Blog – Page 122 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

Re-reading and re-reading myself – the family and the life project

9 June, 2017 by Alberto de la Portilla

On May 19-21 there took place in Viseu the 9^th Formation unit of the CLM. It was moderated by the psychologist Dr. Miguel Villas Freitas.

The formation started in the late afternoon of Friday 19^th. After a warm welcome we had time to mix exchanging smiles, kisses, hugs and news. Yes, these are hugs in the CLM style, as I call them, for being firm and genuine by people who look forward to meeting in order to share unique and nurturing moments!

We started our Saturday with a brief introduction by the formator, to help us better understand what it means to re-read: to make a detailed reading of what has happened in the past and of my characteristics; to be aware that no one does it for me. It consists in being present to the “Presence” for a meeting with myself! And since ‘we all define ourselves by how we relate to others,” this encounter took place in groups so that together we met the signs of this “Presence” in our lives.

Following that, under the direction of our formator, each member of the group was encouraged to take a journey into the past looking for a period of time when we felt very happy. After a brief analysis of the motives of this happiness, we were asked to move this state of peace, success, wellbeing, joy, fulfillment and happiness into the present. We all had the opportunity to meet this pearl of wisdom that had unleashed the happiness that we were living once again. It is necessary to recover this pearl, bring it to the present, take care of it…

We analyzed biblical experiences of this interior re-reading such as, for example, the meeting of Jesus with the disciples of Emmaus or the meeting of Jesus with Nicodemus. In these experiences there are inevitably the following stages: 1) To Reform; 2) To Conform; 3) To Transform; 4) To Confirm.

Those who go through them analyze the areas of their being that need conversion, seek to be reshaped in Jesus, are transformed and go on to live according to this transformation. This way, they get out of themselves, leaving behind false securities and move towards a logic of commitment and service. They move on to enjoy not only what is wellbeing, what satisfies, but even more what fulfills and leaves deeper marks in one’s character!

In the course of the morning we were given moments of individual reflection, followed by the opportunity of sharing two by two and finally with the entire group.

We ended this morning of reflection looking at the documentary, “Celebrating what is good in the world,” by the National Geographic, very rich in messages pointing at the search for what is good in the world.

In the afternoon we reflected on the 24 strengths of character, each one choosing the one that naturally gives way to activity. We asked ourselves individually which strengths we need to work on and which are the most indispensable in our mission as CLM.

Then we had personal reflection with very precise questions in order to understand and share on two points: 1) My passion; 2) My resolve.

In the afternoon prayers we reached moments of great depth and sharing. He, Jesus, is here with us and the Spirit speaks to each one. How beautiful it is to be so united here in the cenacle!

In the evening, to relax, but without losing our recollection, we watched the movie “The Butler.”

On Sunday there were further times of prayer and of sharing.

Three scenes were presented to us on which to concentrate and reflect:

1) “Jesus shows his wounds to Thomas”

– What are my wounds? How to embrace them rather than hiding them?

2) “Footprints in the sand”

– To re-read moments of my life when Jesus picked me up in his arms. With whom and by whom?

3) “To shrink the size of my cross is not a solution.”

– Am I conscious that every time I try to shrink my cross I miss the opportunity to grow both humanly and spiritually?

We search for a personal resolution to take home as a challenge and personal effort, keeping in mind that we will only be happy inasmuch as we commit to change.

In conclusion: Only by meeting myself, seeing myself as I really am, my wounds, my cross and placing it all in the hands of God, allowing myself to be transformed, I will learn to find the best of myself in the world, I will travel on the path that will lead me to my mission and be happy in the mission where I will be assigned.

