Today marks five years of the arrival of Mark and Maggie Banga to Ethiopia.
In this video they tell us about their missionary experience.
Thank you for your testimony
Alberto de la Portilla
House-community, “Emergency hospital”
A Commentary on Mc 1, 29-39: Sunday, February 8th 2015
We continue, in this fifth Sunday of the year, reading the first chapter of Mark, which narrates a Jesus’ Day at Capernaum. Last Sunday we read the first part, contemplating Jesus at the synagogue confronting the “impure spirit”. Today we see him outside the synagogue. For my commentary, I will put my attention on four words:
The house:
Jesus leaves the synagogue and enters a house, Peter’s home, with Andrew, James and John, apart from Peter himself, whose house becomes an operational centre for the first community of Jesus’ missionary disciples. The gospels mention quite often this experience of Jesus entering into peoples’ homes, especially public sinners’ homes: Zacchaeus, Levi, the Pharisee… His meals become a sign of fraternity and feast, pardon and new life. Also the first Christian communities used to gather in someone’s house: this was giving the Church an style of nearness and fraternity, of a life connected to the joys and sufferings of ordinary people.
Today, I know families that welcome the Lord in their homes in so many ways, transforming their houses into places of encountering for Jesus’ disciples and for everyone in need of support. They are real disciples. With them I dream of a lay people’s church, a “homely church”, very much in touch with peoples’ lives; a church, community of communities, made of friends who visit each other, help each other, protect each other in moments of distress, listen together to the Word and praise the Lord with one voice.
The house, “emergency hospital”.
With Jesus’ presence, Simon’ s home becomes a place for the revelation of God’s mercy and free love for all, but especially for those in distress and need. A love that heals, dignifies, forgives, reconciles and invites to serve.
This is what Pope Francis, in his direct language, has called “the Church, Emergency hospital”, a server church in a violent world, that produces many wounded people, physically, economically, morally. Fortunately, many of us haven known a Church like that: So many health centres in every corner of the Earth! So many schools for poor children! So many elders cared for! So many persons listened to, consoled, pardoned!
Somehow, we can be “proud” of a Church that is serving in so many ways: with our money, with our time, with our live, with our love. But, at the same time, I feel this Sunday a strong call to conversion. There are in the world so many wounded people in need of attention; my Church (my family, my community, my parish) cannot be a locked up and indifferent castle, but it must be a home transformed into an “emergency hospital”, like the house of Peter in Capernaum.
Sunset and sunrise: work and prayer, word and silence.
At sunrise, Jesus goes to a solitary place, evidently to meet in intimacy the Fountain of his interior life, to re-establish the love links with the Father, to discern all that is saying and doing. Avoiding to get lost in a “foolish” and senseless activism.
Somebody has said that the future belongs to contemplative people, no to those who run from place to place, multiplying empty word and dry hearts. I think that to invest in prayer and contemplations, is the best investment that we can make for ourselves and for our community. Without that prayer we are like dry leaves carried away, without any direction, by the strong winds of our time.
New frontiers
In today’s Reading, the disciples, together with the crowds, want Jesus to remain with tem, trapped in a web of interested affections and egoisms. “We are so well together! “Let us build a place where to enjoy our being together!”, they seemed to say. But Jesus does not allow himself to be trapped by these “reasonable” words; he remains free to go to other places where the announcement of the Kingdom is needed, not confusing mission with auto-satisfaction or the shallow joy of being applauded…
Success can be a danger, a trap, that makes us accommodate to what has been already acquired. I think of so many parishes that are so happy because their church is full at Sunday masses. But those people going to mass are a minority among the thousands of people living in that area. Where are all the others?
I think that the Jesus’ missionary passion is pushing us to go further, over our barriers, to open ourselves (individual disciples and communities) to new people, new human groups, new places, new “areopaghi”; not to be happy with what we already have, but to look always for new horizons, in private life and in community life.
