English – Page 179 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

The relevance of the social teaching for our society

14 July, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

On July 11^th, we held our formative meeting at Abor. Pierre Ngayo, a comboni Scholastic doing a pastoral experience at IMFH shared with us on the topic: The Comboni charism and the Social Teaching of the Church.

At the beginning of the meeting, Rev. Fr Joseph Rabbiosi welcomed everybody and wished to the group to grow and be engaged.

The Scholastic started by mentioning the credibility of the Soc. Teach. of the Church that is the theological, which is to respond to the appeal of Jesus in Mat 25 about the final judgment and the second is social, the proximity of the Church to the daily life of the society. He later continued by presenting the Topic into three parts.

The first part is the Relation between the Soc. Teach. and the Word of God. In Lk 4, 16-21 and Is 61, 1-2 the Scriptures speak about bringing good news to the poor, to free prisoners, to bind up broken hearts, give sight to the blind and to proclaim God’s year of mercy… The Soc. Teach. finds here a biblical foundation.

The second aspect he developed was the relevance of the Soc. Teach. for the Church in Africa. What is the role of Christians in our society? Issues of corruption, Human right, poverty, rural and urban migration, Human dignity are met all over our continent. Why is it that most of our countries which are populated by Christian in majority are experiencing such things, very high rate of corruption? Two synods were held to reflect upon the challenges that the Church is facing in our continent. The first one was held in 1994 during a period whereby there was a socio political instability all over Africa. The conclusion was published the post Synodal Exhortation Ecclesia in Africa. The second synod held in 2009 and its conclusion was published in Africae munus. The hope of the Church is that we Christians, mostly lay faithful should make our society a better place to live in: “You are the salt of the earth, the light of the world.”

The third aspect is JPIC and the Comboni charism. Comboni came in Africa where slavery was going on, a reality that made him so sensitive and close to Africans. The aspects then of Justice, Human Dignity were so needed and Comboni engaged himself totally for it. The Scholastic suggested that the aspect of JPIC could be well developed by lay comboni missionaries in the province of Togo Ghana Benin. He then added some guidelines for us which are first to be fond with the Soc. Teach. of the Church by reading the Magisterium, especially those encyclicals and Apostolic Exhortations that treat the topic e.g. Populorum progressio, Rerum novarum, …Africae munus,… The second one is to take time to study the Word of God. The third one is to be sensitive towards the needy and vulnerable and the fourth is to develop fund raising activities. In the conclusion, he left with us three questions for our meditation:

How can our encounter with the word of God help us to change our society?
Why do we think that the Social Teaching of the Church is relevant for our situation as African Christians?
What is our experience in the domain of JPIC and what are the challenges to develop it in our Province?

After this presentation, we were clarified about the kind of services we can render to In My Father’s House Institution by the Administrator of the Institution. We agreed to meet on the 8^th August and proceeded with the concluding prayer followed by the community food.

Justin Nougnui, coordinator.

Missionary joy

12 July, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

The June monthly meeting of the CLMs of Mexico DF It was held in the house of the Comboni Missionaries in Cuernavaca. A beautiful and quiet place next to the famous devil´s alley. Yes, you read that correctly, the devil. According to the legend, more than five centuries ago, the intrusive devil helped to jump Hernán Cortés on his horse Rucio, a ravine five meters long for safekeeping of tlahuicas ancestors who closely followed his footsteps to kill him.

Juanita, CLM for several years and frequent visitor of the seminar for many others, was in charge of preparations for our arrival. The reception was warm although a little rainy, which did not stop performing activities under an atmosphere of friendship and joy. In the morning, we did the prayer of Lauds. The main theme for those who came to know the group was the action of the laity in the church. And in the afternoon Father Joseph Infante, brother of Pedro Infante, as he presents always with a big smile, shared with us the devotion to the Sacred heart of Jesus who lived St. Daniel Comboni and how he trusted that divine heart all his projects and concerns. In the evening, we had the celebration of the Eucharist and in our prayers we do not forget all the Comboni family, absent CLMs, and the election of the following day.

On Sunday, some had to leave early. Others took a little walk around the cathedral, where indeed we received the blessing of Bishop Ramon Castro for all CLM Group. So our meeting this month invited us to advance in prayer, sacrifice and keep walking united by the mission, encouraging one another. Thank God for his presence.

CLM México

The Mission of the Twelve and our mission

11 July, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mk 6, 7-13 (XV Sunday O. T.: July 12^th 2015)

After being refused by the people of Nazareth, Jesus, according to Mark, set up a new stage of his Mission involving in it the Twelve, the seed of a new people who accepted the Kingdom of God and made it flourish in villages and towns. In the text of Mark that we read this Sunday, we can find many points of meditation useful for our live as disciple missionaries. I just reflect a bit on four of them:

He called the Twelve and started sending them

The Mission is not a fruit of a personal initiative, but of a call. On the way of missionary discipleship there are moments in which it seems that it is us that take the initiative, it is us that have a project for humanity, an interesting ideology, our clever way to look at things. But real discipleship only starts truly when, passed the stage of a self-centred mission, we come to realize that it is the Lord that calls us and sends us.

Moses and other important prophets have gone through this experience: Mission usually ends up in complete failure when it is taken as a personal way to become somebody in society, while it becomes fertile when it is taken as an answer to a call from God.

