Comboni Lay Missionaries

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Celebrating the memory of the birth of St. Daniel Comboni

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Comboni

TO GIVE LIFE SO THAT ALL MAY HAVE LIFE

Solemnity of St. Daniel Comboni

10 October 2018

“I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for my sheep. And there are other sheep I have that are not of this fold, and these I have to lead as well. They too will listen to my voice and there will be only one flock and one shepherd.”

(Jn 10:14-16)

 

Comboni

Dear Confreres
Celebrating the memory of the birth of St. Daniel Comboni introduces us into the great mystery of the life of the Good Shepherd with a pierced heart who gave his life so that all may have life and life in abundance, especially those who do not yet belong to the table of Christ’s body, the poorest and most abandoned, so that all may become one flock under one shepherd.

We Comboni Missionaries, faithful to this tradition, to the charism and pastoral practice of our Founder, are invited to renew ourselves in this missionary commitment every day to be “at the margins of society as witnesses and prophets of fraternal relationships, based on forgiveness, mercy and the joy of the Gospel” (CA ’15 No. 1).

The mission at the margins of society required from Comboni the ability to remain firm in difficult times and fidelity to the price of life itself, because he had his gaze fixed on the pierced heart of the Crucified One, a vision of faith of the events and the embrace of Africa with a heart marked by divine love. An incarnate holiness that runs through the paths of poverty and human marginalisation, welcoming the other, the different, the poor, in an embrace of communion and dialogue; a holiness that is the divine passion present in a human heart.

This is what we have tried to express in the reflection and prayer of the Intercapitular that we have just concluded. We have been constantly attentive to the voice of the victims, the marginalised, and the great multitudes of human beings whose life is threatened by a heartless system that causes the predictable and violent death of the weakest.

This reality continues to prophetically question our presence and the quality of our missionary service, as it has questioned Comboni in his time. To respond, however, to these challenges, we need to approach each day, to the mystery of God’s love, revealed in Jesus Christ, with the spirit, gaze and heart of Comboni, with an open heart overflowing with love and the mercy of the Pierced One and, like Him, let us also be pierced by so many situations of poverty and neglect.

For St. Daniel Comboni it was clear that the contemplation of the mystery of God, crucified for love, had as its purpose to lead his missionaries to a definite way of doing mission: to witness a life lived in ‘spirit and truth’, fruit of a vivid and convincing prayer, to practice humility and obedience, as signs of a deeply Comboni spirituality. That is, to irradiate with one’s life the mystery of God Crucified in order to bring to Christ, the source of Life, all those who are hungry and thirsty for justice.

It is with these feelings that we wish to celebrate this solemnity of St. Daniel Comboni as a Comboni Family. Enter into this mystery of the Good Shepherd with a pierced heart and drink the lifeblood that renews us, that makes us look at reality through the eyes of faith, hope and charity, that heals and humanises us, that makes us become mission, “cenacle of apostles”, gift for others. “I make common cause with each of you, and the happiest day in my life will be the one on which I will be able to give my life for you” (W 3159).

May St. Daniel Comboni intercede with the Father for each one of us, for the whole Comboni Family and for the missions that are presently going through difficult situations: Eritrea, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Central African Republic.

Happy Feast day to all.
Fr. Tesfaye Tadesse Gebresilasie; Fr. Jeremias dos Santos Martins; Fr. Pietro Ciuciulla; Fr. Alcides Costa; Bro. Alberto Lamana.

“I can do all things in Him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13)

by
LMC

LMC

How beautiful is the wood sculpture of Africa at the feet of Christ. I allow the gaze of Comboni to penetrate me, to contemplate me. And how much of me fits into that gaze. I remember someone who once told me “it is impossible that it will not penetrate you, and question you.” And I agree every time I see this image of our tireless San Daniel Comboni.

