By Christina Leslie | Staff Writer

October is the month when the universal Church celebrates World Mission Sunday to honor individuals who have devoted their lives to spreading the faith. This year’s theme, “I Will Build My Church,” is taken from Matthew 16:18 and highlights the outreach of local churches to poor and marginalized half a world away by the members of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.

In a recent letter to his flock, Bishop David M. O’Connell, C.M., urged the diocesan family to join their brothers and sisters around the world “to celebrate, with great joy, our common vocations as missionaries.” On the heels of this celebration, students of Catholic schools around the Diocese of Trenton learned how they might serve as faith-filled missionaries to others without ever leaving home.

The annual diocesan High School and Grammar School Mission Reach-outs, sponsored by the diocesan Pontifical Mission Aid Society, offered youth from Burlington, Mercer, Monmouth and Ocean Counties the opportunity to hear inspiring accounts from missionaries, pray together the Holy Rosary and recognize their peers’ success in supporting the evangelization of the Word throughout the world.

Father Peter James Alindogan, diocesan director, welcomed the students from the various schools’ Missions Clubs during each day-long program on behalf of Bishop O’Connell, reminding them, “We should thank God for all the many blessings we enjoy. One way, the best way, to express our gratitude is to share the good things we have with others, especially those in mission lands.”

Men and women missionaries who had spread the Good News across the globe recalled their experiences for students during a series of group workshops. In a commissioning ceremony where they were encouraged to spread the faith in their daily interactions with others, students gathered as one to pray a World Mission Rosary, each decade consisting of differently colored beads to represent the five continents where missionaries have toiled.