“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” These words of Jesus inspired Fr. Thomas Judge, the founder of my religious congregation. He was concerned at the beginning of the twentieth century about what he called “leakage from the church.” It created a sense of missionary urgency that inspired his many endeavors. Fast forward to the beginning of the twenty-first century and what was “leakage from the Church” has become a flood. We need to recover that same sense of urgency which drove Fr. Judge. One thing is clear — we can’t remain content in simply doing what we are already doing. We need new energy put into our efforts to proclaim God to a hurting world.