This is the image I contemplate above the altar in the chapel of the MCCJ house in Madrid, where today I will wait until 4:00 PM, when the CLM David will come to get me to go together for the weekend at Arenas de San Pedro, about 100 miles from here. I can’t resist to enter and spend a moment with the Lord. I pray to him for the mission. Not only for my own, but for everyone’s. The mission of those who are about to go. The one of those who stay. Also in separation there is love. It means to leave what we have and earn something better: the freedom of giving ourselves to Christ. Separation is not something simply physical. It means to go out of ourselves on a daily basis. At each moment. It is what I continue to look for today, but that today is becoming more “doable.” LMC

I leave my country looking for the wisdom and the grace I need so that, in the future, I will deposit my gifts in total surrender. So during the next few months I will be in Madrid, with the family I chose, the Comboni Family, for a missiology course. From the beginning, this program inflamed my heart and brightened my eyes, I must confess, just like it is with the anxious waiting of children the day before returning to school. This is what I am grateful for even today before this Africa at the feet of Christ: the opportunity to grow in wisdom and grace.

I know that I am fragile, but in a community that lives of and for love, I feel strong. Because “all I can in Him who comforts me” (Phil 4:13). “All I can in Him who comforts me,” I repeat. It resonates in me. Only in Him and through Him I could be able to go beyond myself, to go to meet love, to be free inasmuch as I trust in Him and in his hands, loving without measure. “God does not choose the able ones, but enables those he chooses.” Today I am understanding this quite well… and I pray to God that he may make me capable in the mission to which I have been assigned. This is for me and for those who are with me. Family. Boyfriend. Friends. People in general. Each in their own right, are part of this mission and I feel the need to bring them along.

LMC“You become responsible forever, for those you have tamed.”

(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

And so it is… I pray for each of them, and for their mission. Pray for me as well, please. From the bottom of my heart, thanks for your trust… Not so much in me, but in God. Everything, including me, we are only possible in Him.

Take, Lord and receive

my freedom,

my memory,

my understanding

and my will,

all that I have and possess;

You gave it to me;

I return it to you, Lord.

Everything is yours,

dispose of it as you wish.

Give me your love and your grace,

and it will be sufficient.

(St. Ignatius of Loyola)

 

Keep in touch,

CLM Carolina Fiúza

CLM Community “Ayllu” in Peru

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LMC Peru

To be a community is to share what we are with others, is going to the peripheries.
In this video we share what we live in Villa Ecológica (Arequipa, Peru) and the work we do with the elderly, children, families and patients at a social and pastoral level.

See and know our way, what we are, where we are and with whom we are.


CLM Ayllu in Peru

You, me and the us God calls us to be

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LMC PeruYou were the community I never chose but with which I always wanted to be. Maybe because in the differences I find a little more of myself, and together we reveal a little more of ourselves.

With you I learned that you do not do mission by yourself, and what I need from you. You crossed my path and even without knowing you opened your heart and accepted me as a companion on our journey, yes, because basically this is a journey we walk every day in this piece of land beyond the realities that we both knew.

You extended your hand when I thought that nothing made sense. I realized, on that night when we prayed together and everything seemed to be crumbling, that God does not make mistakes in his plans for each one of us. You were and you are my support when everything seems hard and difficult. You are a word that does not hide, eyes that speak, you are yourself.

With you I learned the dimension of sharing and of giving, in this triangle of love, in the dynamics of the I, the you, the we.

Many times you are the eyes seeing much beyond what I see. The heart that listens to me, when I need to talk. The arms that hold me and sustain me. The hand that is always there when obstacles appear on the way. God knows why he put you on my way, and now I know it as well. May God help me to watch you and to know how to make sense of your presence in my life and in our journey.

What together we are able to be is what moves this community in search of the mission of Jesus in the world. We are silence, we are laughter, we are criticism and demands, we are limitations and the infinite, we are also the stubbornness of our lives and apprenticeship, we are tears often shared between my crying and your shoulders or embrace. We are often prayers when in silence we look at the reality in which we live.

Come what may, it does not matter. What matters is that in our imperfections we want to be of God.

