Comboni Family – Page 90 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

Living the present with passion

4 May, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

The following reflections are simply meant to be comments on the second goal proposed by Pope Francis in his Apostolic Letter to all religious on the occasion of the Year for Consecrated Life, in November 2014, to help us to live as Comboni missionaries in our time. “The passion for an ideal – in our case the mission – is related to enthusiasm. Passion is not gained once and for all. It is like a plant that we must care for and nourish every day. Because of this it is necessary to make use of such initiatives as that which the Pope proposes to us for the Year of Consecrated Life, to review how we live our consecration and examine our ties with the Gospel, the Institute and the mission”, writes Fr. Rogelio Bustos Juárez, mccj.

LIVING THE PRESENT WITH PASSION

“The past, which is memory, and the future, which is imagination, we evoke by the present”
(Saint Augustine)

The sequela Christi as primary reference point

When we speak of the birth of charisms, the history of religious life teaches us that the starting point of founders and foundresses was the Gospel. It was through their attentive reading of the Good News that they came to know Jesus Christ, received the Word and discovered how they could follow Him. Some placed the accent on the thaumaturgical Jesus who healed the sick, others placed it on Jesus the Master who, with authority, taught new things; we, as missionaries, have been struck by the itinerant Jesus, intent on proclaiming the Gospel to all peoples, since He was sent for this reason.

From this were born the rules and constitutions as a theoretical basis for making the charismatic intuition come alive. In the Rules of 1871, our Founder said: It is certain that, a humble spirit that sincerely loves its vocation and wishes to be generous with its God, will heartily observe them, considering them as the way marked out by Providence, but it is important to state clearly that the Constitutions, the Rule of Life and the traditions of any Institute whatever, will remain vigorous only when and if they continue to draw inspiration from Gospel values.

In this sense the Pope writes: “The question we are invited to ask ourselves during this Year is whether and how we allow ourselves to be questioned by the Gospel; whether it is truly the ‘vademecum’ in our everyday lives and in the choices we are called to live by. This is demanding and requires to be lived radically and sincerely. It is not enough just to read it (even if reading and studying it are extremely important), it is not enough just to meditate on it (and this we do joyfully every day). Jesus asks us to put it into practice and to live according to his words.

I am not at all certain that, having finished our basic formation, we have all taken seriously our ongoing formation. Today, people speak of the liquid society and liquid love (cf. Z. Bauman), with reference to the speed with which the world, society, the Church and religious life are changing.

The Gospel is the source which, with its dynamism and its relevance, may indicate paths on which to direct our steps. In this regard, we may find useful the third chapter of Evangelii gaudium (nos. 111-173) in which Pope Francis invites us to revisit the way we approach the Word we proclaim.

It is not enough to be experts in Biblical or pastoral theology if we are unable to practice what we preach. We are invited to revisit the place the Word has in our lives; whether it is truly the reliable guide to which we have daily recourse and which, little by little, makes us resemble the Master.

Conforming our life to the model of the Son

If it is Jesus Christ that we follow, it will be useful for us to reflect upon the second half of our name, “of the Heart of Jesus”, since it will enable us to deepen our identity. When, in 1885, through Mgr. Sogaro, the Holy See allowed us to become a religious Congregation, we were called: Sons of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In 1979, reunification was attained and we were reborn with the name Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus. The fact that the reference to the Heart of Jesus was kept is interesting.

Pope Francis, in his letter, maintains that, if the Lord is our first and only love, we will learn from him what love is and how to love since we will have his very own heart. That is, we will identify ourselves with him. This is what some Fathers of the Church meditated upon and passed on to us.

Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, for example, speaks of “Jesus Christ who, for the abundance of his love, became what we are in order to make us what He is” (Contra haereses, Preface to book V).

Saint Gregory Nazianzen develops another aspect: “In my earthly condition, I am bound to the life of here below, but being also a divine particle, I bear in myself this desire for the future life”.

Man is not only ordered morally, regulated by divine decree, he is also part of the “genos”, of the divine line, as St Paul says: “we are the children of God” (Ac 17, 29).

