Miara-dalana: together on the Way

After months of anticipation, I finally arrived in Madagascar. The final weeks in France were a whirlwind: first Masses, last confessions, final meals shared together, and many heartfelt goodbyes. Since my ordination on September 6th, life has been wonderfully full. It has been a time rich in grace, though also very busy. Now, at last, I am grateful to have arrived—to slow down, to settle in, and to begin the work that lies ahead.

The day before my departure for Madagascar, MEP celebrated the traditional sending-off Mass, a missionary’s final goodbye to his friends and family and a time to accompany him, through prayer, on his mission. It was a particularly powerful spiritual moment. I arrived in Paris exhausted from packing, whittling my possessions down to two suitcases and a trunk, and saying farewell to my friends in Provence. Yet beneath the fatigue was a deep awareness that this moment marked the culmination of a call first heard many years ago, sixteen years ago, when I was living in Lesotho.

It's hard to believe that sixteen years have passed since my time in Lesotho, the Mountain Kingdom. I can still see it so clearly in my mind, as if it were yesterday. I lived in a mud hut on the edge of the Mafikeng Valley, lush and green in the summer, but cold and dry in the winter. In the distance stood Thaba-Tele, “the tall mountain,” quietly watching over our little village below. I can still see the faces of my friends, friends who became my family. We lived together, cried together, smiled together, and suffered together. It was there—among the poor, the forgotten, the cast aside, high in the mountains of Africa—that the Lord touched my heart.

I can still see the candlelight dancing against the brown mud walls of my hut. I hear the night breeze softly brushing past my window as it makes its journey downward from the village of Ha Pholo, high on the mountain plateau, sweeping gently through the valley below. The tender warmth of the small gas space heater caresses my legs as I turn an orange in my hands, heating it slowly over the flame. The smell of warmth from the heater and the sweetness of candle wax mix with the cool night air, as my mind drifts in quiet contemplation.

I can still hear His voice, not loudly, but like a whisper carried upon the mountain breeze. It echoes deep within my heart and resonates in my innermost being. His presence fills me as He calls me to be a Catholic missionary priest to the unreached in Asia. I feel the tear as it rolls down my cheek, the trembling of my lips, the joy, the love, and the deep contentment rising from the center of my soul. I can still hear my response:

“Whatever I do in this life, I want to do it with You.

Wherever I go in this world, I want to go there with You.

Yes. Of course. Yes.”

I hear those words not as a distant memory, but as a living reality—renewed each morning as I open my eyes and say, “Yes, Lord. Yes. Wherever you go I will follow.”

But that is a story for another time.

It's difficult to believe that sixteen years have passed since that cold, candlelit night. It's hard to believe all that has happened, the path that He's led me on, the journey we've taken together. A master’s degree. Seven years as Executive Director of Universal Chastity Education. Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania. You see my dear friend, I was slow to respond, slow to understand, because at first, I couldn't understand how the Lord could call a non-Catholic to be a Catholic missionary priest to the unreached.

But that, too, is a story for another time.

The Lord led me to His mother, and He led me to His Church, and the call that I heard that night in my mud hut... I hear it still. Only, I've become a better listener now, not a good listener mind you, just better. He led me to France, a place I had never in my wildest dreams thought of going. “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jer 29:11). He led me to the Paris Foreign Missions Society (MEP). Truly, He has never left my side.

He walked with me as I learned my first words of French. In Paris, He carried me through my years of philosophy, comforting me as I repeated my courses over and over again late into the night. He stood beside me and encouraged me throughout my theological studies at Notre-Dame de Vie, and during my deaconal year in beautiful Provence. We've preached together. We've celebrated funerals together. We've heard confessions and celebrated the Mass together.

He has never left my side. He has always gone before me, always guided me. He has always been faithful. It has been a path of joy, a path of life, and a journey filled with hope. And now, he has led me to Madagascar, the eighth continent.

All of this, and more, passed through my mind as I prepared to take the final step: the sending-off Mass. That last day in France marked the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. He never promised me that the journey would be easy. He did, however, promise me that he would always be with me: through sunshine and storms, through consolation and desolation, through times of ease and times of trial, through spiritual deserts and green pastures of renewal. The words of the Gospel proclaimed that day still echo in my heart: “By your perseverance you will secure your lives” (Luke 21:19). They are also the words engraved on the walls of the oratory of the Virgin Mary in the garden of MEP. The oratory where I received my mission crucifix.

At the end of the Mass, the entire congregation processed from the MEP Chapel of the Epiphany to the Oratory of the Virgin Mary. The procession was led by the cross and incense and accompanied by the singing of the Litany of the Saints. As the procession reached the oratory, the people gathered before it, and formed a semicircle around this place of departure and prayer. As 4,318 MEP missionaries before me had done, I prepared to go for my entire life to a country I did not choose, to a people I had never met, to proclaim the Gospel of the Lord. In that moment, I felt more strongly than ever the words of Scripture rise within me:

“Where you go, I will go;

where you lodge, I will lodge;

your people shall be my people,

and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16).

After I received my crucifix, my parents came to embrace me. My mother hugged me first. Then I turned toward my father. We looked at each other, and he said only one word: “Andrew.” He then knelt and he kissed my feet. Was it his love for the Lord that moved him to such a beautiful gesture? Was it his love for his son? I know it was both. He rose to his feet, and we embraced. We said goodbye.

It was a goodbye—to my family, to my friends, to a world I had known. Yet a missionary never goes on mission alone. He is accompanied by Christ and His Church, for It is not my mission—it is ours. It is the mission of Christ and His Church. Although we may be separated by an ocean, a continent, and another ocean, we are always united in Him.

So, my dear friends, some of you have already walked many miles with me, while others I may only now be getting to know. Yet I invite all of you to walk with me on this missionary journey: to smile with me, to cry with me, to suffer with me, to rejoice with me, and to join me in prayer as we walk together on the Way.

Miara-dalana — together on the Way.

Painting : Le Départ (The Departure) is an 1868 painting by Charles Louis de Frédy de Coubertin displayed in the Chapel of the Epiphany at the Paris Foreign Missions Society (MEP) that depicts the solemn moment of missionaries preparing to leave for foreign missions. It was painted during the time when missionaries would travel by sea: a departure from which they would most often never return. The people kissed the missionaries’ feet as a sign of deep reverence, humility, and gratitude for their willingness to sacrifice their lives in service of God and the Church.