We are witnesses of those who accept to grow together. We are Andrea and Paola (Paula in her native land), lives that God united to walk in the direction of a love which is learned daily, a love born of mistakes, exercised in prayer, made of silences and often of glances that say it all, made of extended hands and chores shared, of bad moods and stubbornness, of different perspectives and of two ways of acting that complement each other.

We are what each one can give of herself. We are in what you are and teach me to be. We are in what we mutually learn. We are from where we know we come from. Love.

LMC PeruWhen I realized that I was called to mission, I knew that I was being called to be community. In this journey I knew that God was calling me to be community with Andrea, as humbly they call Neuza in Peru. Arriving in Peru I understood that it was time to cross the desert. Even so, when I arrived in Peru I felt happy, totally happy and realized that Andrea was part of this happiness. A happiness filled with obstacles and difficulties, joys and hilarious mistakes, and for all this, complete. When I was called to journey with Andrea I knew and still know that God wants to teach me something through her. We met people in our lives to make us grow, to make us holy, to teach us how to walk and get closer to God. To walk with Andrea demands accepting that there will be complicated and difficult times, but that even in silence she is always there. She knows when you wake up crying and comes to hug you and only returns to bed when she is sure you are alright. She is there looking at you when it seems the world collapsed on you and instinctively she will cry with you to share your sorrow. To live with Andrea is like climbing and descending mountains with a sore stomach from too much laughing. With Andrea I feel capable of facing the greatest difficulties on our journey. With Andrea there is not a boring trip or waiting for a bus. With Andrea there joy in every step in the mission. Andrea puts up with fatigue, pain, and suffering and accompanies me up and down the roads. With Andrea I meet Jesus in every corner. To live with her is a constant learning experience and a journey that I propose to do every day. I am happy and I trust that we are happy even in the days when I am frail and everything looks grey, you are always there at my side to love me just as I am. Just as with the love of God, to be community with Andrea is not easy, but it is enough to know how to love and to be loved. To be community with Andrea reminds me of Pope JPII’s quote, “To love is an act of the will,” because I want to love her every day on each step of our journey.

To live in community and share everything in our lives is not easy. But when we want to and we do it with love and for love, when we do it knowing that it is God who unites us and stays with us at all times, everything is fine. To be community is to be available to walk not in me or in you, but in us. To be community is to stick together in happiness and to share the crosses. To be community is to know how to give space and bear hugs. In community we share the biggest gift God has given us, life. Together, in community, we bring joy to every house we may visit, we pray wherever, we sing wherever and we live in Vila Ecología in the beautiful house we call home.

We are you and me, we are us.

LMC Peru

Ayllu Community , Neuza (Andrea) and Paula (Paola)

Spiritual dryness

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espiritualidadI whole heartedly appreciate our colleagues who consistently bring us encouraging words to give us spiritual enlightenment through their own missionary experiences from which we are learning a lot from what they share with us here in our blog.

I humbly would like to share my own experience in spirituality from my journey in trying to find where our Lord is but I have not found him face to face but I know in faith he is with me and all of us in doing the work that we do. Without God we would not have reached where we are through the intercession of our beloved founder, St. Daniel Comboni in whose steps we try to follow which is like moving in a bush full of thorns. These are from my notes of some retreats and workshops I attended and I humbly pray those who will read it may find something to learn to share with the people they work within our missionary life. It may benefit you as a person or help to learn to facilitate some talks with the parishioners or the young people we work and stay with. This is not a complete literature to rely on but it may make you think more to discover the will of God in you and me.

Spiritual dryness is said to be a state of being distressed, hopelessness, and unworthiness, unsatisfied, discouraged in our spiritual life and duties. This can occur to anyone and we find from actively participating in prayer life, we tend to realise we resist going for morning prayers or saying it personally, reading spiritual books, community prayers become a very big burden. And we find no reason for what it is that we face but there is no reason we can explain for our state. St. Paul calls them as thorns in his flesh and no matter how long or how short we are in our missionary vocation, they are sure to come like day and night, as they say no matter how long or short a night is, the day is sure to come.

