We continue this series with Fr. Enrique Bayo Mata, a Comboni Missionary who spent fifteen years in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Fr. Enrique tells us about his rich experience of learning the African liturgy and his work on the continent, which includes, in addition to pastoral service, publishing, radio and television. For many years he has collaborated with the CLM in Congo, at the African level and even within the Central Committee of the CLM. (Interview in Spanish)
Last Saturday we held the regular meeting of the General Councils of the Comboni Family (Comboni Missionary Sisters, Secular Comboni Missionaries, Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus and Comboni Lay Missionaries).
As it is usual at in this time of pandemic, we had to do it online. Hopefully we will soon be able to return to face-to-face meetings that allow us to share and talk, and at the same time to be able to extend them and address more topics. The online meetings have helped us to stay in touch in these pandemic times, but we all looked forward to being able to meet face-to-face.
We started the meeting with a simple welcome and a common prayer that put us in situation.
We were able to dedicate a first moment to share the concerns that we are currently experiencing in the different branches of the Family and thus update each other.
The first topic to work on was the result of the work of the ministeriality commission. In particular, the members of this commission presented the results of the data collection that has been carried out at the international level and that were presented in the last webinar of March 5 and 6. We were able to deepen in some of the data that are being extracted about the projects and missionary presences in the different continents. We were also able to learn about the work proposal for the next webinar to be held on June 25 and 26. This third meeting will close the first cycle of work and we hope that new proposals for collaboration and joint deepening as Comboni Family in our missionary service will emerge.
We are very satisfied and grateful for the great work of the commission on ministeriality and the welcoming and participation of the members of the Comboni Family in these meetings.
We will try to hold a meeting to study these results in greater depth once the third meeting is over and we have the proposals for the future drawn by all.
After a break we evaluated the work of collaboration that we have been doing as a Comboni family in recent years following the proposals launched in the joint letter of 2017 “Beyond collaboration: under Comboni’s gaze“.
We use an online tool to evaluate by cards the positive aspects, the difficulties encountered and the proposals for future work.
We see that the family feeling that permeates our council meetings is very good and the accompaniment that we maintain of the progress of the different branches. We understand that this is not only due to the people who are currently there, but that it is something that happens and must continue to happen regardless of possible changes in the teams.
In the coming months the general assembly of the Secular Comboni Missionaries and later the chapter of the MCCJ will be held. We wish them all the best and accompany these commitments with prayer and a willingness to collaborate as a family. How to further deepen this collaboration is something we will continue to work on in future meetings.
Greetings to everyone.
Alberto de la Portilla, CLM Central Committee
That the Holy Spirit may help us to discern the will of God for our pastoral ministry and to be always witness of cooperation and communion. Lord hear us.
«One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear
and immediately blood and water flowed out»
(Jn 19, 34)
Dear Confreres,
Fraternal greetings in the Heart of Jesus.
This year, the celebration of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus finds us fully engrossed in preparing the next General Chapter, a synodal event that gives us the opportunity to grow in fidelity to the chrism and so to incarnate it in the particular mission of this historic moment. This time is marked by the pandemic caused by the COVID which has been a shock at all levels, by conflicts and wars in different parts of the world and by tensions in some local Churches.
Our Rule of Life reminds us: «The Founder discovered in the mystery of the Heart of Jesus the thrust of his missionary commitment. Comboni’s unconditional love for the peoples of Africa had its origin and model in the saving love of the Good Shepherd who offered his life on the Cross for humanity » (RL 3).
The Heart of Jesus is for us the anchor that keeps us joined to the source of life and the mission; it is the sap that gives life to our Institute; it is, without doubt, a fundamental element of the charism which helps us to re-qualify and renew our commitment. The Comboni mission, 154 years after the foundation of the Institute, continues in time and space, enriching us with shades of meaning that find concrete expression in new ways of being and living the mission. One of these expressions is, without doubt, integral ecology to which we are called to respond with the courage and creativity typical of our Founder.
In this feast, we renew our desire to follow Jesus in his total giving of himself for the salvation of the world and, in all humility, to place our gifts at the service of the Kingdom. We are invited to find in the contemplation of the mystery of the Heart of Jesus the audacity and the energy to set out where the Spirit leads us. Our missionary commitment will bear fruit only if it emanates from an experience of encounter with Jesus and is a living expression of that love which shines from the Cross towards all men and women, especially the most needy.
