Comboni Family – Page 69 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

(Re) Living a Dream

27 October, 2017 by Alberto de la Portilla

“We are moved by a dream,” wrote Sebastián da Gama. Many times, a dream rules the soul of a person. It can take us to places we deeply desire, but we not always manage to reach in reality. Since 2015, Carapira had been a dream to me. To return to a place where I had been so happy, to see once more well-known faces, people who had touched me deeply, was something I did not think that could happen again.

But, by God’s grace, the dream became reality and the joy of living the mission God had entrusted to me on Mozambique’s soil filled again my heart with deep gratitude to God and to all those who prayed and worked to turn the dream into reality and make me live it again.

Unlike 2015, my first time in Mozambique, this year the task God entrusted to me consisted in being responsible for seven young people of the group Faith and Mission: Ana, Felipe, Inés, Jorge, Monica, Ruben and Sophia. My main mission was to ensure that these young people would spend a month filled with rich and deep experiences of God, with the people God had us know, within themselves and with the missionaries who, by their example, would teach us about mission.

This year, my greatest joy was to experience the fullness of these young people’s hearts, to see them happily giving of themselves without reserve to all the people who crossed our paths and to all the tasks entrusted to us. Once more, I am grateful to God for the young people he sent to Carapira, for their generosity and goodness, for their cheerfulness and enthusiasm, for all that I learned with them and for all they gave in such a short time.

Despite te fact that we only reached Carapira on August 19, I believe that the long journey was very important, because it allowed us to create greater empathy among ourselves and reflect a bit on mission. So, during the trip we held a catechesis on volunteering and mission, the sacred ground that Mozambique was for us, the other as “sacred” and “a mystery,” and the joy of meeting.

Many thanks to all the missionaries who with open hearts welcomed and accepted us into their homes, who took precious time out in their mission to to stop and be with us, to share marvelous personal stories and took us to see marvelous places.

For me, the best places were the village of Carapira, the communities we visited and all the other places where we were able to be with people. It is for the sake of people that God invites to move. Mission is made of faces: First of all, the face of Christ, filled of love for all and, in a special way, for the most abandoned; then, the face of each person we met and shared of our own selves. At times we only shared our presence, our being there, as it was the case with the sick. Truthfully, this simple sharing brought some people to say to the young people that they had been a blessing from God for the sick. And the young folks allowed themselves to be moved by that. I had the grace to be with some who were attempting to describe what was going on in their soul, on the interior journey they were on, and I can tell you that at times my heart was full of what had been shared, with the marvelous deeds God was working in each one’s heart. Only a loving God can bring about the marvels that our God worked in these young people of “Faith and Mission.”

At the end I said my good-bye to Carapira. Parting was serene, because in my heart I felt the joy of one who does not really say “Good-bye,” but rather “until we meet again.” It could very well be “good-bye” to Carapira, but a “see you again” to mission well beyond our borders. May God make it so!

I end with a little personal Magnificat which I wrote between Carapira and the airport of Nampula:

My soul magnifies the Lord,

I praise and bless God for all the marvels I relived in Mozambique.

The little I had and gave, the Lord multiplied in graces and gifts

transformed in simple gestures of giving and sharing.

Praise be to God!

For our entire group of “Faith and Mission,” the Lord filled our hearts with wonders

translated into a simple “ehali,” into a smile or just a look.

Praise be to God!

Contemplating the natural beauty of this beautiful garden which is Mozambique,

I give glory to God for all of Creation,

for so much love!

Faced with the many signs of God’s presence that we experienced and contemplated

I can only say: God is great!

And God’s greatness shows in all and in everything,

Including myself and my frailty!

Praise be to God!

Pedro Nacimiento, Portugal

Mission on the other side of the Atlantic

26 October, 2017 by Alberto de la Portilla

To have faith is to sign a blank page and le God write on it what he wants (St. Augustine).

The same way, mission means to allow us to be guided by the Holy Spirit who accompanies us and waits for us. We came to this journey with all that we are and this way we left. We carried in our hearts all those we love and are part of us. They sent us here and they will accompany for the rest of our lives, for this is what love demands. We left at dawn and we reached Peru also at dawn. Aware of the length of our journey we found strength in the tight embraces we immediately received. We reached the land that, for the next several year we will call home.

