Serra Serra

Junipero Serra was a Franciscan priest and professor of philosophy and theology. In his mid-thirties, he became a missionary and in his mid-fifties was charged with bringing the Gospel to a large territory on the very edge of the empire of which he was a subject. He walked hundreds of miles on foot behind a retinue of soldiers, limping painfully from illness. He and his confreres established 21 missions that helped convert the native people to Christianity. These missions developed into secular economic and population centers that went on to become cities that retained the original Catholic names: e.g., San Francisco, California.

Father Serra worked within the cynical imperialist system in which he was born to follow Christ’s call to spread the good news of salvation and to care for the poor. The system was imperfect, nor were the missions he founded entirely perfect, but he himself was faithful, devout, and did great good.

Do we let cynicism and the imperfections of our environment get in the way of our doing what we can to spread the good news of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?