Let us look at some but not exclusive Causes of spiritual dryness

  1. Sin that we refuse to admit and uncover, this can be consciously or unconsciously in our life. If we do not have enough time to meditate on our life and services, it will be very difficult to discover sins we committed but have not come to our mind at the time of confession. Some great thinker said a life without daily reflection is not worth living. Mathew 13:12 tells us in such moments to always aspire for more of what we need from God so that God will bless us more with his gracious gifts. The more we meditate on our life and try to find out our wrongs, and surrender our all to do the will of God, the more he will show us areas in our life that we need to be delivered from.
  2. Over-feeding and over straining to some people. This especially comes during retreats of either group or individual, Bible camps where we learn about the Bible and learn how to live it in our lives, Church festivities like Christmas, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost in which we always prepare to get the most in all that we wanted. After such moments, our Spiritual Fathers always encourage us to prepare for this spiritual dryness that can make us to drift away from our main focus on Jesus and our beloved Mother Mary.
  3. When we have been blessed with God’s word from what we read, may be when we find our prayer requests have been answered. We are in very good perfect life with the family and the rest of people in our life. In our Parishes, where we do our missionary work, we have very excellent work life with no challenges and other associates or team work we work with. If we do not constantly pray for guidance of God and ask him to let us prepare for the worst in our spiritual life, we may find we easily fall into a state of nothingness and despair.
  4. Taking unlimited amount of spiritual food for example people belonging to more than 3 weekly Bible studies, prayer group may suffer so much but personally with our missionary assignments where we are two or even one, it may be very difficult to have a constant spiritual nourishment and we may put our self in a deep spiritual nourishment once and it will take another very long time to have a similar nourishment and so we can be an easy target of spiritual dryness
  5. Over-feeding spiritually may damage our spiritual life and o spiritual dryness and so we are advised to take what is appropriate but consistently searching to get more, as they say we need to thirst for more and more in our life to discover the Lord.
  6. Disregard of our body just as joy affects heart and flesh. We must be conscious of our health, may be working for service or an income for the family but we need to know when we are tired and we can do more. It becomes challenging when we are to meet deadlines of what we do and we may be taken deep into work, thereby depriving our body of rest, a tired body cannot concentrate on prayers. That is why Jesus in his mission, when he did a wonderful work, performed miracles, he would tell his apostles to find some place to rest, he would be alone in a state of prayer and contemplation when he is preparing for a difficult task. I strongly believe if we give our bodies rest and give some time to enjoy the nature God has given us to help us like flowers, trees, water, animals and the rest for us to live better, our spiritual journey will be easy. Psalms 84:2 brings us how to thirst for the word of God and to be in his presence and in his temple. We can never have this yearning when our body and mind is so tired.
  7. A sick mind can be a cause of a sick body. We are different individuals who grew from different family backgrounds and so when we come to live together in a community, conflicts are bound to arise by all means. If we claim not to pay attention to diverging views and learn to tolerate to live with them, it will affect our mind which will never find it easy to concentrate on prayers. One of the spiritual writers put it that Jesus advises us to learn to live with Judases in our life because he knew Judas Iscariot was going to betray him but he tolerated and lived with him for three years. We may say we are not Jesus the divine to tolerate Judases but St. Daniel Comboni had the worst share of this as well when too much allegations were put on him; he does not pray, he does not use the money for the purposes it was meant to be and so on, he personally did not have peace of mind with the clerics he was with, no wonder why he died in the hands of the Lay people who were by his bed side at that time and so I believe conflicts are good but if we cannot resolve them amicably like followers of Jesus, it will affect out prayer life and so spiritual dryness is inevitable in our life. Jesus brings this out very well in the teaching about divorce Matthew  19:1-9 and there are always people who will contradict us in our work and what we teach but remembering how he handled them is the way out to live with people who are always controversial in our missionary work in our communities or where we work
  8. Loss of balance. Our conversion to follow Jesus Christ does not relieve us from observing the order of creation in which we are part. We have friends we need to meet, we have to attend to our natural body desires of intimacy in a spirit of chastity in religious or marriage life and we need to acknowledge that we are weak and immoral and we need to surrender these feelings to Jesus to work. We have our families that need our company, we need to have recreation as St. Francis of Sales put in his book Treatise on the Love of God and The Devout Life that what our body demands, we have to do it even if it means going to dance but it has to be in a way if Jesus comes to you right there, he should judge you rightly. King Solomon tells us to learn to regulate our body according to reason.