Saint Athanasius, in his Tract on the Incarnation of the Word, maintains that the divine Logos became flesh, becoming like us, for our salvation. And, with a well-known phrase, he says that the Word of God “became man so that we could become God; he became corporeally visible so that we might have an idea of the invisible Father, and endured the violence of men so that we might inherit incorruptibility” (54, 3).

Our Founder, St Daniel Comboni, making his own the spirituality of his time, was able to respond to the challenges of the mission by drawing inspiration from the spirituality of the Sacred Heart, broadening its meaning and giving it a more social and missionary character.

To sum up, if those who approved our name thought it necessary to include in it reference to the Heart of Jesus, it is therefore necessary that we increasingly identify ourselves with His sentiments and transform them into attitudes.

We follow Jesus not in any way whatever but obliging ourselves to be “cordial” in our manner of working, to be a reflection and an expression of the sentiments of the Son of God. All this has its consequences in personal and community life. Even to the point of becoming an existential parable, a sign of God Himself in the world (cf. Vita Consecrata n. 22).

3. Faithful to the mission entrusted to us

The third point invites us to review our fidelity to the mandate we received from our founders. A charismatic intuition is, at the same time, gift and responsibility. Gift, because we did nothing to deserve it through the persona and work of our founders which, however, has been recognised by the Church and we must, then, avoid distorting or altering it, but be the ones who continue this gift which has been placed in our hands.

At this point, there are two possible ways to go: either we cling to the thought and work of our Father and Founder and, out of charismatic fidelity, try to reproduce, sine glossa, that which he did, or, instead, we act in such a way that all we do, does not resemble at all what was suggested or proposed by our founders as we work in complete freedom, interpreting the new challenges as we please with a scribbled reproduction of the inheritance we received 150 years ago.

I think it is best we avoid these two extremes. It is, in fact, necessary to take the torch from the hands of our predecessors with a clear mind so as to discover how we must respond to the challenges of the present without weakening the charismatic originality. This, it seems to me, was the aim of the Ratio missionis and the work of re-qualifying our commitments upon which the Institute has insisted in recent years.

Pope Francis exhorts us to ask ourselves if, in this Year of Consecrated Life, our ministries, our works and presences correspond to what the Spirit asked of our founders. In short, he invites us to live in an attitude of constant discernment so as not to go wrong but to be an expression of that ecclesial charism we have received.

4. Becoming experts in communion

With things the way they are and considering the value fraternal life has for us, it would be opportune to question ourselves about the quality of our life in common. In this regard, our Founder was very clear in his description of the characteristics of the Institute: “This Institute, then, becomes like a small Cenacle of Apostles for Africa, a centre of light sending to the centre of Africa as many rays as are the zealous and virtuous missionaries who go out from it. These rays of light, bringing warmth as well as illumination, cannot but reveal the nature of the Centre from which they emanate” (Writings 2648).

It is interesting to note the image of the “Cenacle of apostles” used by St. Daniel. The cenacle is a room on the upper floor where the Master entrusted to his disciples what he bore in his Heart on the vigil of his greatest gesture of self-giving. Being together is that reality which transcends us and brings us closer to God when we live in communion with our brothers. It is also an intimate place where we may open our hearts to our companions to show ourselves as we are. It is there where we share that which we are, discovering our gifts and limits and those of the people who live with us. Theologically, the Trinity is our model: three distinct persons but only one God. Living together helps us to share our gifts and to welcome the richness of those who live next to us. We are different but we cultivate and promote unity by means of respect and tolerance. In an international Institute like ours, the challenge is greater but not impossible.

In the image used, there is also mention of apostolicity. From the “cenacle of apostles” there will come forth like “rays” solicitous and virtuous missionaries to bring light to situations of obscurity: the Pope speaks of a clash, of difficult coexistence among different cultures, the overpowering of the weakest and inequality, and we could continue with a list of situations we know and are faced with in the different parts of the world where we work. To all of these we are asked to bring a word of hope and encouragement, illuminating the darkness and sharing an experience of fraternity, fruit of the communion we have experienced. We will not base the strength and effectiveness of our missionary vocation on the material resources we may bring to the mission but on our willingness to share our authentic experience of God and the amount of humanity we can transmit. The quality of our mission will depend on the time we are prepared to dedicate to people emarginated from society. Our place, as missionaries – and the majority of local Churches recognise this – is there where there are tensions and differences, where there are situations incompatible with the human condition. It is there we must bring the presence of the Spirit, seeking to give witness of unity (Jn 17, 21), as the Pope reminds us.