They were waiting for us at the entrance to the airport and received us with joy. We shared our names and our charism.

Outside, we were received by a fine and penetrating rain, and in this whirlwind of sensations we stepped on Peruvian soil for the first time.

It was a time of primary knowledge, stripped of our own selves, we took the first steps with these people who welcomed so lovingly. It’s us, from the other side of the Atlantic, living the mission in the style of St. Daniel Comboni.

To know the CLM meant to get to know our Peruvian CLM family. Each one of them shared with us a little about themselves, their witness of life and of faith. While talking, eating, drinking and laughing we received part of themselves and shared part of ourselves, joyfully, certain that all these lives converge in God.

With the certainty of what has been and that God is calling us to this mission. Let us walk together sure that we will reach where they are waiting for us.

Neuza and Paula, CLM Peru

The Spanish Comboni Family in Almería

24 October, 2017 by Alberto de la Portilla

Last week the commission of the Comboni Family met in Granada, Spain, to continue to elaborate the new project we, as a Comboni Family, want to start in Almería, specifically in St. Isidro of Níjar.

The situation of the migrants who have settled there, mostly Africans, challenges us and calls us to give an answer from our Comboni charism of “Saving Africa with Africa.”

Many thanks to the commission for your commitment and work and for sharing the dream of a new type missionary presence as Family.

We share with you a short video of one of our visits to the various settlements of migrants during the last course, which shows the situation we found there.

CLM Spain

Community Life

20 October, 2017 by Alberto de la Portilla

Great news!

This last Tuesday, the Spanish CLM Teresa Monzón arrived in Portugal. She is in Braga going through an experience of community with the CLM Cristina Sousa. They are both studying in Braga, but dealing with different languages: Portuguese for Tere and French for Cristina.

We welcome Tere with great joy and we feel united also to this community. Let us pray that in it life giving fruit will rise, “life in abundance.”

Welcome Tere. We are together!

CLM Portugal

Thanks, St. Daniel Comboni, for having founded the Institute

10 October, 2017 by Alberto de la Portilla

Thanks, St. Daniel Comboni,
for having founded the Institute

“Sing to the Lord, all the earth… Enter the temple gates with thanksgiving… Bless his name. The Lord is good, his love is eternal and his faithfulness lasts for ever.” (Psalm 100).

Dear confreres, Happy St. Daniel Comboni’s Feast Day!

In this year, when we celebrate the 150^th anniversary of our Institute, one of the great things that we contemplate is the celebration of the holiness of Comboni in the Christian communities of the local Churches in which we live and of which we are part.

“Comboni bendito é Deus em teu nome”, “Comboni, God is blessed in your name”: so were our dear brothers and sisters, our parishioners in Curitiba, whom I met during my visit to the province and to the confreres of Brazil. Yes, a local Church in Brazil, far from Africa, blessed be God and praised be St. Daniel Comboni. How beautiful that Daniel Comboni, our Father and Founder, became such an attractive figure, thanks to the sharing made by the Comboni Missionaries, the Comboni Sisters, The Secular Comboni Missionaries and the Comboni Lay Missionaries. Yes, our saints men and women speak to everyone and everywhere. In Mozambique, where the 150 years of life of the Institute were celebrated together with the 70 years of presence and the generous service of the Comboni Missionaries in the parish of Benfica-Maputo, the good young people of the choir were singing “Continente Africano alegremo-nos e cantemos, o mundo inteiro alegre-se e cante dando graças ao Senhor. Foi um profeta no seu tempo. Denunciou a escravidão. Ouviu o grito dos Africanos”, “African continent, let’s rejoice and sing, may the whole world rejoice and sing, giving thanks to the Lord, for Comboni was a prophet in his time. He denounced slavery and listened to the African people’s cry”.

Thank you, Comboni. Thanks Africa, because you have moulded Comboni and made of him a holy and generous man of God.

