Comboni Family
Passing through Bangui
We arrived in Bangui to meet Irene, a CLM coming from Kinshasa. She is from the Democratic Republic of Congo group and will stay with us for about a month. A very charming person. May God allow us to give her a good missionary experience and an unforgettable one for her.
We brought along one of the orphans to whom we feed maternal milk. Her name is Mervelle (Wonder) and she weighed around 4 pounds at birth. She is now five months old, is growing normally and weighs in at 11 pounds, but by December 2 she had lost over a pound and the grandmother said that she had diarrhea. We immediately sent her to the UNT and she was admitted. She was undernourished, and had a fever on a daily basis… Both the director of the hospital and Tenda, another medical colleague, thought that she may suffer from meningitis, so on Wednesday we decided to transfer her to Bangui.
We reached Emergency, an Italian NGO working in the pediatric division of the hospital in Bangui, on Friday around noon and left at four. She was checked from top to bottom and x-rays of her lungs were taken. In the end, Mervelle, our Wonder, was admitted to the ICU for pneumonia, and with symptoms of meningitis, anemia and malaria.
They immediately started to give her oxygen. It was difficult to get enough of her blood for analysis. May God help her to recover quickly, if it is his will! May he watch over her. Today is Sunday and, thanks be to God, a nurse told us that she is doing better.
On December 8 we celebrated the closing of the Year of Mercy with the participation of the entire parish. The Eucharist was very lengthy and lasted three hours, but everyone was happy. At 6:00 in the morning we said the rosary, accompanied by many songs, as we took the image of Mary in procession through the communities of Mongoumba. The faces of our people were glowing with joy and with devotion to our Heavenly Mother.
The Family Jubilee was a success. We held catechesis for both parents and their children. It was good to see the parents and their children take part in the Eucharist together, because they usually do it separately. After Mass, each couple went out looking for a couple that was not married in Church, taking upon themselves the responsibility to catechize them and prepare them to receive the sacrament.
We also want everyone to know that now we have a new car! We thank the Comboni Missionaries of six provinces who shared with us the donations of their benefactors. We are grateful to God who gave them the inspiration to help us, to show solidarity and love.
Do not forget to pray for us. We pray for you.
WE WISH YOU ALL A HOLY CHRISTMAS AND A GOOD 2017 FILLED PEACE, JOY AND MUCH LOVE.
Hugs and kisses from the CLM Anna and Maria Augusta
Mongoumba, CAR
God wants to visit THIS man? – Meeting of the CLM in Nuremberg
At the meeting of the CLM, beside sharing time together, we worked fundamentally on two topics: What are the main points for the group’s work plan for next year and what does Sunday’s Gospel of Zaccheus tell us today from a missionary perspective?
The starting point we used for planning our work was the document with its conclusions from the European Assembly of Viseu, which was held in August of this year, which was attended by four CLM and by Bro. Friedbert.
As a result, in 2017 the group wants to prepare itself forcefully for the MCCJ Symposium on “Mission in Europe” and wants to foster the networking with MaZ (missionaries part-time). We also want to improve communications within the group.
The result of the biblical work was presented at the homily during the Sunday Mass in the community of St. Cunegonde.
Beside working, praying and sharing, we also had a lot of fun during this weekend and we even had a taste of a Peruvian drink.
CLM Germany
Assembly of the Comboni Lay Missionaries (CLM) in Portugal
During the weekend of October 15-16, 2016 the CLM of Portugal gathered in Viseu for their National Assembly and for their second formation meeting on the topic of, “The Word as (with) Vocation,” moderated by the CLM Paula Clara.
During the Assembly, we as CLM had the opportunity to reflect over what was accomplished this year and see the many marvels the Lord has worked in us. We remembered the return of Marcia from Mozambique, and of Élia from the Central African Republic. We remembered the departure of María Augusta for the Central African Republic and of Marisa, who is studying the language in England. Many milestones were reached along the way right here. Above all we concentrated in organizing the European Assembly of the CLM to which we were all committed and for which we felt responsible, and in which we all worked a lot without leaving any detail to chance. We also spent time evaluating and then electing the various ministries of those who, as CLM, are responsible for the organization, such as the coordinating team, the formation team, the finances and many other things that are necessary for the future life of the CLM.
All this reflects what Pope Paul VI wrote in the dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium (#7): “As all the members of the human body, though they are many, form one body, so also are the faithful in Christ. Also, in the building up of Christ’s Body various members and functions have their part to play. There is only one Spirit who, according to His own richness and the needs of the ministries, gives His different gifts for the welfare of the Church.” We are different people with different ministries and responsibilities. We journey together here at home and beyond our borders, praying and committing ourselves in the name of God according to the charism of Comboni.
The meeting on formation could not have been more connected with the Assembly. While some were reflecting on vocation, others were reflecting on what their vocation had produced. In such a journey there are moments when walking together is not enough, but we felt the need to abandon ourselves to divine providence through our commitment. For this reason, on Sunday, relatives and friends joined the CLM family to witness the promise of Neuza, Rufina and Paula.
