English – Page 19 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

André the boy who likes to dream…!!!

12 July, 2023 by Alberto de la Portilla

His eyes shine crystal clear with desire.

Eyes that seek the horizon in the dense forest.

With the same intensity as yesterday, his smile is full of hope and joy.

Today school days are part of a near but long past.

He plays at survival with his family

He dreams of one day being a passenger, a driver or simply an observer of the beautiful car that passes by his house.

He dreams of clean clothes, whenever the white man shines.

He dreams of the simple touch of his hand, of the lingering greeting

This barefoot boy with his easy smile wants one day to be like “You”.

Inside his house made of green paper and red glue is the small fire that insists on warming the cold that is felt.

The red mantle of this land consumed by the sun, is now painted with the incandescent heat of the bodies that curl up with each other forming a large canvas, made of human paint

This boy wants one day to be like “You”.

He dreams of one day being able to have a tree all to himself full of fruits to eat and share

He dreams of being able to understand what books say.

The sun is peeking through the morning mist, it’s time to get up and listen to what the wind says.

The day is marked by the laziness of the daily and repetitive routine.

Today little André is leaving for the deep forest

He is going to meet the majestic and ancient trees, they are the masters of his world.

At this time of year, they are dressed in their most beautiful and delicious butterflies.

The family is happy, the scent of the flowers speaks of abundance.

In a little act everything is ready for the journey

Mama with a baby tied to her chest, with a basket on her back and on her head whatever was forgotten, winds her way along the path already traced by time.

Papa, machete in hand, makes way, for the trees insist on covering what is theirs.

André imitates his father with the small knife without a handle, tears the dense leaves like a true boy of the forest, makes life with his joy, he can dream of things that are not his, but his sweaty skin shines with pride and honor of being pygmy.

Cristina Sousa, Comboni Lay Missionary

Bangui, Central African Republic

Taking care of our health

10 July, 2023 by Alberto de la Portilla

Health Care Formation Course for the CLM of Mexico.

The Comboni Lay Missionaries of Mexico are grateful for the course of Formation for Health Care through Biomagnetism that took place from June 24 to 30 at the Oasis House of the Comboni Missionaries in Guadalajara. Elías Arroyo Román, Comboni Missionary and a medical doctor, and Claudia Araujo Facilitator, who shared their knowledge and experience with us.

To fix our gaze only on a transcendent God far from human reality, or to look at man only from science as an organic and material being, are two reductionist visions that threaten the integral wellbeing of man. Health care brings, from the data of divine revelation to the medical mission, the essential values and criteria of valuation that bring health professionals closer to an authentic humanization of health services.

The formation of CLM in health care, together with the practices of love for the neighbor, is to transcend the community work in health services to be able to recognize God in the other, especially in those who suffer and need comfort through each of the spaces of medical care in the mission to which we are sent as simple as it may seem; it is necessary and of utmost importance; having humanization as the fundamental axis of being and doing in the health care of our needy brothers and sisters.

Rocío Adelina Quintero Hernández

A Piece of Heart

5 July, 2023 by Alberto de la Portilla

“Love is fire that burns without being seen…”

I have in me this fire that suffocates but gives life!

Fire that in lava flows and sprouts in the most hidden place of my being.

He gave us to eat His Bread and drink His Wine …!

And in this simplicity He made us His most loved and desired Sons by All those who seek Him to Live…!

To live of, with and for His Love…

He is in me, and I in Him.

My heart is the Tabernacle, the Temple of Resurrection.

He is reborn in the deepest wounds of this Brother People.

People who suffer from a Tabernacle open to All.

People who silently scream to ears sickened by ambition.

People with bare feet, feet cracked by the dry and muddy earth.

Thin, dry, strong, well-defined bodies, covered by throbbing veins charged with the same lava that sustains me.

The difference between us is none, the tears, the smiles, the pains, the sighs muffled in hands filled with hope and desire for Love. They are equal, the same, authentically the same.

