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Message of Fr. Enrique for the feast of the Sacred Heart

12 June, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

“We ask for the grace to become joyful and happy consecrated people because we carry in our heart the treasure of the love that flows from the pierced Heart of the Lord, which St. Daniel Comboni discovered as the foundation on which to build his mission and to which he committed himself without setting any limit. May the trust in the Heart of Jesus become also for us a source of an eternal love that will help us to live our consecration as the most beautiful gift that we have been given. Happy Feast day of the Sacred Heart.” Fr. Enrique Sánchez G., mccj, Superior General.

Consecrated in the Heart of Jesus

The words consecration and consecrated, with all their synonyms, can be enhanced and integrated in our lives, especially during this year earmarked for the religious and consecrated life, to the extent that we allow ourselves a moment for reflection and, perhaps even more, for gratitude for this gift.

At the same time, these words are likely to be emptied of their meaning and the richness they evoke, if we do not compare them with the experiences of our life; if we do not give, through our life, an authentic meaning to what we assert in words.

We are consecrated. Very little is needed to make this proclamation which, however, is not so obvious when we ask our life-witness to express the content of what has been the choice of our life.

Although it must be said that there are extraordinary examples, very close to us, of people who have treasured their consecration and whose life has been transformed into a light that can penetrate the darkest shadows, now we need to stop and ask how much our consecration to God defines and characterizes our identity and our acting.

To reflect on our consecration can become an extraordinary occasion to better understand what we mean when we identify ourselves as persons consecrated to God for the mission.

Our missionary consecration

To help us in our reflection, especially on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, I would like to share with you some brief thoughts that might be provocations for asking us to what extent and how much we are living our religious consecration and mission.

Pope Francis invited us to do a memory exercise, to recognize in the past the gift of our vocation, of our charism, letting flow from within our heart the gratitude and thankfulness for this gift. He recommended us to contemplate the present of our consecration to live it with passion, without making calculations, with the generosity and enthusiasm of the first moment, when in the silence and complicity of God we heard our name pronounced and dreamed of a mission without frontiers.

The Pope asked us to look to the future with hope, which means confidence in God, in his proximity, in the certainty that He continues to cherish in his heart a plan for humanity that no one can frustrate, because it will always be a project of love and love does not halt in the face of obstacles.

To live our missionary consecration in this way leads us to rediscover, to experience again the joy of the first moment of our call, and to say in simplicity: Lord, how great you have been in setting your eyes on me. You could not have bestowed on me a more extraordinary gift.

Being a missionary was the best choice that you have done for me; thank you, because you have remained faithful and because what has happened to me so many years ago continues to maintain its freshness.

Thanks for this missionary present that is a challenge to us. Your call is sometimes in danger of being overshadowed by so many obstacles that we find in our path. We lack your passion, your enthusiasm, your courage in not letting ourselves be overcome by the indifference of our time, the consumerism that surrounds us, the superficial hedonism that assails us with its traps that increase our selfishness and superficiality.

We need missionary passion, first of all to believe in you with all our heart, to find you in the brother who suffers, in the sister who is abused, in the young man condemned to live without the possibility to dream of an appropriate future, to come out of our shelter and comfort.

Lord, it is good to recognize with humility and simplicity that we lack the passion which is not afraid of sacrifice, renunciation, abandonment, the passion that allows us to leave everything to make of you and your mission the most important thing of our life.

You gave us a vocation that makes us privileged people, because for us you have chosen, as a place to meet you, the poorest, those farthest away, those who do not count in the eyes of our contemporaries.

“The hope of which we speak – says the Pope – is not based on numbers or enterprises, but on the One in whom we have placed our trust” (2 Tim 1:12).

We want to live, and we cannot but do so, in the hope of when we have been witnesses of your fidelity, your trust, your kindness toward us. We are not scared of tomorrow because we know that you have preceded us and prepared for us the morrow that will be completely different from what we could have established with our own efforts and our resources.

We are not afraid to decrease, to die, because we are convinced that, wherever you are, life cannot but win and that it will always be you the one to write the beautiful history of the mission, which will also become ours.

A consecration lived through small and large details

When we speak of consecration, I intend to say that we are referring to an experience, to a life that makes us live through the small and large details of our existence and of our daily work, as we fulfil the dream that we carry in our heart as the ideal that drives us to go farther and farther.

I intend to say that being consecrated is nothing but accepting with joy that our life is in the hands of the One who gave us our existence. It is to accept that we are the Lord’s possession, that we are or we are becoming God’s gift to humanity.

