthough we are halfway across the world, kindness knows no boundaries. The generosity of our parishioners and mission friends in Cork will give great encouragement to the Holy Family community in South Africa. Thank you to everybody who attended our Bring & Buy Sales for your enthusiasm and your contribution.â