“MY years of being with and among the migrant communities along the river (the river that brought hope and at the same time despair), have been fountains of learning and sources of growth. They are years of stretching and going beyond one’s own comfort zones. They shattered stereotypes and broke down walls of prejudices. The people have opened my heart to an embrace of God not often seen by the dominant culture. I learned how to walk as a missionary.” - Rev. Michael Montoya, 2011
Rev. Michael is the modern-day global missionary whose boundaries are beyond the walls of the church, border towns, institutions, and countries. As the first Asian Executive Director of the United States Catholic Mission Association, whose offices are based in Washington, DC, he organizes gatherings and summits to represent the American Church’s missionaries and brings God’s word globally.
Rev. Michael’s faith in God is expressed while working with communities, from as far as Mandaue, Cebu, to families in San Antonio, Texas, to border towns in Rio Grande Valley, to leading an American delegation to the Congreso Americano Misionero in Ecuador or to the West African Summit in Liberia to Consolidate the Peace Process in the Mano River Basin, to organizing annual national mission conferences in the country attended by hundreds of missionaries from all over the world, and giving retreats and workshops to various groups in the Church.
He traces his beginnings to Bamban, Tarlac in the Philippines, then, journeyed to San Antonio, Texas to complete a Master’s in Divinity from Oblate School of Theology. There, he learned how to focus his studies on liturgy in a multi-cultural setting. He was the pastor of Our Lady Queen of Angels in La Joya, Texas, where he worked with Basic Christian communities and organized with Valley Interfaith. While working with the leaders of these communities, they sought programs to benefit the local communities: water, sewage projects, job training, citizenship campaigns, health care issues, including better education.
He was then assigned to become the school director in Cebu, and Vocation Director for the Southern part of the Philippines in 1999. In 2000, he was asked to pursue his doctoral studies at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, with concentration in Spirituality. While in Chicago, he became one of the founders of Missionaries of Jesus, a group of 38 Filipinos, 2 Belgians and an American who found a common purpose in doing God’s mission of taking The Gospel to far-flung, underserved communities: the Mayan people in Guatemala, the indigenous people in Papua, New Guinea, Lumad in Davao, to Aetas , Igorot and Benguet communities in Baguio and the Mindanao communities where Christians and Catholics are in the low 4%, while predominantly populated by Muslims.
He became the associate pastor for St. Monica Parish in Chicago, which served as the first home to the newly-formed Missionaries of Jesus, USA in 2002, under the sponsorship of pastor Michael A. Walsh. There, he got a call from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ Msgr. Dave O’Connell and Msgr. Craig Cox who invited him to replicate his work of organizing basic Christian communities in Los Angeles. He found his Los Angeles home in Precious Blood Church, and months later, the Missionaries of Jesus USA team arrived with Fr. Melchor Villero and Gino Santos. The logo of the group was formed with “letters of M and J joined together, to form a heart, and on top of this heart is the cross that they bear and proclaim to all, with a bright green color to denote freshness and newness of the group.”
Rev. Michael shared his reflections: “ When 41 of us, priests and brothers decided to [form] the Missionaries of Jesus, an artist friend of the group…approached us wanting to give a gift to the newly founded order. His proposal was to carve an image of Jesus (rostro) for each of the founders of the community and another for that founder’s benefactor [sponsor/donor]. He used pieces of traviesa from century-old wood or discarded railroad tracks. Out of what is seemingly a useless piece of wood, comes an image of Jesus. It is a wonderful reminder of a spirituality that tells us that no matter who we are, however broken we may have been, or however rejected a person is, in each one is the image of Jesus that we bear. ..The separation of the 41 founders from the old community was not easy. For a while, it felt like we have been thrown away and discarded, but later on we realize that God has a purpose…That God indeed called us to be missionaries of Jesus. And like the discarded wood that the artist used to reveal the face of Jesus, we too are called to show the face of Jesus in everyone we meet….Like the discarded wood, we too are reminded that it is not about us, …but about the Jesus we reveal.”
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