All of this is expressed in a proper style that must be one of listening, of dialogue and collaboration with the persons with whom we come in contact. We may well be dynamic and capable people but, if we are not able to work as a team, it will be hard for us to witness to the Trinitarian love on which community life is based. Differences must not prevent us from giving witness of unity before the Church and the world.

5. Passionate for the Kingdom

A final consideration: to follow Jesus, to want a heart like his, to continue to be in love with the mission and to be builders – and not just users – of communities, will be possible in so far as we keep alive the passion for the Kingdom. If we look closely, many of us show a fair degree of irresponsibility in the way we administer the time and goods we have at our disposal. If we lose touch with people, it will be difficult to imagine what is lacking to the majority of our people. In his letter, quoting Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis affirms: “The same generosity and self-denial that moved the Founders must move you, their spiritual children, to keep alive the charisms which, with the same power of the Spirit who brought them about, continue to grow and to adapt themselves, without losing their genuine character, to place themselves at the service of the Church and bring to completion the establishment of his Kingdom”.

Why do some of our candidates later lose their initial enthusiasm when they enter the Institute? Why, for many of us, is it easy to cease to be Combonians when there appear difficulties and disagreements? Why is it increasingly more difficult to obey and to respond to the challenges that come our way? Why has our passion for the Gospel and for all that concerns the mission diminished? Why do so many live like pensioners before their time? Is it not, perhaps, because we have neglected some fundamental reference points linked to our identity, leading us to go off the road or lose our way?

The passion for an ideal – in our case the mission – is related to enthusiasm. Passion is not gained once and for all. It is like a plant that we must care for and nourish every day. Because of this it is necessary to make use of such initiatives as that which the Pope proposes to us for the Year of Consecrated Life, to review how we live our consecration and examine our ties with the Gospel, the Institute and the mission.
Fr. Rogelio Bustos Juárez, mccj

“Take off your sandals, for the place where you stand is holy ground”

3 May, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

This land is called Pau-Brasil, Irajá, Comboios, Caeiras, Olho d’Água, indigenous villages in the state of Espíritu Santo.

I spent nine days with great intensity, important days, beautiful, full of friendship and sharing, we as Comboni Family (priests, religious, laity, scholastics) and the Tupinikim indigenous people, people of this holy land.

The simplicity, humility, sharing, hospitality, are words that I remember celebrating those days.

The availability, tenderness of the families we met, visited, lived, brought forth the beauty of true and sincere principles that value the encounter with the Other and the sacredness of knowing how to welcome.

The Tupinikim people, as all indigenous peoples, fought for the recognition of the land that was always theirs and they lost with colonization, besides losing the right to be resident.

Indigenous land, holy land.

A fight that began in 1979 until 1981 for a territory increasingly exploited by another colonization, a foreign multinational, supported by the lobbies of political and economic power.

Many attempts were made by the police with guns and threats to the Tupinikim in order to leave their land. Many were the processes, finding letters and documents to prove it was an indigenous land and finally in 1993 came the land demarcation and recognition that protects the indigenous territory, their communities and villages.

The struggle for life, fight for rights, respect for a culture that is being lost and resist the increasingly dominant homogenization that wants to treat everyone as objects and consumers.

Threats ended and the law has confirmed a truth that has always existed, now is the time to recover a territory exploited by a (foreign) industry that planted eucalyptus trees at each site by market interests, for the manufacture of cellulose.

The problem is that these trees grow faster and take water from the land, impoverishing the soil and occupying the space of the native forest.

When the weather due to drought does not help, everything becomes difficult and complicated for those who live from agriculture.

Restart, caring for the earth and its fruits, through an indigenous tradition that always respect the Pachamama, living with essentials, is a beautiful lesson of life that indigenous taught us.

In this land we were welcomed, we felt at home and there is no more beautiful thing for a foreign pilgrim that being accepted and taken in hand.