To celebrate the Heart of Jesus in a pandemic context that has forced us to seek new paths and adapt to the imperatives imposed by a situation that leaves us helpless and has made us suffer and weep for its victims among the Comboni Family, our own families and the people among whom we work, reminds us that we all belong to one interdependent family. To the loss of human lives we must also add the tremendous increase in the loss of employment throughout the world that inevitably leads to poverty. May the extraordinary gestures of solidarity we have witnessed be also signs of hope helping us to build up our humanity so needful of finding new coordinates that will enable all of us to have life in abundance. The blood and water that flow from the side of Christ are the sign that our fragility has as its final horizon the resurrection, and this lights up our work of proclaiming the Gospel of the infinite compassion of God for humanity. As Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus, let us make this suffering ours and let us renew our commitment in the mission Jesus has given us.
The renewal of our consecration on this Feast Day is an act of trust and an invitation to continue to grow in the vocation the Lord has given us as a gift for all humanity.
We beg the intercession of Holy Mary Our Mother who accompanied her Son at the foot of the cross and that of Saint Daniel Comboni.
We wish you a Happy Feast Day.
Rome, 1 June 2021
The Anniversary of the Founding of the Institute
The General Council
A commentary on Matthew 28, 16-20
This Sunday dedicated to the Holy Trinity is, somehow, the highest point in our liturgical year. The disciple missionary, who tries to identify himself with Jesus Christ, receives today, in adoration and contemplation, a proposal to approach the mystery of God, a reality that is close to his most intimate identity (S. Agustin), but at the same time overrides every frontier and every human dimension. The Church offers today a reading of the last verses of Matthew’s gospel, where mention is made of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Let us reflect a bit on a few concepts that we can find in these last verses of Matthew:
Jesus meets his disciples on a mountain, in Galilee. It may seem an irrelevant geographical note, but I do not think so. In a sense, all of us are marked by geography. At least, on my side, I must say that some mountains have left a definitive mark in my personal life. I remember, for example, the Sinai majestic pics: there I could understand quite easily how Moses and Elia could feel the extraordinary presence of God (Cfr Ex 19, 20; 1 Kings 19, 8); I remember also the fantastic Machu Pichu in Peru, where I had de impression of being at the centre of our Planet and to enter into communion with the ancient Peruvians… In fact, for many religions and cultures mountains are a place of God’s revelation (theophany). And that can be easily understood: mountains help us to come out of ourselves, to overcome routine and superficiality, looking for the highest level of our personal conscience. And it’s precisely there, in the highest level of our conscience, that appears as a presence that cannot be expressed in words, but it’s clearly perceived as very real and authentic.
Jesus, on his side, used to go quite often to the mountain, alone or with the disciples, reaching, as the son of Mary, the highest level of conscience and communion with the Infinite Love; such an experience has become an extraordinary gift also for us, his disciples and brethren. Following his steps, we need also to climb continuously the mountain of our conscience, with the help of a place which invites us to overcome routine, noise and superficiality.
Confronted with Jesus, identified “on the mountain” as the Son of God, the disciples experience a double movement of adoration and doubt. On one side, they feel the need to prostrate themselves and acknowledge the Divine presence in the Master and Friend, because only in adoration we can approach the mystery of God; word do not help and even sometimes they may sound almost like a “blasphemy”, in the sense that no words can contain that reality that one can just glimpse from our deepest conscience. That’s why, together with a sense of joy and adoration, the disciples experience also uneasiness and doubt: they are quite aware that they cannot reach to God and that all or words and concepts are limited and , in a sense, not completely truthful. All our concepts about God are inadequate and must be continuously corrected, with the help of the doubt, which lead us not to “sit” over what we have understood and to be ever open to new insights. God is awaiting us always in front of us on the way of history.
Different people, cultures and religions, “grope about” for the mystery of God, giving Him different names according their own cultural experience. Israel, on his side, decided rather not to pronounce God’s name, because really no human being can “name” God. When somebody gives a name to something or somebody, somehow, he takes possession and manipulates the “named” object. But God cannot be possessed or manipulated. Nor even Jesus gives a name to God; what he does is to reveal his relationship with God as his Father and his Spirit. And He commands his disciple to go to the world and baptize “in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit”. When we are baptized, following this mandate, we do not name God, but we are consecrated to become members of that divine “family”. We –and the whole humanity- are called and consecrated to be in communion with this divine mystery of relationships and love.
The most important religions have reached the idea of a unique God and this is an important step in the history of mankind. But Jesus, from the “mountain” of his human conscience, teaches us that God is unique, but not “single”; not “lonely”, but communitarian. In the same way, we, human beings, created on God’s image, are made to live in communion. None of us is complete; we need to be completed by others before reaching the image of God: Father-Son-Spirit. When somebody denies a member of the community is denying God. To adore God means to welcome Him/Her in the sanctuary of the conscience and, at the same time, in the concrete reality of every human being, in its marvellous singularity and diversity.
Fr. Antonio Villarino,
Bogotá
