Inma Cuesta. Smc.
There’s a particular moment that happens to many missionaries, usually a few months or years into their work. It’s the moment when they realize the script has flipped—that the people they came to teach are actually the ones doing the teaching.
Ignorance is not a good ally
For Sister Marilena Gennero, that moment came in the form of a simple question she asked a farmer in Ecuador. She had been organizing pastoral meetings, catechesis sessions, all the usual structures of church life. But she noticed this man never attended. With what she now calls her “ingenuity”—a kind word for youthful presumption—she approached him one day.
“How do you manage to nurture your faith if you don’t even come when we organize meetings?”
The farmer looked at her with genuine surprise, as if she’d asked him how he managed to breathe without attending breathing classes. “When I wake up, the Lord is with me,” he told her simply. “I make breakfast, the Lord is with me. I step outside my door, the Lord is with me. I take the first swing of my machete, the Lord is with me. I don’t know what else you want.”
Sister Marilena’s response captures the essence of what mission really teaches: “I just wish I had the faith that you have.”
A two-way mission
This encounter reveals something that challenges the traditional narrative of missionary work. For centuries, the story went one direction: educated, faith-filled missionaries bringing light to people living in darkness. But the lived reality of mission tells a different story entirely. Sister Marilena discovered what many missionaries eventually learn—that institutional faith and living faith are not always the same thing. The farmer didn’t need her catechesis classes because he had something deeper: a constant, unbroken awareness of God’s presence woven into every mundane moment of his day.
God speaks to us through people
This is the kind of faith that can’t be taught in a classroom or transmitted through a program. It’s the faith of the poor, the faith of those whose lives are simple enough that God isn’t crowded out by complexity, whose rhythms are close enough to the earth that they naturally align with the rhythms of grace.
“Joy—I find it in encounters with people,” Sister Marilena explains, “because for me they are the manifestation of the Lord who speaks to me through them. So every encounter for me is something very beautiful.” Notice the shift in understanding here. People aren’t the objects of her ministry. They’re not even primarily those she serves. They are, first and foremost, the way God speaks to her.
Listen to Sister Marilena’s voice on Instagram @comboniane