How many times we have heard that the consecrated persons are people who have freely agreed to give up everything to allow God fulfil his dream of love for humanity.

It’s nice to think so, because it helps us understand that the consecration is not a work that comes from our own will or ability, but an experience of great freedom, generosity and above all of deep docility.

What does it mean to be consecrated to God?

To be consecrated to God is to educate our heart to be always open and willing to what He wants to do of us. In this sense, consecration is synonymous with abandonment, obedience and courage, because with the Lord we know where the adventure begins, but we do not know how far He will take us.

To speak of consecration means entering a world in which our parameters are no longer applicable, because we enter the world of the mystery of God, which breaks all our logic and our calculations and turns everything upside down, as He becomes the protagonist of our history and the master of our existence.

And here we can think of many sayings in the Gospel: “You did not choose me, no, I chose you” (Jn 15:16); “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17).

What great strength resounds in Paul’s message when he remembers how he was chosen and how, in his ministry as an apostle, he has realised that “We know that by turning everything to their good God co-operates with all those who love him, with all those that he has called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28).

So, the question that arises is very simple: who is, after all, the one who is consecrated?

How many times have we to recognize that in our lives we have advanced because the Lord has not pulled back? How many times have we to realise that were not our qualities, our merits and our virtues that made us worthy of the gift of the choice that the Lord made us?

We have a great responsibility in preserving and developing the grace received from the day we said yes to the Lord. Will we always remember that God calls and does not change his opinion over time? To which loyalty does He challenge us?

St. Daniel Comboni’s witness

“Since I have an extreme need of the help of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Sovereign of Central Africa, the very joy, hope, fortune and the all of her poor Missionaries, I write to you, my friend, the apostle and faithful servant of the divine Heart which is so full of love for the most unfortunate and abandoned souls on earth.

How glad I am to spend half an hour with you, to commend and entrust to the Sacred Heart the most precious interests of my trying and difficult Mission, to which I have vowed my whole soul, my body, my blood and my life!” (Writings 5255-56).

The consecration of the Comboni missionary, to be a real source of happiness, will always have to try to respond to this clear conviction of Comboni, a consecration that will be born of the experience of love that flows from the Heart of Jesus. The Heart of God who has loved so much humanity and who had no hesitation in handing over for love his Son, his only Son.

It is from this love that our consecration originates and finds support. It is and will always be from this open Heart that we can receive the light and strength to live only for God and for his work. It is from the Heart of Jesus that we will have to learn how to become God’s people who find their joy in serving the mission with an undivided heart.

It will always be the Heart of Jesus to help us look to the future without falling into discouragement, sadness and disappointment, because from the Heart of God new things are always born for the good of all those who open themselves to love.

Like Comboni, we must learn not to be scared by the difficulties of the mission that we are called to live. It will always be a difficult and laborious work, but we must not forget that it is the mission of God, not ours. It is the mission of the Lord in which we are called to become mere collaborators and facilitators of his love.

As our holy founder, we too are invited and called to live fully the gift of the missionary vocation, willing to devote all our heart and soul, becoming men of deep faith, accepting with joy to witness through our poverty, our chastity and our obedience, and always trying to create environments of intense fraternity.

Even for us, the great challenge of the consecration will be the willingness to sacrifice everything for others, for those we meet in the mission. This also means acceptance of martyrdom, which will ask us to impregnate the heart of our brothers and sisters with our lives offered up in our daily existence, in humble and hidden service, in joyful acceptance of the surrender of ourselves to allow God to manifest his love.

Only if educated in this school of love, which is the Heart of Jesus, we will be able to experience in total freedom the choice for the poorest, and to give a face to the love of God, through the construction of a more just, more caring, more respectful world, capable of generating the happiness that we all carry in our heart as the only true yearning of our lives.

We ask for the grace to become joyful and happy consecrated people because we carry in our heart the treasure of the love that flows from the pierced Heart of the Lord, which St. Daniel Comboni discovered as the foundation on which to build his mission and to which he committed himself without setting any limit.

May the trust in the Heart of Jesus become also for us a source of an eternal love that will help us to live our consecration as the most beautiful gift that we have been given.