The journey takes place by walking as a community whose nucleus is Christ. After a day of formation and discernment we wanted to pray with our lives what we daily pray in the Our Father, “May your will be done.” We choose to follow a path of happiness, knowing fully well in advance that we will suffer, laugh, cry, love, fall, get up, get lost and be found. Here we feel at home, the hugs get longer, the laughter echoes in the hall, and often we pray with tears and in silence, because words are not enough to express the love of God. Here we learn that there are no distances that can stand in the way of staying united. Here, like St. Augustine, we turn Love into a greater prayer. Together, we are the thousand lives for mission that St. Daniel Comboni dreamed of. We are the dream of Comboni and we dare to follow in his footsteps making it possible to have much more than a thousand lives for the mission.
Paula Sousa, CLM Portugal
FEAST OF SAINT DANIEL COMBONI 10th OCTOBER
We will all die; what a little thing it is for us to offer our lives to Jesus, when he died for us. (S 5822)
Dear Confreres,
We greet you all with affection wherever you are, offering your missionary work, because we want to be in communion with you on this occasion, when we are celebrating the feast of our Founder.
Some days ago, the General Council travelled to Limone sul Garda, on the occasion of the closing of the General Chapter of the Comboni Sisters and to close even in this way our canonical visit to the communities of the Italian Province.
Limone, indeed, besides being a beautiful and attractive tourist place, speaks particularly to all of us, followers of the footsteps of St. Daniel Comboni. To visit the church in which St. Daniel received the sacraments, beginning with that of Baptism, to enter the small house whose walls heard his infant cries, to walk through the lemon grove once trudged up and down by that boy, to climb along the steep path that connects Limone with other villages and, from above, to contemplate the blue lake of Garda, allows our imagination to better understand his letters and everything else that little by little expanded his heart and prepared him for the challenges of the African mission.
Followers of an inheritance
Limone has been the cradle and crucible of a dream. It was interesting to hear how some people, residents of Limone, express themselves on their missionary and bishop fellow countryman. He seems alive and present in their lives, a source of pride and blessing for all of them.
The feast we are celebrating can also be an invitation for us to ask: what is the place that our Founder occupies in our life? We are the followers of a gift received from God and that reached us through St. Daniel. How can we bear witness in the places we work to that same passion he felt for the missionary cause? It is a gift that can be enriched or depleted. It will be enriched if we offer the best of us, working generously and tirelessly to reach the ideal of the Kingdom, as Comboni did. It will be depleted if we are satisfied with what we have achieved and do not share the gifts that each one of us has, but we keep them hidden for fear of losing face or because it is more comfortable to remain where we are, without trying to go further.
To experience communion despite our differences
Limone is located on the slope of a mountain. St. Daniel was able to go beyond, looking for new horizons; he had the courage to go further than the known environment, venturing into a faraway continent, visualised in his mind only from the description given by passing missionaries and enriched by his youthful imagination, enlightened by faith in the Son of God. Comboni was able to discover another kind of beauty in peoples different from his own. He allowed himself to be captivated by the life and fate of so many men and women who considered his brothers and sisters. We too are invited to discover the beauty of the people, those who live with us and those we encounter in our work, in spite of our differences, certain that we cannot love what we do not know.
Our Institute today is more than ever international, namely Catholic, because that’s how St. Daniel desired us to be from the beginning. How do we experience the challenge of internationality? Comboni invited all he met to work in the mission. Are we able to convey the same missionary zeal which abided in the heart of our Founder, about which the last General Chapter tells us? We want to have a relationship of communion with God and share this with those among whom we live. We want to read life and history in the light of faith, assuming a new style of life and communion grounded in evangelical choices (AC 2015, 29).
Implementing the Chapter guidelines
When we discover the gift that freely reached us, we cannot but live in an attitude of gratitude to God and are compelled to get busy. When we are also able to be grateful, we live in the joy that comes from discovering that we are bearers of good news, as the last General Chapter proposed to us, on the footsteps of the Evangelii Gaudium.
In almost all our meetings of the various sectors it has become a praxis to approach the reality in which we are to become familiar with so that our work may bear fruit, because it is inspired by and is contextualized in that particular place. We live in difficult and challenging times for everyone, but we have the promise that we are not alone. Let us not become discouraged when we take into account that not only the Risen Lord walks with us, as he did with the disciples of Emmaus (Luke 24), but also when we are aware that Comboni is present by his missionary witness, allowing us to begin this life journey: I shall stay at my post until death (S 5329) despite all the obstacles of the world (S 5584).
On this feast, we ask ourselves how to ensure the specific Comboni style in our activities. The Chapter reminds us: We feel the need to recover the sense of belonging, the joy and beauty of being true ‘cenacles of apostles’, Communities characterized by profoundly human relationships. We are called to value, above all among ourselves, interculturality, hospitality and the ‘conviviality of differences’. The world has great need of such witness (AC 2015, 33).
May the small town of Limone sul Garda, where St. Daniel was born, and the city of Khartoum, where he died, remind all of us that God can do wonders when we let him act in us, as our Founder did. Happy feast to all!
Cordially,
THE MCCJ GENERAL COUNCIL