There are many times that I see you in the red and warm flesh of the wounds that I try to care for with the touch of my hands.

With tenderness and delicacy I tuck your pain in my breast and let my heart cry, for it is You who present yourself to me in the faces of the daddy, mama, children…

Inequality, indifference, selfishness, mutilated human rights leave me completely disintegrated…!!!

The weight of my reality increases my capacity for discernment and resilience.

With much affection I wrap with white cloth impregnated with your balm of love, your wounds that are also mine…!

There are many times that in my consciousness I have present the “No” to your call.

But here I am, Lord, at your disposal, give me the tools to work in the harvest of your vast and great Love…”.

The mission is done in “All” the Places where “You” are…!!!

Cristina Sousa, Comboni Lay Missionary in Mongoumba

A collaboration from fraternal LOVE…

3 July, 2023 by Alberto de la Portilla

Hello! I am Sylvia Durán Jovel from Costa Rica and I took the decision and my desire to be a Comboni Lay Missionary after listening to one of the most beautiful testimonies on Radio Maria, a Catholic non-profit radio station where I am also a volunteer and where I have witnessed many acts of love, faith, perseverance in prayer in every sense, but especially with the prayer of the missionary rosary from its oracles.

Being part of the formation to be CLM involves gathering on the second and fourth Sundays of each month at the seminary located in Sagrada Familia, a marginal urban neighborhood where the parish priest is Father Fabio Loaísiga, who by the way is also the director of Radio Maria.

On June 25 we would have our meeting which coincided with the retreat “A New Pentecost”, organized by the radio in the Curridabat area with a priest who came with his ministry Dei Verbum from El Salvador and a proposal full of love to praise our Lord that would definitely burn more hearts for the love of GOD as Comboni is passionate about and it is really his exquisite madness. My mind and heart were struggling between which of the two activities to attend, and well one is that an activity to know the deep love that God has for us and the other is a commitment with the LOVE of COMBONI to change hearts mainly in Africa, but we also have a small Africa where we are and where we go. God makes everything perfect, our CLM formation meeting was cancelled and it opens the opportunity for the 2 CLM aspirants and our leader to attend together for the first time as a CLM group to support this extraordinary retreat MISSIONARY opportunity during our formation. Giving that small but great bit of sand filled my heart with joy, and I did not care about my spleen pain (which still bothers me writing these lines), I was happy. In this retreat where almost 2000 hearts attended and we also saw how the LOVE FOR MISSIONARITY gave us the opportunity to see and be the missionary who seeks to know Christ and his faith more and more each day.

To have responded urgently to the call for help from the brothers and sisters of Radio Maria and to be a testimony of the joy that convinces and increases it in our own life for knowing Christ in that place. We arrived in Curridabat ready to serve, each one in different activities, and little by little we saw the transformation of moments, having put our gifts at the service. Little by little the activity progressed and the time of the Holy Eucharist was approaching where, to our pleasant surprise, the Comboni Priest Guerlain Joachim Biseka (a native of Congo and who works hard in the Comboni Parish of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal located in Barrio Cuba, another urban slum and for whom I pray a lot and for whom I have special admiration and affection), had also been called to give support in confessions. And how could I not jump with happiness because COMBONI wanted us to be where we were most needed, with our gifts and charisms, and also where we could confirm and reaffirm our vocation and love for Him and also shout it with crazy love. It was a time of grace in my life and even more so knowing that Comboni knew that women were the key to carry out the mission by creating the first women’s missionary institute in Italy. Thank you Comboni.

Sylvia Durán Jovel, candidate of Costa Rica

Prayer Intentions of the Comboni Family July 2023

1 July, 2023 by Alberto de la Portilla

That the first anniversary of the memorial of Blessed Joseph Ambrosoli (on 28th July) may help all Comboni missionaries in the service of the most fragile to renew their commitment to a journey of holiness in faithfulness to the circumstances of daily humble service to the sick, the suffering and the fragile. Let us pray.