Dear Brothers, in this year when we celebrate the 150^th anniversary of our missionary Institute, we want to thank God for the gift of St. Daniele Comboni and the gift of the confreres who have spent and donated themselves totally for the people of God in the mission. We thank our confreres who were killed while they were engaged in the service of the Gospel and the mission. We want to say thank you: they have become “holy and capable”: “Holy and capable. Saintliness without capability or capability without saintliness are of very little value to a person who wants to undertake a missionary career. The missionary man or woman cannot go to heaven alone. They must go to heaven in the company of the souls they have helped to save. So in the first place holiness, completely free from sin and offence against God, and humble. But this is not enough: love too is necessary to make these men and women do good work.” (Writing 6655)

In the context of the 150^th anniversary of our Institute, it would be very nice to dedicate an amount of thanksgiving prayers to our “holy and capable” confreres, who have been consumed for the Kingdom of God among the peoples they had been sent to. Contemplating our holy and capable confreres causes us to ask: and I, am I willing to make a journey of constant conversion? Do I aspire to missionary holiness and to the evangelical ability that contributes to the lives of my brothers and sisters, with whom we build the Kingdom of God, and to our world so desperate and wounded?

Thinking of our “holy and capable” confreres, we realize that we have a deep and rich well of missionary and Comboni spirituality from which to draw. We have many confreres of all ages, cultures and races who yesterday and today have lived and live filled with this great spirituality and have become exemplary. “There are many well-identified Comboni Missionaries, generous and ready to give up their lives for Christ and the Mission; they spend their lives quietly, day after day, in the various services entrust to them” (AC 2015, No. 14).

In this year when we celebrate the 150^th anniversary of our Institute, I would like to mention four confreres and one sister whose process of beatification and canonisation, within the Christian communities and the Church, has already begun.

“Holy and capable” in evangelization: “From me depends the salvation of so many souls; the holier I am, the more people I will save… One who much loves, will do a lot and one who much suffers will achieve a lot. In front of Our Lady of Lourdes, I have asked for the grace of martyrdom,”: “O Sacred Heart of Jesus, I lock myself in the wound of your sweetest side. I have handed over the keys to my dear Mother Mary and besieged her not to open it unless it is for coming to enjoy you for all eternity” (Mgr. Antonio Maria Roveggio, from his personal diary).

“Holy and capable” in community life: “Between me and my confreres I remember to have insisted twice, and even with some passion, in my opinion, for perhaps about two minutes, so that the harmony, perhaps, was not of the most pleasant, but bless be God both times, immediately, I begged them to forgive my passionate words, and they said: yes, yes, okay. If rarely it happens to succeed in splashing water on other people’s fire, one does it willingly, especially as it costs little” (Bro. Giosuè dei Cas, 13.1.1927, Letter to Sup. Gen., office letter).

“Holy and capable” in charity: “Holiness is the tree and love is its fruit. The more we strive to love, know, serve God, the more we feel attracted, as to a magnet, to serve Him in the person of all the needy, especially the most distant and suffering.” (Fr. Bernardo Sartori, Letter from Otumbari, 19.01.1979).

“Holy and capable” in the desire to live the Gospel: “I’ll have just to continue in the effort to live the presence of Jesus in my heart and to ask myself frequently what He would do in my place. I was struck by the thought of listening to the word of God without raising barriers, and to converse with Jesus in the tabernacle without raising barriers. That is, not to defend myself with so many excuses if my life is different from the Word of God, and not to talk about Jesus and impose my petty human point of view. Unfortunately I have to repeat more or less the same resolutions as in the past” (Fr. Giuseppe Ambrosoli, Extract from the Spiritual Exercises, 9-15.1.1981).

“Holy and capable” in prophecy: “I love you all and love justice, and for justice it’s enough the willingness of every person, it’s enough the willingness of the Church and the community, before the revolt may cause unforeseeable brutality in our social environment. We do not approve of violence, even though we receive violence. The priest who is speaking to you has received death threats. Dear brother of mine, if my life belongs to you, also my death will belong to you” (Fr. Ezechiele Ramin, Homily at Cacoal, 17.02.1985).

“Holy and capable” in our collaboration: Sr. Maria Giuseppa Scandola, quite ill, sends a message to the sick young missionary, Fr. Giuseppe Beduschi, saying “The Scilluk need you…, you will not die. I will I die in your place…” She offers her life in his place and dies after a few days (1.9.1903), while Fr. Giuseppe will survive and still live for many more years († 10.11.1924).

Here are the sons and daughters of St. Daniel Comboni.
St. Daniel Comboni, happy feast day.
Fr. Tesfaye Tadesse Gebresilasie, mccj

on behalf of the General Council