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Rome
Child Pastoral today
This work is done in Brazil voluntarily by 218,000 people participating in this network of human solidarity that unites faith and life. Thanks to this volunteering Brazilian reality has changed. To this story of success were incorporated different complementary actions, such as income generation, literacy, community playgrounds, food security programs, mental health, etc.
This large network of human solidarity has spread throughout Brazil and today is present in 3,616 municipalities, accompanied by approximately 79 thousand 500 pregnant women and more than 1 million and 630 thousand children. The national average is 12 children per leader, more than 90% of community leaders are poor women.
“THE WORLD WILL NOT BE BETTER IF RICHER, BUT IF EVERYONE GROWS IN EQUALITY” (Zilda Arns)
Thanks to the team of 189 sector leaders, who enthusiastically and with great fellowship throughout 2014 made possible the Child Pastoral in the area of Renza in the parish. Santo Domingo, Icaivera and Jesus Obrero.
By Maria de Lourdes, Lay Comboni Missionary
Meeting of the General Councils of the Comboni Family
This past Saturday, January 24, we came together as a Comboni Family in Rome at the level of the three General Councils and of CLM representative.
We spent the morning reflecting on the challenges presented by the missionary life in the context of the places where we work. Each of the branches shared on the challenges we are facing in the mission.
It was a reflection that touched on points such as the need to live and to do mission starting with being close to the people: being close to their needs, walking according to the rhythm of the communities and accompanying everyone according to their stride. Keeping the necessary balance between human development and help to meet the most immediate needs. Ensuring that projects do not come before the people and that we, as missionaries, are not only seen as development agents but above all as bearers of joy, the joy of the gospel and the desire for a better life for all, which flows from the Father’s love. Save Africa with Africa, as Comboni said, always seeking the leadership of the people and not of the missionaries. Relying on the skills of the others, enhancing their strengths and discovering new ways of doing things, open to the new ways proposed by the people.
We also reflected on our decreasing numbers, of being fewer missionaries than we were years ago; at the same time we reflected on the greatest diversity of our members, fewer Europeans and more Americans and Africans, prompting us to treasure our greater diversity and the resulting new style of mission. This reduction in numbers requires us to ask the people around us and working with us for more involvement.
It is a challenge to deepen our spirituality, which allows us to have a solid foundation for our doing. A challenge to make of us agents of reconciliation, especially in war and post-war situations, by our continuous presence, by speaking of peace, love and forgiveness as the basis for a better future.
Along with this, the need to rethink the ministries that we carry out, and receive the necessary training to better adapt ourselves to the needs of men and women of today in the different continents. Being missionaries in the context where each one of us is located. Updating our charism, which after all is the only way to remain faithful to our vocation. Talking the new language that reaches people today. Remaining open to young people and offering them a life worth living, embodied, with its struggle and sacrifice, but also with its happiness and joy. Providing our members a formation that will help them grow from the heart, which does not remain superficial or self-interested but which also helps us grow as people, individually as well as a Christian community.
Finally, we are invited to reflect on our own reality as charismatic Family. Our style of presence and especially our commitment as a family has to be the seed of a community church where priests, religious, secular and lay people can share responsibilities and, according to our abilities and specificities, serve the people by being seeds of new relationships as brothers and sisters in our Christian communities.
We ended the morning with the Eucharist, placing on the altar all these reflections and the life of all the missionaries scattered around the world and of the people they serve.
In the afternoon we took time to share the most important events of this past year 2014 for each of the branches. The committee in charge of preparing the celebrative event, informed us of the 150th anniversary of the Plan of Comboni to be held from 13 to 15 March in Rome.
We ended the day with a prayer and we fixed the date for our next meeting towards the end of the year. We hope that these meetings and every little encounter we have in our communities will keep us walking and serving the mission as the Comboni Family.
Inequality in the world
We share with you a short video from OXFAM explaining how inequality is growing in the world.
