Last Saturday we were able to enjoy a formation on Comboni Missionary Spirituality given by the Comboni Missionary, Fr. Vittorio Moretto.
A formation that goes through the central aspects of this missionary spirituality and gives us clues on how to live our missionary vocation as Comboni Lay Missionaries.
We encourage you to watch it in community.
The session is recorded in Spanish.
PODCAST 1 – Beginning with ciranda song.
This is the ciranda song, you dance in a circle, each member hugging his or her neighbors and moving in rhythm by banging their feet loudly. This song is a dance related to Brazilian folk tradition.
Hi, we are Anna and Gabriel, and this is Ciranda, the podcast about our mission experience in Brazil. In which we try to take you into the everyday life choices of people living in this part of the world.
We start with a question that we have been asked on several occasions over the past year: what does it mean to leave with the Comboni Lay Missionaries? Who are they? And why specifically in Brazil?
We got to know the reality of the Comboni Lay Missionaries (CLM) after some word of mouth until we met this reality in the Venegono area. The LMCs were created following the charism of Saint Daniele Comboni. A priest, from the first half of the 1800s, who dedicated his life to the mission in ways that were new for the time and probably also for today, with the goal, as he said, of “saving Africa with Africa.”
Comboni Lay Missionaries carry on this spirit in the various missions around the world by accompanying the presence of Combonians on the ground.
To better understand this new way of doing and being mission, which is different from what we had known in the past, we did a 2-year journey of getting to know the CLM, at the end of which, together with our reference group, we were proposed to do a period of experience in an international reality. We had proposed ourselves for the mission areas of Latin America, and at the same time in the mission in Brazil the urgency had arisen to find a couple of volunteers who could carry on the presence of the Laity, already inserted for several years in the reality of Piquià. So, in May 2022, we left, leaving our little house in Cuneo in the direction of Brazil, in the state of Maranhão, municipality of Acailândia, specifically in the small neighborhood of Piquià. This 3-month experience allowed us to touch the Combonian way of life, to learn Portuguese, and to observe the reality of the various projects in which the Comboni family is involved. These are mainly 3 realities: the casa familiar rural (a school for children from rural areas), the reality of Piquià de Baixo (a community affected by pollution from steel industries), and the interior families living in the countryside, isolated and affected by the world of agribusiness (i.e., deforestation and monoculture of soy and eucalyptus).
The time spent in Piquià was a short time but enough to make us realize that this would be our home for the next 3 years.
The uniqueness of this experience is also the choice to do common life with the Combonis, who live in the house next to ours. Therefore, not only are we included in the parish and engaged in the various pastoral activities but we share with them prayer times, dinners and other moments of daily life, making choices in common. This is the Comboni family, where lay people and Comboni fathers do mission together.
Dialogue
WHAT IT MEANS TO SAVE AFRICA WITH AFRICA …
WHAT STRUCK US ABOUT THIS STYLE…
WHY THREE YEARS?…
Anna and Gabrielle, CLM in Brazil
It was a triple celebration in Kenya when the feast of St Daniel Comboni coincided with the 50th celebration of Comboni MCCJ presence in Kenya as well as the Kenya nation was also celebrating “Huduma Day” loosely means Service Day.
The celebration was held at the Community of Postulants in the outskirts of Nairobi. The celebration started by a talk from by Fr. John Korir who is the vocation director. The theme of the day was “Rooted and Grounded In Christ” this is well in line with the writings of St Daniel Comboni .. “We will have to labor hard, to sweat, to die; but the thought that one sweats and dies for love of Christ and the salvation of the most abandoned souls in the world, is far too sweet for us to desist from this great enterprise” St Daniel Comboni, from the beginning knew where his strength will come from, which is Christ himself.
This celebration marked the 20th Anniversary of St Daniel Comboni Canonization, by St John Paul II who said “we need evangelizers with enthusiasm and apostolic outfit of St Daniel Comboni an apostle of Christ among the Africans” this reminds us to be apostles of Christ among those who are in the same reality and those who are abandoned. Comboni discerned and a abandoned his parents for the most abandoned in Africa.
On the Jubilee Celebrations for the MCCJ presence in Kenya, a brief history was shared how the MCCJ came from Uganda to Kenya in 1973, during the reign of Uganda dictator president Idi Amin. The Comboni Missionaries (MCCJ) came through the north west of Kenya in Kacheliba West Pokot, and then spread to other areas like Turkana, Marsabit, Wote, Naivasha and Nairobi. Some of the missions were handed over to the diocese. True to their charism of the most neglected and abandoned. The MCCJ presence is felt in areas that no one dares to go and evangelize, to date the Kenyan MCCJ are 30, Brothers – one in novitiate formation, Comboni Lay Missionaries – 6, Comboni Secular Missionaries – 4. Comboni sisters came to Kenya earlier in 1963.
It was a holiday for us also to celebrate the “Huduma Day” where citizens come together to help their brothers and sisters who are less fortunate, and offer services to the nation.
St Daniel Comboni said am dying but my work will not die, lets pray for more vocations for our youth and the laity that they may be sent to priestly ministry wholeheartedly.
Martin Onyango, CLM Kenya
St. Daniel Comboni Parish, in Guriri, Diocese of São Mateus, in the state of Espírito Santo, began the feast of St. Daniel Comboni on Sunday, October 1. The celebration began with the blessing of the image of the patron saint containing the relic of St. Daniel Comboni, followed by a procession from the residence of Bishop Emeritus Aldo Gerna to the parish church. The image of St. Daniel Comboni was carved in wood especially for the first Comboni parish in the world by the sculptor Werner Thaler, from the city of Treze Tílias, in Santa Catarina.
Fr. Raimundo Rocha
Provincial of the Comboni Missionaries of Brazil
That the synodal journey of communion, participation and mission we are celebrating may involve us as Church, so that she may truly become the home of all. May the breath of the Spirit keep the communities alive in their pastoral and missionary journey. Let us pray.