Gloria Rocha

The LOGBOOK of Simone Parimbelli, a CLM in Central Africa

7 June, 2017 by Alberto de la Portilla

May 15, 2017

88^th day, 1012 to go

The “AFRICAS” AROUND MY TABLE. I have moved to the Comboni parish of Our Lady of Fatima! Everything is new… new schedules, new food, new room, new COMMUNITY! Now I live with three African Comboni priests: Fr. Moises, Fr. Jean Michel and Fr. Romain! They are all African but from different types of Africa: Fr. Moises is Ugandan, had to learn French and Sango, has more experience than anyone else and he is charge of the parish. Fr. Jean Michel is from Togo, only recently arrived in the Republic of Central Africa, and is learning the reality, the life and the customs of the CAR. Fr. Romain is Central African, just ordained, speak fluent French and Sango, is learning to say Mass and will be sent to Guatemala on his first mission assignment. Uganda-Togo-CAR are so far off “AFRICAS” that it’s like living with a Russian, a Frenchman and a Portuguese. To say that they are Africans is a generalization, because they all have their own ways… it is not easy to be a COMMUNITY, but AROUND THE TABLE we joke, laugh, chat and speak of the problems of the various “AFRICAS”… There is a good rapport and brotherhood in this little corner of our “AFRICAS”!

May 22, 2017

95^th day, 1005 to go

MARTIAL, THE GOOD SHEPHERD. Martial is a young man of the parish, he is 28, a catechist of Confirmation, and moderator of the AITA KWE group. This week he has also been my GOOD SHEPHERD, who accompanied me to school by “paths tranquil and safe.” The parish is near the Muslim neighborhood called “Kilometer 5” where in the “troubled” days they had some “small” problems. Martial, like the GOOD SHEPHERD, ensures tranquility and safety along the short walk to school. In the afternoon the parish is full of young people studying, women praying, children having fun, people looking for the fathers, but often it is a rather silent life or without too much noise and at times I have had the feeling that everyone is waiting for something. I hope it will be a waiting filled with hope and peace.

May 28, 2017

101^st day, 999 to go

AITA KWE = “All brothers and sisters” is a parish group of adolescents and pre-adolescents. They wear a yellow shirt, green pants or skirts and a green scarf with a yellow border. Together with Fr. Moises and Martial I went to their retreat-formation day. When we arrived, they were reflecting on “my life project: my good points and my weaknesses.” After the reflection, they had some fun, a Mass celebrated by Fr. Moises and then a common meal of bread, fish, and manioc mush. All together like brothers and sisters!!! When it was time to leave, we loaded on Fr. Moises’ pick-up all the backpacks, the pots, the empty water drums, and a few tired little girls who had a hard time standing up, while the group line up by twos and, with drums beating, marched back to the parish (a two hour walk!!!). It was just like the days in my parish at the “oratorio” of Osio Sopra (or Basiano) with the catechism children and youngsters… also the pastoral life of the parish of Our Lady of Fatima is active and fervent with many people involved in the service of the community!!!

June 2, 2017

106^th day, 994 to go

IN A FLASH: Tomorrow from 8:30 to 10:30 I will have the final evaluation of my second French course… in a FLASH…Anna will pick me up at school, we will go to the parish to load my luggage which I already packed and we will leave…IN A FLASH… for Mongoumba…a journey of five to six hours. After only 20 days, this will be another move…up to now I have kept to my “navigation route”: to arrive quietly in the CAR, to take time to adapt, to study French…now I begin a new phase of my journey: to learn Sango and to adapt to Mongoumba!

I haven’t sent you news in a while, but in the parish there is no internet connection and it will be the same in Mongoumba, at times even at Comboni House I can’t connect to e-mail and it becomes difficult to communicate with you, but this is one of the objectives of the journey!

I have yet to have my first malaria attack and haven’t yet met unsurmountable problems, perhaps I lost some weight (Fr. Alex says that I lost my extra Western pounds), but my appetite is good and the fathers continue to encourage me to eat, because food helps us to keep healthy. Time is going by fast…in A FLASH…106 days have already passed since my arrival in the CAR!!!

Greetings and hugs, a kiss and a prayer and THANKS…

Simone CLM

Mission Promotion by CLM of PCA

6 June, 2017 by Alberto de la Portilla

…”Holy and capable, making common cause with the poorest and most abandoned” (St. Daniel Comboni)

The CLM of the PCA in Guatemala started a new missionary experience. It concerns mission promotion in the parishes of the city.

We share here the first experience which took place on May 11, 18, 21 and 25.