Happy Feast day of the Sacred Heart.
Fr. Enrique Sánchez G., mccj
Superior General

In the footsteps of Jesus – spiritual retreat in the streets of Berlin

11 June, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

On May 13, three women of the small group of German CLM went to Berlin, to make a spiritual retreat in the streets. We were anxious, how will that be? Full of gratitude we can say that it was worth it! The Jesuit Christian Herwartz and the Comboni sister Margit Forster affectionately accompanied us. Each of us made her personal and profound experience, going to places that made possible an encounter with God in a special way: the jail, a drug sales point, a meeting place for the homeless, tourist places in the center… Like Moses, we take off our sandals (fears, prejudices, judgments) and in the holy places we find God in a new way. Unfortunately, we had to return home on May 17. It was a brief but very rich experience, especially together. THANK YOU!

Barbara Ludewig CLM Germany

My name is “She Rained Down”

9 June, 2015 by Maggie and Mark Banga

Names have a unique significance and richness in Ethiopia and the naming of a child may come about in a few different ways. The country’s ancient Christian roots reveal themselves to this day in the naming of many new babies. As among other Christians throughout the world, it would be common to name a child after a person in the bible, one of the apostles or a saint. For example, common names here are Hanna,Solomon, Isaac and Yohannes (John).

But what is also common and beautifully unique here is that many Ethiopian names are compounds or small phrases rather than one word. Some examples of compound names are:

Ehitnesh – You are a sister
Terunesh – You are wonderful
Serkaddis – Always new
Zenebetch – She rained down
Engedawerq – Golden guest
Yibeltal – He is above
Yemiseratch – She who works
Nega – It became dawn

The meanings sometimes reveal the circumstance of the child’s birth, a personality trait that the parents see in the child or an aspiration of the parents for their child. For example, the name Tesfaye which means “My Hope” is frequently given by a mother who is very poor or single reflecting her hope for her child’s future goodness and success. Or a name like Mitiku meaning “Substitute” would be given to a child after the death of a brother or sister. One of our friends is named Teshale which means “He is feeling better” because he was born sick but pulled through.

Many compound names may also stem from the parents faith and reflect one of God’s characteristics. They are given to give reverence and thanks to God for the gift of the new life into this world, for example:

Meheretu – His Mercy
Gashow – His Shield
Mebratu – His Light
Gebre Mariam – Son of Mary
Habte Mikael – Gift of Micheal (if the parents had prayed to St. Michael the archangel for a baby)

Another unique feature is that there are no surnames. The tradition is that the first name of the child’s father becomes the child’s last name. Since my fathers name is Alex Banga, had I been born in Ethiopia I would have been named Mark Alex instead of Mark Banga. Also, a woman never takes her husbands name in marriage, instead she keeps her fathers first name.

Because the Amharic names still sound ‘foreign’ to our ears we don’t notice how different the names are. Meheretu enters our mind as Meheretu and is quickly classified as a foreign word, not decoded into its Amharic meaning. But if we stop to think about what we are hearing it’s quite peculiar for us. The compound names shown above do not symbolize the meaning but are in fact the literal words. Just imagine if you overheard this conversation:

“Good morning His Shield”
“Hi You are Wonderful, how are you doing? Did you see My Hope last night”
“No, My Hope did not come to the party but He is feeling better was there with his new girlfriend She is sister.”

The names have on one hand been helpful to learn Amharic, because we have not needed to remember a lot of names as new vocabulary. We can translate someone’s name into the literal meaning which both reinforces the Amharic grammar and helps us remember their name. Bonus! But on one hand it has been difficult. Perhaps in reading the little conversation above you were confused? This often happens to us for example when listening to the radio. We are not always sure if the broadcast is about the government or if the person who is being interviewed is named The Government! Also several names can be used for both boys and girls. For example, Tesfaye – My hope or Fiqere – My love.

As for our names, although Maggie is a short name and easy to spell in the Amharic alphabet (only 2 characters!) there is no equivalent or similar Amharic word so they struggle a little to remember it. We have found it funny that if Maggie says her long name with a Spanish twist and calls herself Margarita they have no trouble remembering! But for me, there is no easier name to recognize under the Ethiopian sun than one of the Gospel writers, Markos.

– Mark & Maggie Banga

Comboni Lay Missionaries serving in Awassa, Ethiopia

And Jesus challenged me to do something new…

8 June, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

There are incredible things that become a blessing if you know how to say yes … that happened to me as Comboni Lay Missionary in the amazing world of interacting with children. In my daily life, I teach at a university and one day the good Lord asked me if I wanted to be a catechist for first Communion, the answer was without thinking, it was only for love, I said yes. Yes ?? !!! Yes. However, I was not a specialist in children and had only led teenagers Confirmation. Evidently, God wanted to give me an unforgettable experience … a true mission (which at one point I thought to be “impossible”).

