Alberto de la Portilla – Page 166 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

“I was in prison and you came to visit me”

23 February, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

Among the various pastoral activities of the parish of Santo Domingo, led by the Comboni Missionaries in Nova Contagem, it is also the prison ministry, in charge of 15 volunteers, including the Comboni Lay Missionaries, which are part of the parish.

Every Tuesday and Wednesday morning, the group meets to visit the pavilions of the maximum-security prison of Nelson Hungria, located in Nova Contagem, with about 2,000 inmates. The meeting is at 08:00 in the square next to the prison.

The prison situation in Brazil, as in other parts of the world, suffers from high overcrowding due to prison system with little attention to the recovery of prisoners.

Prisons in Minas Gerais, for example, can receive 32,000 prisoners, divided into 144 prisons; actually, there are 54,000 inmates in the different units. This situation only gets worse the living conditions of prisoners, with a further object of punishing instead of re-educate and re-socialize, with serious violations of human rights.

The action and commitment of the group of Prison Ministry, composed mainly of women, is to believe in a work of promoting human dignity, respect for human rights, and the overcoming of the limits of the current prison system in favor of a model that allows effective recovery and reintegration of the individual.

The most important of our pastoral activity is the testimony of a God who does not discriminate anyone, in a place marked by contempt, prejudice and violence, making ours the words of the Gospel: “I was in prison, and you came to visit me “. It is the pedagogy of Jesus, method, model, who heads the way of this pastoral, recognizing the face of God in every person, including the prisoners.

There are many challenges and difficulties in our pastoral activities, such as excessive bureaucracy that often delays and complicates our work, controls, restrictions on visits, limited permissions; but with courage, this small group of volunteers are facing difficulties. This has allowed in 2014, to create two groups of catechesis in prison. And it was possible that some inmates, who had requested, receive the sacraments.

For this are fundamental the moments of ongoing formation that we make at the end of the month, to have a dedicated space of programming and training, allowing prison pastoral agents learn the actions that will help to improve prison visits and the relationship with the inmates. In this also helps the training conducted by the diocese.

In short, this would be the work of the prison ministry. A simple action, giving hand, encountering real faces, listening to the life stories of those who are on the other side of the bars, to bear witness to the dignity of every human being, because as the Gospel says “by this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (Jn 13, 35.).

Emma Chiolini, Comboni Lay Missionary

Improvements on the web

21 February, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

Today we want to share with you the improvements we are making in our web. We have restructured the section “Audiovisual resources” of the website.

We have placed more than 5000 images about our history and service that we carry out as CLM; almost 200 CLM and Comboni´s videos (in the 7 languages we have) as well as over 50 songs about Comboni in different languages so that they are accessible to everybody. You will find the songs and videos differentiated in the various languages.

We hope you like this new enhancement. You can visit it by following this link.

Greetings

From Santa Teresita de Alto Anapati

19 February, 201519 February, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

Katagueta from Santa Teresita de Alto Anapati after many days of rain, sun and sometimes cold, believe it or not. Three weeks we’re here in this missionary lands and we still have three more. Today, thankfully, we have light even a few hours because all the previous time we did not. I can write with keys and leave the notebook and pen. The days go slow, the serenity of the location invites you to live calmly and appreciate the presence of God in this place so far from the city surrounded by nature in the middle of somewhere in the central jungle of our country.

Our job is to sensitize the native community. Especially children and, through them, the parents about the presence of God in everyday life, strengthen faith in them and prepare some possible pastoral agents who can assist in the Eucharistic celebrations that regularly held once or twice a month by the remoteness of the city. The extension of the parish is large and covers many native communities and settlers approximately more than 200, so that priests available cannot keep up.

The natives welcome us with joy and greet us as if we were longtime friends. We come to them through the program of “useful holidays”. In the morning we attend approximately 70 children, in the afternoon quickie prepare our lunch, and then meet another group of children who need special attention. Contact with small enables us to understand life here in the community because everyone here speak in nomatshiguenga language and is a bit difficult to reach smaller by the dialect but the universal language of affection and good treatment allows us to understand.

We are the CLM Nelson and Fisher. Thank God, we live this experience amidst nature with refreshing rain that relieves the earth after the heat that brightens our days. Sometimes there is too much rain, because it is very strong and extends for days.