Even artists tell something similar to that prophetic experience. Poets, for example, often say that it’s not they that look for words, buts it’s words that look for them; in fact, poetry reaches a special forceful expression when somehow it “imposes” itself to the poet, who has maybe worked hard with the words, but at the end he feel that the inspiration came as a gift. On the same way, in our missionary discipleship there must be a moment of surprising grace, an awareness of being freely called, breaking our barriers and our desires of self-control and personal ideologies or pretentious self-made projects… Only then Mission becomes really the Mission of the Lord, fertile, even if it has to go through failure and cross.

Two by two

Sending the disciples out “two by two”, Jesus follows the Hebrew tradition, according to which, messengers are sent two by two, so that the message conveyed by the spokesman will be confirmed by his companion. Going on mission two by two the disciples sustain each other on their witness giving more credibility to the message of the new brotherhood.

Moreover, mission “two by two” is no longer an individual, private mission, but it becomes a social, public proposal. Certainly, Jesus used to pray for hours alone, but his mission was always public: in synagogues and streets, in towns and villages, in private houses and public places. Jesus’ mission was not a private but a public and social affair. This does not mean that it makes mission easier, but a more authentic and credible one.

To enter peoples’ homes

In the missionary practice of Jesus there are no reserved places: he preaches and heals everywhere. Jesus’ mission does not exclude the Temple, but neither remains limited to it. Looking at that, we are sure that the Church’s mission today cannot be confined to parishes; it has to come out of parish’s premises and go to meet people wherever they are and live.

To announce the nearness of the kingdom

Nearness: this is a key word in Jesus’s experience and mission. Jesus announces, with words and actions, that God is near to people and He performs actions of healing, liberation, forgiveness and love that makes people rise up and walk. This is the power Jesus has, the power that shares with his disciple missionaries, the power that make people rise and walk as free children of God.

Fr. Antonio Villarino

Roma

Contrasts

9 July, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

Since I came to Ethiopia still surprises me how full of contrasts is this place … In the past few days I had two such experiences about it. On Sunday, I was invited by my friend to the graduation of kinder garden of her son. They make a great party and it looks almost like a graduation of the university! The kids presenting what they had learned (mostly in English – whether it be a song, or counting, or alphabet …), then dressed in special clothes, received a certificate of completion of kindergarten. Overall for me it was so funny, especially seeing how seriously people treat it 😉

And yesterday evening I went with the Salesians for the night outing. These are meetings on the street with the boys living there and thinking about going to join the project and try to change their lives, go back to their family, to school, to the society. In Addis Abeba there is enormous number of children living on the street, every day they are encountered at every step. But this meeting in the evening, when the streets were far more empty than usual, with children (some of them even 7-8 years old!), The majority of which was carrying and inhaling glue (because it allows them not feel hunger, cold, pain, etc.), it was incredibly striking. While having before my eyes image of their peers who two days ago graduated kindergarten, who are studying, who have family, who have a house…

Magda Plekan

God among the kitchen pots: Jesus carpenter, son, brother, neighbour

4 July, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mk 6, 1-5 (XIV Sunday O.T: July 25th 2015)

Mark shows Jesus as a travelling master, who, after some time in and out of villages and towns near to the Galilee Lake, goes back to Nazareth, where He grew up and where He was not accepted by his neighbours, because He was just one of them. Mark explains this refusal with the well-known sentence: “No prophet has ever been accepted by his own people and at home”. And he concludes saying that Jesus was astonished at their incredulity.
It seems to me that Jesus’ experience – his refusal by his own people- is quite common and on my view reflects two errors that very often we make:

1) We imagine God as someone far away from our everyday life.
It happens all the time in history and in all religions; many people think that God has to be looked for in extraordinary events: in wonderful places, big cathedrals, special sanctuaries, in a very important person, over the clouds…. As if God would have nothing to do with what we are and do in our simple and ordinary lives. But Jesus teaches exactly the opposite; He teaches that God becomes one of us (Emmanuel): He is born as a displaced person, works as a carpenter, goes to the synagogue every Saturday, drinks, eats, and makes friends… And in all that He is and acts as the loved Son of the Father.
One way to explain this experience of God’s presence in our ordinary life is the famous sentence by Saint Theresa of Avila: “God is also among the kitchen pots”. That’s it: Do not look for God in extraordinary events but in the simple facts of your everyday life: in the working place, in the family, in friendship, in the honest fight for justice and peace… Certainly also in the simple and sincere prayer (with not so many words or gesticulation)… “Among the kitchen pots”.

2) To let a heavy heart grow in us and become cynics and hard with our neighbours
There’s a saying that goes more or less like this: “the person with les respect within a temple is the one who works in it”… That may happen to all of us with the people we live with: the members of our family or community, co-workers, parish priest… Living near them, we are in danger of seeing only their limits and defects, overlooking the many good deeds that they probably are doing. So far from taking the opportunity of our nearness to love them and understand them, we end up in a hipper-critical attitude that makes it difficult for us to discover the message that God wants to give us through tem, in spite of their limits and defects. God will not come to us in the dress of a perfect person, but in the concrete reality of people around us.
As I meditate on this text form Mark, I pray to the Lord to acquire that humility that makes us able to recognize Jesus in the humble prophet of Nazareth and in the people that live with me and are for me a sign of God’s presence in my concrete reality, with its opportunities and problems, its rights and wrongs, its successes and failures.
Lord, do not allow me to become arrogant or cynic like the people of Nazareth. Let my heart be always open to acknowledge your humble presence around me, in spite of my own limits and the limits of others.
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Rome