Lack of balance between work and rest in a long run leads to spiritual dryness as well explained in Genesis 2:2-3 where God rested after working. God, in his divine nature did this, what about us the mortal ones who are victims of sin all the times of our life in this world of sin? Many sins we commit I believe happen so when we are tired and exhausted from all that we do and so we are so irritated that we just say anything that comes to our mind without reflecting on what we are to say or have just said, we tend to pass our judgments emotionally (irrationally) rather than rationally something we may regret later.

Lessons to learn from spiritual dryness

Therefore spiritual dryness should not be taken as a calamity. In John 11:4 Jesus said the death of Lazarus was to bring the glory to God. Personally I have been through some hard moments of life challenges but later on I would thank God that it went that way, it has brought me so closer to him. Therefore;

  • Through spiritual dryness, we can grow in our spiritual journey, we tend to surrender our all to God and say with our Beloved Mother Mary; Lord, let your will be done in this not mine, if it has come from you, make me strong enough to pass through this but do not remove it away from me. St. Augustine said “he who created you without yourself will not save you without yourself” and so we need to be fully present to overcome our spiritual dryness with prayer and fasting
  • People who were very close to God experienced the same like our Lord Jesus wept in the garden of Gethsemane before he handed himself to be tortured and killed. His words Father, remove this from me, but let it be you not I would have it… when he was scourged, he beautifully said, my heart is ready or God, my heart is ready….and these are the very words we can learn to have in our most challenging moments in our life, Moses and Elijah also experienced spiritual dryness and when we read about them, we find our they were so humble to let the will of God be in their lives through the hard moments they were going through, we can always ask ourselves how often we allow the will of God to happen to us than defending our pride to explain why the other person is wrong and I am the one right. Jesus did not defend his heavenly Kingship when Pilate asked him….are you the king? He said it is you who said it…..why then should we find it very hard to accept that we are wrong and find all possible reasons to defend our actions??? The answer could simply be got from Herbert Cardinal Vaughan’s book Humility of Heart that is the Pride in us that we are better than others and we are so much self-centered in all our deeds. St. Thomas said acquired humility is in a certain sense the greatest good. From Job 4:2 we learn that God sends us some moments of dryness to prove our worth as his faithful followers and Psalms 22:15 tells us the path followed by the evil is always wide with no challenges and is smooth as compared to path leading to eternal happiness which is full of thorns and holes to walk on. Jesus said whoever wants to follow me must take his cross and follow him. To me this is not the wooden or metallic cross that we make but the challenges that we bear in our daily life as we keep our focus on him but keeping touch with the reality we live on ground.
  • After every mountain, there is a valley and this is the journey to eternity and it is like watching a train or lorry fully loaded climbing a mountain with too much smoke and at a very slow speed and the driver keeps his speed because he knows there is a slopping side where all will be fine and when he reaches another mountain he prepares for that and this should be our journey in our work, always to be prepared for mountains and crosses in our life.
  • Do not despair when spiritual dryness comes, your blessings are at hand, only if you persist and do not give up your focus on the Lord Jesus and live in a spirit of humility knowing all is from God to make you to know him better. Daniel and his friends preferred to be burnt in the heart of fire, they did not ask God to save them from the flame but said the will of God be done. At the end they triumphed in this with God sending his Angel to save them.

