Let me introduce my friend, Krishna, who is a wonderful example of a lay person who proclaims the Gospel to the poor.  Krishna is about forty-seven years old, married, and the father of three daughters and then three sons.  He lives to the north-east of the Kathmandu valley, in Gyalthung Village, a slow bus ride of four hours from the city, over rough roads.  Following local Hindu traditional customs, he married at the age of twelve or thirteen.  Immediately after the wedding his uncle took him off to Mumbai, India, while his wife returned to her parents’ home.  Krishna settled into the tailoring profession at Mumbai, and completed his high school education.  He met good Catholics there and was baptized. 

After fourteen years in Mumbai, he returned home, called his wife, and started a family.  He continues his tailoring profession today, and has started to spread the Good News to his neighbours, many of whom are now “Believers” who get together on Saturdays for prayer.  These people are uneducated subsistence farmers who work marginal land.  However their faith, though uninformed, is strong.  They appreciate visits and especially prayers for healing.  It’s a joy for me and my community members to visit now and then, to offer Mass, and provide some religious instruction.  With further training, Krishna could help build a strong community there.         

                Boniface Rai, who lives in the foothills near Nepal’s eastern border with India, is another dynamic layman.  He was a local shaman faith healer until he met the Salesian missionaries in India.  Once instructed and baptized, he returned home to spread the faith.  Now there are about twenty Catholic families in the village.  They have a small church.  Jesuits visit regularly, and soon our Apostolic Vicar, Bishop Anthony, Sharma, S.J., will assign a priest to stay there. 

What led these men to become outstanding missionaries completely on their own?  Their faith!  They are excited about being disciples of Christ, and wish to share that excitement with others.  They met Christ in other good Christians who radiated Christ’s loving forgiveness to them, just as Jesus offered that same healing forgiveness to the first disciples.  Now through their daily life as farmers, tailors, and especially family members, they reach out to people whom the clergy and religious cannot easily encounter.  These lay people become the front line of evangelization, proclaiming that there is one chosen People of God: “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”(Eph.4:5)  Krishna and Boniface accepted the duty every Christian has, the duty of “working for the ever greater spread of the divine plan of salvation to all.”(Lumen Gentium 33)

Had these two faith-filled men not arisen to God’s challenge to evangelize, their village friends would not know the joy of experiencing God’s loving forgiveness.  Many of their neighbours continue to express their faith through other religions.  Hopefully we all accept their choice, while showing them that God’s principle of love, if it imbues every human activity, will bring joyful fulfillment to all.  We priests followed Krishna and Boniface to their homes, and can now humbly back up their teaching, offering the Sacraments to these truly heroic people.      

The Second Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium 38) calls the laity to “. . . diffuse in the world the spirit which animates those poor, meek, and peace-makers who the Lord in the Gospel proclaimed blessed (cf. Mt.5:3-9).  In a word:  ‘what the soul is in the body, let Christians be in the world.’”  Let’s pray that we all be people, who, like Krishna and Boniface, enjoy sharing our joy as Christ’s disciples in our own tiny corners of our world.