25 September 2026, fr. JLucas

This past week, Kenyans in Jamaica sat with a visiting delegation from home. We talked about work, about duty, and about the people who wait for us across the ocean. I told them about my mission here, my family there, and how much they depend on me. In the same week, we were praying for a Kenyan brother who had fallen ill in the United States — a breadwinner, now in a hospital bed. That is when the question stopped being polite.

What happens to a family when the one person who cannot afford to fall, falls?

The most dangerous position in a family is not being poor. It is being the only person who cannot afford to fall.

I am a missionary priest in Jamaica. People see the collar and think the Church is a bank. They do not see the plate. This is a poor country, two per cent Catholic, and very much Protestant in its bones. Many of my parishioners are aged. Giving the way some churches give is not their culture. The collection is low. Support from the pews is little, and sometimes it is none. I still have a sickly mother. It is my duty as a son, and as a priest, to help her. Every penny I send home is sweat. I did not become rich by becoming a priest. I became the one who is not allowed to say I am struggling.

Then the WhatsApp messages start. Join the group, Father. Help us raise funds for the wedding, the funeral, the birthday, the thanksgiving. They expect me to throw in the collection. They expect a big amount, as if the collar prints money. My siblings reach out for this and for that. I love them. I want to help. But in a mission like this, that love can drain you dry. When one man is taking care of the mother, answering the siblings, and sponsoring the community’s special occasions, we praise him: You are our pillar. You are our millionaire. You are the only one we have. God blessed you so that you can help us. Sometimes those words are not compliments. They are a job description without a retirement plan.

Here is the uncomfortable question: If I were to spend six months without a stipend, would the people I consider family collapse? If the answer is yes, do I have a family support system?

You have a financial dependency system with one sponsor in a cassock. Helping your family is not the problem. The problem begins when your vocation becomes everybody else’s financial plan. You are supporting a sick mother. You are sending upkeep. You are solving emergencies. You are financing needs that never become independent. Then one day the family ATM gets tired. And suddenly everybody discovers that the ATM was also human.

The breadwinner must eat some of the bread. Love your family. Help your family. Honour your mother. But do not build a system that requires the missionary, or the one in the diaspora, to stay healthy, employed, and generous every single day for the next thirty years. Invest a little before you send everything home. Keep something for your own body before you become everybody’s insurance policy. Because there is something deeply wrong with an arrangement where everybody is protected except the person protecting everybody. And here is the sentence that may offend some families: sometimes the first child who “made it” did not escape poverty. The family simply relocated poverty onto his shoulders. A FAMILY SHOULD HAVE A PLAN B THAT IS NOT ANOTHER SACRIFICE FROM THE BREADWINNER.