Medicine was once considered a vocation. It remains a vocation, no matter what the world tries to convince us otherwise. As doctors, we are called to imitate the First Physician – to heal not only the body but also the soul. This is never possible unless He is the One who works through us. As Mother Teresa often said, “I am a little pencil in God’s hand.” Once we realize this, God can do all sorts of great things for His Kingdom. Like Mary, He asks us of an everlasting “fiat”.
From an early age, the desire to become a doctor was rooted in wanting to help others. Yet this desire ran deeper – a call to serve, to go beyond comfort, even to the poorest places on earth. There is a quiet truth that God plants these desires from the very beginning, unfolding His plan in ways that are often only understood in hindsight.
God always has a plan. Sometimes, this plan may not initially “line up” with our plans, ambitions, and achievements. Ultimately, it is God who calls and leads. At times, what the world calls failure becomes something entirely different in God’s hands – a redirection, a hidden grace, even a small miracle. This is exactly what He did in my life – He redirected my life towards His plan: mission work.
Mission work reveals this most clearly.
To encounter the poorest of the poor is to encounter Jesus Himself. In suffering and agony, in joy, and in simplicity – He is there. And once this is seen, everything changes. What once seemed important begins to lose its meaning, and a deeper calling comes alive: a vocation not simply to medicine, but to service. Matthew 25: 35-41 became so alive for me:
“Whatever you did to the least of My brethren, you did it to Me.” (Mt 25:40). It is Jesus we are serving in every sick, hungry, and thirsty person.
Mission is not simply work – it is prayer. It is being with the Living God, with Jesus in disguise. Every patient is truly Jesus. Every wound is His wound. And what is received in every mission is far beyond anything that could ever be given.
In a recent mission trip to Africa, we were serving in the refugee settlements, and this truth became tangible. There are countless stories, each one a testimony to Christ present among the poor. A man who has lost everything – family, home, security – yet remains filled with a peace and joy that cannot be taken away (cf. Jn 16:22). Jean-Claude is his name.
Jean-Claude left us in such awe; we were stopped in our tracks. He had nothing (literally) and no one. His family was massacred back in the Congo before he fled. When we asked whether he had forgiven the murderers, he answered very spontaneously: “If I do not forgive them, how can God forgive my many sins?” His prayer for us was Psalm 41. Poor in many ways, yet Jean-Claude was the richest man we have ever met.
I remember another incident when we were walking in the refugee settlement and felt a sense of despair at how much help was needed and how little we were bringing. I kept thinking: truly the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few (cf. Mt 9:37). In that moment, a little girl said something that was translated as “the white girl loves.”
I was reminded that often love is what is most necessary: a smile, holding someone’s hand, a simple gesture. Pope Leo XVI writes this in his first Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi Te: “It was a small gesture [the anointing of Jesus’ head with perfumed oil], but those who suffer know how great even a small gesture of affection can be, and how much relief it can bring.” (Chapter 1, Dilexi Te)
Mission teaches us that what seems like a drop in the ocean is never insignificant. As Mother Teresa reminds us: “Without this drop, the ocean would be less one drop.”
There are graces upon graces in every mission. A joy beyond this world – found not in abundance, but in simplicity and poverty.
Missionary Medics
Missionary Medics was founded upon this reality, with two pillars: providing medical care to the poor, and offering humanitarian aid – feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, the lonely, the suffering, the marginalized, and even prisoners. The vision is simple: continuous mission, continuous service.
The reason for this work is simple.
God, in all His glory, “emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness” (Phil 2:7). In this extreme poverty, Jesus reveals God’s profound love for each one of us. From His birth to His crucifixion, His life was marred by poverty, rejection, suffering, agony, but above all – love.
God is close to the poor. In serving the poor, in alleviating hunger, disease, loneliness, and agony, we are in turn in close unity with our Lord and Savior.
For me, the poor hold the key to the Kingdom of Heaven.
I will end with something that Pope Leo XVI has said. His first Apostolic Exhortation truly confirms my vocation with the poor and in the missions: “Love for the Lord, then, is one with love of the poor… In the poor, He continues to speak to us.” (Dilexi Te).
Website: www.missionarymedics.com
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