How to overcome spiritual dryness

  • Try to live a life full of forgiveness and tolerance no matter how hard it may sound to be and how innocent you may be in all the challenges you are going through. Our Lord Jesus said …..father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing…the same word St. Maria Gorrett said to her murderer that God should forgive him but he should turn to learn to do good….it needs a real divine intervention to forgive as human beings. We can say I forgive you but I will not forget. Therefore forgiveness takes time and effort through prayer. Etty Huillesum said “inside me there is a very deep spring and in this spring is God. Sometimes I achieve it but more often it is covered by stones and sand, at that moment God is buried, must be unearthed again” and this is done only and only when we pray and learn to forgive.
  • Confession and renewed assurance of forgiveness and this comes with the necessity of having a Spiritual Director who can guide us in all these challenges we go through and they always hold our hand in the journey which is full of thorns and holes. Whoever we have as our spiritual director is also a human being bound to err and when we witness this, it does not stop their role of being our spiritual directors to whom we can always run in case we are in turmoil of spiritual dryness.
  • Make daily examination of consciousness and discover the imperfections. Accuse yourself to Jesus for the sins you have committed for each day, eliminate self-love and become like little children as Jesus says. Consider humility under the aspects of your relationship with God and your neighbor. Always ask yourself what did you do this day, how did you do it, what have you omitted to do. Always insist on spiritual directors. Great spiritual writers gave us two things: two things of which one must never complain, clothes or food, two prayers we should frequently repeat, my God, let me neither be curious nor talkative and two actions for which we must be always ready to have Holy Communion all the time and to die. Let us all have an effort to read the very excellent book written by St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori Preparation for Death (free download from search catholicfreebooks click on the second option, it brings a very beautiful cathedral windows and pictures of saints, you can download as many books as you can) or any other author and it teaches us how to live a real committed life to go to heaven as we can die anytime anywhere. When death comes whether prepared or not how will it find you and me
  • We need to live a life of responsibility and discipline in both private and public life at all times and in all places we go to. Always we need to ask ourselves what Jesus would like me to do. Spiritual writers tell us to live each day the way it comes and when we want to make resolutions, they should be made each day not for life, because we can control what we do at present not tomorrow which we are not sure whether we shall reach and also yesterday is gone and we leave it to the mercy of God. Therefore every day we need to live better as they say perfection is attained now at present when you are there doing all that you can.
  • We depend too much on second hand sermons; learning from others is very good but not enough for our constant spiritual growth. We need to dig out firsthand information on spiritual food for ourselves through personal studies, reading spiritual books, attending personal and group retreats, making every encounter we make a moment of prayer and to learn to appreciate Jesus for all the wonders he does for us.
  • All crosses and adversities will only serve to strengthen the spirit of the members who are faithful to this holy task and determined to put the mission on the road of certain prosperity, because the works of God have always been at the foot of Calvary and must be like Jesus Christ went through the process of passion and death in order to reach the Resurrection. (St. Daniel Comboni message MDC 238) and Having been made sharers in the passion of Jesus Christ, we have a greater desire than ever to sacrifice our life for Christ and for his mission (St. Daniel Comboni message MDC 69) with these beautiful words from our founder, let us learn to discover Jesus from all the spiritual dryness we shall always get and be ready to fulfill our part in the sacrifice for the kingdom of God for which we  are striving to do our part.

Matters of spirituality are never exhaustively discussed and are never easily understood but I hope with these few, it can lead us to read more and search more from different sources on how well we can do all this in our life. With our work, sometimes we may not have sufficient time to pray but learning to pray where we work, communicating to God in our work may help us to pray.

Disagreements are always there and when they come, let them lead us to pray more through the intersession of our Beloved Mother Mary, St. Daniel Comboni and our patron saints.

With these few words, let us keep the candle burning in our words and deeds while asking God to be with us all the time of our lives. And by asking the lord to make us live a committed Lay Missionary life with love and dedication to the most Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate heart of Mary and to strive for something that is worth and very important to live as Comboni family to reach to all in words and actions as we live in peace and harmony. St. Julian of Norwich said the greatest honour we can give the Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love. Love is our Lord’s meaning and we have to do everything for love, God made us, God keeps us and so we need to turn to him all the time of our life.

To God be the Glory

Ezati Eric.

Comboni Lay Missionary. Uganda