It took place in the church of St. Rita, in the parish of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. We did mission promotion with the mission pastoral team of the parish. They are a group of people who ardently desire to proclaim Jesus in the areas of their neighborhood and, by so doing, to be a “Church reaching out,” as Pope Francis is constantly asking. They are beginning to plunge into this beautiful adventure of meeting those who have no desire to approach the Church, in order to encourage them and to invite them and to speak to them about Jesus and of what he has done in their lives.

This is why they asked for our help.

For us it was the first time to have this type of experience and we felt very grateful to God, because he had already been at work in their hearts and we served as instruments in encouraging them not to be afraid to venture out.

We had the opportunity to share our personal witness of our encountering Jesus, together with our experiences in home visits, in the mission we currently exercise in the parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, located in the red light district of the capital, and on the community life we share here as CLM.

We also explained to them who we are, our identity and charism, with the objective of raising lay vocations. Blessed be God.

“My missionaries must constantly keep their eyes fixed on Jesu Christ, loving him tenderly and striving to understand always better what it means to have a God who died on a cross for the salvation of the world.” (St. Daniel Comboni)

CLM Guatemala

20th Anniversary of the CLM in Brazil

5 June, 2017 by Alberto de la Portilla

It is with great joy that we, the CLM of Brazil, celebrate this year the 20 years of the CLM – the Association of the Comboni Lay Missionaries, a juridical not for profit organization founded on May 31, 1997.

In 1995, a group of people from all over Brazil began to dream of the project of the CLM in São José dos Campos, SP. Those were the days of the great event that took place in Brazil, the COMLA 5, that pushed the Church much beyond its borders. After that, other meetings took place and finally 1997 saw the beginning of the first missionary community of CLM involved in formation and in the sharing of missionary life in the city of Contagem, MG.

After 20 years of existence the Association of Comboni Lay Missionaries has reasons to celebrate, in the light of a history of challenges, a lot of dedication, daring and perseverance, its existence as lay missionaries in the style of St. Daniel Comboni.

We continue in the call to follow Jesus Christ and we are inserted in challenging missionary areas at the side of the poorest and most abandoned of our society, both here and much beyond our borders.

In June we will hold the Yearly Assembly of the ACLM in Curitiba, PR. It will be a privileged time of communion and of sharing our vocation. On the 22^nd, we will celebrate a Thanksgiving Mass for the 20 years of the ACLM in the parish of Santa Amelia. We wish to meet, reflect, evaluate, pray, make new plans and continue the “dream-challenge” of the Brazilian Church, totally missionary and open to the world.

Recently we have been living through some beautiful moments in our journey as CLM in Brazil, such as: the formation of groups of Comboni Spirituality and discernment in Curitiba and more recently in Balsas; our participation in the team of Coordination of the Comboni Family, with the various activities planned in common in missionary and vocation promotion; the strengthening in a short time of the CLM in Acailândia-Piquiá together with the Justice project of Raíles; the weddings and births that took place in this CLM Family; the special witness of some members at difficult times for the loss of dear ones and in the struggle to regain their health. In total, it is the commitment of each one on different fronts, persevering in the pro-life option.

There are also challenges and questions over how we must answer our vocation in these new times. What are the specific aspects of our identity? What do we need to change? How can we be more efficient in mission promotion and in promoting new vocations? Keeping in mind that mission is renewed by new missionaries, men and women willing to enter into the dynamics of a Church on the move.

We count on everyone’s prayers and wish to remain united to the great Comboni family spread around the world.

In the light of our reality, in the grace of the celebration of the 300^th anniversary of the Aparecida, inspired by St. Daniel Comboni in the sequel of Jesus and united in our missionary journey to the Church in Brazil and in the world, we are ready to protect and foster each day the missionary call of the Comboni vocation.

With every best wish and friendship,

The CLM of Brazil

With Gratitude and Hope

3 June, 2017 by Alberto de la Portilla

Final Message of the 150 Anniversary of the MCCJ institute

We Comboni Missionaries coming from our different circumscriptions have gathered in Rome along with other members of the Comboni Family for the celebration of the 150 years of history of our Institute. For us all, to celebrate means first and foremost to recall our origins and the history God has been writing with us and with the peoples we have met on our journey. To remember is not an exercise in archaeology, but a living process of thanksgiving to God, entrusting our future into his hands. To remember is to set out again and afresh.