Comboni Family: Father Elias, Father Savio, Sister Josephine, Emma, Wedipo, Cosmas, Fidel, Grimert.

Emma Chiolini (Italian CLM in Brazil)

Visit to Italy

27 April, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

Last weekend I had the opportunity to participate in the coordination meeting of the Italian CLM in Florence.

I appreciate the invitation of the CLM from Italy to share this time together. It was very interesting to know more deeply the reality of the different groups that are present throughout Italy. Each with a particularity and its own way. A reality closely linked to each specific place and expressed particularly by each group. The richness of the charism of Comboni is clear, and in Italy can be seen in the way that lay people try to stay faithful to this vocation. Some groups with great commitment to social level, working on JPIC issues like immigration (which is news in the media these days for the misfortunes in the Mediterranean), raising awareness in schools and doing missionary animation in parishes and area centers, heavily working the presence of community life as laity, with specific experience and new projects for opening, maintaining consistency in training the groups, with prayer as revitalizing center, etc. We had a specific time to know how things are going for Emma in Nova Contagem with the Brazilian CLM and Marco and Valentina in Piquiá (also in Brazil) and the support that the different groups provided them.

We also had a good time to talk about the reality of the CLM internationally, so that I could inform and exchange points of views. I encouraged them to communicate in the international blog what each group was doing. Something I always do in the groups. There is so much wealth that, it is a shame that others do not know it and when we exchange it everyone can grow.

I think Italy has a nice way to go to create synergies. Starting with the different groups within the country and of course in coordination with the CLM internationally. We create a large network where we can work together for a more fair, more human, more divine… world attending to the problems of men and women of our time from the 20 countries where we operate, exchanging ideas, experiences, contacts, support. On top of that, we are one big CLM family, united by the same charisma and intuition of Comboni that “this work (the mission) should be Catholic, and not specifically Spanish or French, German or Italian”. Comboni encourages us to continue working together, not seeking uniformity but synergy, commitment, collaboration, fraternal assistance to carry out Jesus’ call to mission. A family that worry and support each other for the good of the people.

In addition to the meeting I also had time to visit the group of Bologna and Venegono. Talk quietly, share concerns. I admit that I felt very comfortable at all times, in family. The best of these trips is to feel closely the warmth of each CLM, the enthusiasm for the mission, the commitment of everyone, beyond or within the labor and/or family obligations that as laypeople we face every day. The Faith and follow of the Lord that from every corner of the world we try to carry out every day.

I hope many others may join the group, in all countries, to continue serving the Lord in our smallest and needy brothers wherever He leads us.

Meeting to celebrate the 150th nniversary of the “Plan for the regeneration of Africa”

15 April, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

Africa, Continent on journey.

Dear friends, while participating to the 13-14-15 March meeting on “Africa on journey”, organized on the occasion of the 150 years of the “Plan for the regeneration of Africa”, inspired by God to our founder St. Daniel Comboni, I offer you, as a reflection, the Fulvio de Giorgi’s conclusive synthesis that collects the substance of these three day workshops, intensely and joyfully lived in the exchange and in the encounter of the whole Comboni family.

The meeting has seen its conclusion in the Eucharistic celebration presided by card. Fernando Filoni.

We thank the General Mother Luzia Premoli who opened the meeting by wishing us her welcome and presenting the program of these days, and thank, as well, the General Father Enrique Sanchez Gonzalez who closed the meeting workshops with the invitation to develop in our life and in our missionary work the reflections which emerged out of the meeting itself. “We have walked together and it has given us the opportunity of breathing new fresh air, the one – we cannot deny it – that, as we know, is now changing the whole human world. Now starting from this new sensibility, says fr. Enrique, Comboni’s dream reveals itself to be beautiful, actual and greatly challenging.

Let us remember that Africa has no need of donors, because it is able to grow by itself and is ever more conscious of its own strength, as our missionaries realize while living on the spot.

It is not by an accident that our institutes are themselves getting strength through so many confreres coming from Africa and this fact is the demonstration of how true is Comboni’s Plan. Africa has to become the protagonist of its own history.

The gift of the Pan received by Comboni was not a gift just for him, but it was for all those who, after him, were going to live with the strength of the Spirit contained in it.