Nelson y Fisher (CLM-Peru)

Make your hearts firm

18 February, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

MESSAGE
OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS
FOR LENT 2015

“Make your hearts firm” (Jas 5:8)

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Lent is a time of renewal for the whole Church, for each communities and every believer. Above all it is a “time of grace” (2 Cor 6:2). God does not ask of us anything that he himself has not first given us. “We love because he first has loved us” (1 Jn 4:19). He is not aloof from us. Each one of us has a place in his heart. He knows us by name, he cares for us and he seeks us out whenever we turn away from him. He is interested in each of us; his love does not allow him to be indifferent to what happens to us. Usually, when we are healthy and comfortable, we forget about others (something God the Father never does): we are unconcerned with their problems, their sufferings and the injustices they endure… Our heart grows cold. As long as I am relatively healthy and comfortable, I don’t think about those less well off. Today, this selfish attitude of indifference has taken on global proportions, to the extent that we can speak of a globalization of indifference. It is a problem which we, as Christians, need to confront.

When the people of God are converted to his love, they find answers to the questions that history continually raises. One of the most urgent challenges which I would like to address in this Message is precisely the globalization of indifference.

Indifference to our neighbour and to God also represents a real temptation for us Christians. Each year during Lent we need to hear once more the voice of the prophets who cry out and trouble our conscience.

God is not indifferent to our world; he so loves it that he gave his Son for our salvation. In the Incarnation, in the earthly life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God, the gate between God and man, between heaven and earth, opens once for all. The Church is like the hand holding open this gate, thanks to her proclamation of God’s word, her celebration of the sacraments and her witness of the faith which works through love (cf. Gal 5:6). But the world tends to withdraw into itself and shut that door through which God comes into the world and the world comes to him. Hence the hand, which is the Church, must never be surprised if it is rejected, crushed and wounded.

God’s people, then, need this interior renewal, lest we become indifferent and withdraw into ourselves. To further this renewal, I would like to propose for our reflection three biblical texts.

1. “If one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Cor 12:26) – The Church

The love of God breaks through that fatal withdrawal into ourselves which is indifference. The Church offers us this love of God by her teaching and especially by her witness. But we can only bear witness to what we ourselves have experienced. Christians are those who let God clothe them with goodness and mercy, with Christ, so as to become, like Christ, servants of God and others. This is clearly seen in the liturgy of Holy Thursday, with its rite of the washing of feet. Peter did not want Jesus to wash his feet, but he came to realize that Jesus does not wish to be just an example of how we should wash one another’s feet. Only those who have first allowed Jesus to wash their own feet can then offer this service to others. Only they have “a part” with him (Jn 13:8) and thus can serve others.

Lent is a favourable time for letting Christ serve us so that we in turn may become more like him. This happens whenever we hear the word of God and receive the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. There we become what we receive: the Body of Christ. In this body there is no room for the indifference which so often seems to possess our hearts. For whoever is of Christ, belongs to one body, and in him we cannot be indifferent to one another. “If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honoured, all the parts share its joy” (1 Cor 12:26).

The Church is the communio sanctorum not only because of her saints, but also because she is a communion in holy things: the love of God revealed to us in Christ and all his gifts. Among these gifts there is also the response of those who let themselves be touched by this love. In this communion of saints, in this sharing in holy things, no one possesses anything alone, but shares everything with others. And since we are united in God, we can do something for those who are far distant, those whom we could never reach on our own, because with them and for them, we ask God that all of us may be open to his plan of salvation.

2. “Where is your brother?” (Gen 4:9) – Parishes and Communities

All that we have been saying about the universal Church must now be applied to the life of our parishes and communities. Do these ecclesial structures enable us to experience being part of one body? A body which receives and shares what God wishes to give? A body which acknowledges and cares for its weakest, poorest and most insignificant members? Or do we take refuge in a universal love that would embrace the whole world, while failing to see the Lazarus sitting before our closed doors (Lk 16:19-31)?

In order to receive what God gives us and to make it bear abundant fruit, we need to press beyond the boundaries of the visible Church in two ways.

In the first place, by uniting ourselves in prayer with the Church in heaven. The prayers of the Church on earth establish a communion of mutual service and goodness which reaches up into the sight of God. Together with the saints who have found their fulfilment in God, we form part of that communion in which indifference is conquered by love. The Church in heaven is not triumphant because she has turned her back on the sufferings of the world and rejoices in splendid isolation. Rather, the saints already joyfully contemplate the fact that, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, they have triumphed once and for all over indifference, hardness of heart and hatred. Until this victory of love penetrates the whole world, the saints continue to accompany us on our pilgrim way. Saint Therese of Lisieux, a Doctor of the Church, expressed her conviction that the joy in heaven for the victory of crucified love remains incomplete as long as there is still a single man or woman on earth who suffers and cries out in pain: “I trust fully that I shall not remain idle in heaven; my desire is to continue to work for the Church and for souls” (Letter 254, July 14, 1897).