Our Heritage: From Gratitude to Faithfulness

The birth of our Institute did not happen in a laboratory. Rather, it is the fruit of a long process of life and mission. It was a painful birth at a time of major change in the world. We were born in a context of poverty, without any particular ecclesiastical, political and economic support. This event – in itself nearly unique in the history of the missionary movement of the XIX century – granted us greater freedom to respond to our special vocation. Even though the process of finding a juridical form for our mission was certainly not straightforward, it is clear that Comboni desired a family of missionaries with these distinguishing marks:

Ad vitam, namely missionaries not only available to offer their time, but also their very lives for the mission;
catholic, meaning not constrained by nationalistic mentalities;
in love with God and the peoples, making common cause with the poor.

Pope Francis tells us that “the joy of a missionary always shines against the backdrop of a grateful memory”. Gratitude means to know you are loved and then – moved by this love – to go out to share this experience with others. Gratitude is not static, but dynamic; gratitude is movement, inwards, outwards and forwards; it is a journey. In this perspective, the reunion of the Institute, the new Rule of Life, and the canonization of Saint Daniel Comboni become qualifying moments of our history and opportunities to set off again and continue his journey with creativity.

Gratitude means to recognise in our history God’s faithfulness, mirrored by the generous fidelity of countless confreres, both from the past and the present; faithfulness to the Gospel, to Comboni, to a challenging mission, to prayer, to evangelical poverty, to God’s people and to internationality.

Journeys of Regeneration

Today we have the tools for the study and a better knowledge of our Founder and our history, and this symposium contributed to this end. We are aware that whenever in history we have reconnected to Comboni and his charism we have taken a significant step forward.

A ‘reconfiguration’ of our Institute is necessary. We face the challenge of a type of mission that is always on the move, still far from fulfilment. The aging of the members of our Institute along with the decrease of vocations in many of our circumscriptions, the new paradigms of mission and our changed role within Local Churches are just a few of the challenges that add anxiety to our present situation. Today mission calls for a kind of witness that goes far beyond works and questions our life-style; it also demands of us a total self-giving.

We believe that the reconfiguration of our Institute unfolds along four paths: spirituality, humility, fraternity and ministeriality.

Spirituality. This is not only about rediscovering the beauty of prayer, but rather developing a spirituality of God’s presence in the history of peoples and lives of each person. The poor become our teachers with their faith and hope and they teach us this spirituality, without which we risk to become arid and lose the meaning of our missionary journey.
Humility. Aware of our limitations and fragilities, we are called to move from being protagonists to being witnesses. Today it is not just “doing mission” that counts, but first and foremost “being mission”. Words and works are no longer enough, as there are many who can talk and work – even better than we do. The challenge ahead of us is to bear witness with our lives to the treasure we hold in our hearts.
Fraternity. Many among us have expressed both in the conferences and in the group-work the desire that we love each other more, like brothers. We need to grow in the quality of our community relationships. This problem is all the more manifest in our poor community discernment and planning, as well as in the low quality of our brotherly sharing. Some among us do not feel at home in our communities. To be brothers means to give space to one another, even across cultures and ages, and oftentimes demands moments of reconciliation, also in a sacramental way. More fraternity would help us to link mission and consecration and would improve our community discernment.
Ministeriality. Today’s new social contexts urge us to review our ministeriality. We need to be better qualified in different fields of evangelization, and to improve our team-work with other members of the Comboni Family and of the Local Church. Mission is the reference point for any formation program. Ministeriality alone is not enough if it is not grounded in Christ’s passion for humanity.

From this anniversary we set off once again, as brothers, aware of challenges and difficulties, but also full of hope:

“The missionary never loses heart in face of difficulties. All crosses are meritorious, because we work only for Christ and the mission” (Saint Daniel Comboni)

“May the Spirit make hope overflow in you” (Pope Francis)