“La Cumbre” (The Summit) (Pamplona Alta, San Juan de Miraflores) is part of our area of Mission in Lima. We as CLM reach this urban-human periphery with enthusiasm, there is no need to know trekking or mountaineering, although you just have to keep smiling as you climb the hills of our sector of Mission. A small guitar, some banners of our Jesus and Mary and the precarious lounge, every Sunday I WAS EVANGELIZED by the purity, humility and hope of every child who prepared very excited to get the sacrament. We shared the Word of God and the beautiful good news that Jesus had his own house on that hill so far from the city full of malls, highways and modernity. Jesus also expected the tanker that supplied the water because in those hills there is no running water, but there is a lot of love.

After several months, when sand of the hills stopped of been mud and the sun started to shine timidly in December on this side of Lima, Jesus dwelt at the heart of my “catechists”. I shared the Kerygma between dances, songs and conversations and they, my little ones, evangelized me with the conviction to arrive happy to their First Communion day. This January, the Lord gave me the honor to work with children in another city in my country, and in them I returned to relive my first experience as CLM “catechist”. That grace blessed me and think it all started with a yes.

Elizabeth Huaita

CLM-Peru

What are the Comboni Lay Missionaries engaged in?

6 June, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

The answer is a bit complex, for now I will just tell you what Caro and Mine (two CLM) do in the mountains of Guerrero, in Na’Savi culture, officially known as Mixteca.

They are located in the village of Huexoapa, in the municipality of Metlatónoc, and the parish of San Miguel Archangel, Diocese of Tlapa. In Huexoapa live about 200 families, their language is tu’un savi or Mixteca, although some also speak Spanish.

The CLM have a missionary presence in this town for six years, eight have been the missionaries who have served in this mission, in different periods. Each has shared part of their being, their knowledge, their faith with the people and in turn, the people with them.

Caro came to this mission in September 2014 and Minerva in February 2015 to take over the companions who were there. God willing, they will be for three years in this town. Although the time they have there is not enough to know and understand all the wealth and weaknesses of the culture they have tried to assimilate what it has been possible for them, feeling part of the people, enjoying and appreciating the good in it, and contributing to build a better place, each from their skills and knowledge.

Caro offers evening classes remedial education, for the moment 19 children of various grade levels are involved, and she take care of them at different times. The support is reduced only to read (12 children) and mathematics (7 children) primary level. It is very probable that the number of children increases, as more and more people are interested and come to her asking her to “help them to study.” Minerva teaches knitting and sewing, but now informally, since she just came to the place, the ladies are just beginning to learn about their work, but those who have already approached have shown great interest, and not only ladies but also some of the young, who learn very easily.

Other activities they perform, is the accompaniment of children, youth and adults participating in some pastoral activities, such as support for the three catechists of the community in the preparation of the catechism for confirmation, first communion and presented sacramental talks; weekly meeting with young people in which human and Christian formation occurs; formation in values and catechesis to children; Holy Hour on Thursdays; support in the preparation of the Liturgy of the Word to the young person who is going to chair, or in the organization of the liturgy when they have Eucharist, which is most of the times. They are also having guitar lessons, and have a quasi choir, two mandolins, a tambourine, three guitarists (two women and a man), and two more persons interested, but they have failed to learn because of lack of instrument, although all are just learning, they are encourage to play some songs at Mass or at the Liturgy of the Word.

Also they spend one day a week to visit families so we can know them more closely, some of the time accompanied by a young or a child from the community that helps as a translator, since they do not speak the local language, and not all families speaks Spanish. They are striving to learn, both in daily life, trying to memorize the words that people taught, and in the hours they devote to study, with the help of a young lady from the village.

They are also trying to cultivate a small orchard, on the back yard that is part of the house that the community gives them to live. For this, as for other activities that they perform as well as the needs that are presented to them, they have the support of the people involved in the above activities and who do willingly.

Caro and Mine know that work is hard and sometimes things do not go as they wanted. Although there are many the signs of life found in this culture, there are also present signs of death, coupled with this their personal limitations and defects, however they know that “the works of God are born and grow at the foot of the Cross” (St. Daniel Comboni).

Being with this people they realize that they receive more than they give, but I will speak on that subject later.

I conclude making you an invitation to join in the building of the Kingdom of God, from what you feel called to provide: counseling, financial support, prayer, giving part of your time or giving your life to the service of the mission.

“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” We have lack of you!

CLM Mexico