We share in the merits and joy of the saints, even as they share in our struggles and our longing for peace and reconciliation. Their joy in the victory of the Risen Christ gives us strength as we strive to overcome our indifference and hardness of heart.

In the second place, every Christian community is called to go out of itself and to be engaged in the life of the greater society of which it is a part, especially with the poor and those who are far away. The Church is missionary by her very nature; she is not self-enclosed but sent out to every nation and people.

Her mission is to bear patient witness to the One who desires to draw all creation and every man and woman to the Father. Her mission is to bring to all a love which cannot remain silent. The Church follows Jesus Christ along the paths that lead to every man and woman, to the very ends of the earth (cf. Acts 1:8). In each of our neighbours, then, we must see a brother or sister for whom Christ died and rose again. What we ourselves have received, we have received for them as well. Similarly, all that our brothers and sisters possess is a gift for the Church and for all humanity.

Dear brothers and sisters, how greatly I desire that all those places where the Church is present, especially our parishes and our communities, may become islands of mercy in the midst of the sea of indifference!

3. “Make your hearts firm!” (James 5:8) – Individual Christians

As individuals too, we have are tempted by indifference. Flooded with news reports and troubling images of human suffering, we often feel our complete inability to help. What can we do to avoid being caught up in this spiral of distress and powerlessness?

First, we can pray in communion with the Church on earth and in heaven. Let us not underestimate the power of so many voices united in prayer! The 24 Hours for the Lord initiative, which I hope will be observed on 13-14 March throughout the Church, also at the diocesan level, is meant to be a sign of this need for prayer.

Second, we can help by acts of charity, reaching out to both those near and far through the Church’s many charitable organizations. Lent is a favourable time for showing this concern for others by small yet concrete signs of our belonging to the one human family.

Third, the suffering of others is a call to conversion, since their need reminds me of the uncertainty of my own life and my dependence on God and my brothers and sisters. If we humbly implore God’s grace and accept our own limitations, we will trust in the infinite possibilities which God’s love holds out to us. We will also be able to resist the diabolical temptation of thinking that by our own efforts we can save the world and ourselves.

As a way of overcoming indifference and our pretensions to self-sufficiency, I would invite everyone to live this Lent as an opportunity for engaging in what Benedict XVI called a formation of the heart (cf. Deus Caritas Est, 31). A merciful heart does not mean a weak heart. Anyone who wishes to be merciful must have a strong and steadfast heart, closed to the tempter but open to God. A heart which lets itself be pierced by the Spirit so as to bring love along the roads that lead to our brothers and sisters. And, ultimately, a poor heart, one which realizes its own poverty and gives itself freely for others.

During this Lent, then, brothers and sisters, let us all ask the Lord: “Fac cor nostrum secundum cor tuum”: Make our hearts like yours (Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus). In this way we will receive a heart which is firm and merciful, attentive and generous, a heart which is not closed, indifferent or prey to the globalization of indifference.

It is my prayerful hope that this Lent will prove spiritually fruitful for each believer and every ecclesial community. I ask all of you to pray for me. May the Lord bless you and Our Lady keep you.

From the Vatican, 4 October 2014

Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi

FRANCIS

From Chiapas

16 February, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

Hello friends! Good day to all of you! From this chosen people of God, I greet you with a big hug and joy in my heart. I wish each and every one of you buddies and brothers in Christ and St. Daniel Comboni to be well physically and spiritually and enjoying the life that gives us our Father in heaven every day.

After my training in community experience as CLM, I find myself missioning in Chiapas. Here I am very well, working in the San Carlos Hospital. I am living a new missionary experience and starting this great mission that Christ is entrusting me among these indigenous peoples. The parish have 80 communities, but we attend more than a 100, walking up 15 hours or more to come to our Hospital of San Carlos, because sometimes, in other hospitals or health centers they do not want to attend because they do not understand them. We have six main dialects, Tzeltal, Tojolabal, Tzotzil, Ladino, chol, but the predominant are Tzeltal and Tzotzil.

It is a great missionary work and a great humanitarian work directed by the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Padua for over 30 years. They have a nursing school within the hospital and that is where we train the indigenous people as nurses. Then, they work in the hospital attending their own people. They are who translate us. Here, patients feel at home and family, and although they have to pay recovery fees, they prefer this hospital. By this, is being met what St. Daniel Comboni prophesied in his Plan “Save Indigenous with Indigenous”. My memories and prayer for everyone. We are united in our fellowship with our heart and our missionary spirit, love you all and wish you the best in your missionary life. Greetings and a hug to all.

Your little friend and sister: ISA. 😉