The fact is that Africa has got something which nobody else has. It has a life of its own; and this is a particular, precious gift for all mankind. It is a thing that can’t be explained, but must be lived; it is an experience of love. Therefore I wish for all of you to continue this way, i. e. to continue with new freshness this experience of love for this new African youth”.

I leave you this beautiful synthesis on the topics of the meeting, which has been prepared by Fulvio De Giorgi. I have brought it home in order to share it with you.

My greetings to all of you and a fruitful mission as well.

Rosanna Braglia, CLM Italy

“If Daniel Comboni were here, on seeing all this, he would have his heart full of consolation and of joy at the spectacle of such a grown up Africa, of the sons and daughters of his institutions involved in this great project, of his dream partly already a reality with so many fruits, as well and especially in women’s laity, and partly still just a track which has to be followed for the future.

This is the main fruit of our meeting and it keeps on calling us to set us in a new direction. It is fundamental to say this, and all the participants to the meeting have underlined it, that about Africa there must never more be a negative, catastrophic, sad way of looking.

Pope Francis reminds us that “only the ones who look for the happiness of their neighbours, can be missionaries”. A thought which reminds us of what Comboni said: “It is the Sacred Heart of Jesus that helps me to overcome all the enormous obstacles I have to face in order to make true my Plan for the regeneration of the African people with the African peoples themselves”.

The key words are two: ‘PLAN’ and ‘HEART’.

The first word is “PLAN” [here it is to be taken into account that in Italian the corresponding word has several meanings. Note of the translator]. What is a Plan? It is project which challenges the critical capacities of each one and asks as well for the commitment of the will supported by great hope.

All of us, any continent we come from, are called to decolonize our hopes, our designs, our plans, our ways of looking, trusting in a hope that is greater than we are, and supports us in our commitment. The decolonization of the way of looking cleans up our eyes and helps us to see well the fact that Africa is keeping on growing, and that Europe can become its partner in its positive factors. The fact is that in Africa we can find a kind of New Renaissance. Europe can cooperate to it, by walking together in friendship.

The Africa of the African peoples has told us that it wants to live in fullness its life at the side of the other peoples. Therefore (decolonizing the way of thinking and overcoming stereotypes) dispersion and transcontinental emigration in all directions are a source of benefit in spite of the fact that they are caused by the inequalities existing inside the Country itself of the emigrants, and of the great sufferings they bring with themselves.

But it is important not to fix these events once and for all inside a negative horizon of death, but to set them free and regenerate them as an occasion, as a chance, for a more various and more beautiful world.

Here we are: more beautiful! The expositions of photos, the sculptures, the films and music offered in this meeting oblige us to recognize, generally speaking, the great beauty and aesthetic creativity coming from the new African art, from the new cinema. And our hope can better see what is positive, underlying connections which are going to become projects and plans growing around us.

The word “Plan” [having in mind the Italian word] includes also the idea of levelling out, that is of filling up vallies and lowering mountains, of putting all things to the same level. And here we are reminded of the sermon in Mathew’s Gospel, the one of Jesus on the mountain, the one Luke calls Sermon on the Plain, where we read also the threatening word “Woe to you rich!”. If all of us are on the same level, we can look each other directly in the eyes; in this way injustices and inequalities become unbearable. “Throwing down the powerful from their thrones and setting up the humble” is the dynamic of the MAGNIFICAT.

In this way we understand, as Samia Nkrumah (minister in his country) has said, that it is a right for the African peoples that they may control their economy for the benefit of the peoples of Africa themselves and may find the way for Pan-Africanism.

To set at the same level means to fill up the valleys and the abyss of corruption in the government lists; it means also to recognize that the walk to African democracy must be autonomous and new and not in the European forms. Certainly it will be a walk with lights and shades, of corrupt and dictatorial governments; but even the failure of the african leaderships must not slow down the understanding of the citizens in order to set to a better level their political directories, so that these ones may be uninterested about their particular profit and form agents of social trasformation, as Efrem Tresoldi said (Nigrizia), quoting Pierli.

Levelling means also to throw down the mountains of enmities and hatreds, the mountains of internal wars and of the accumulation of arms, as Maurice Simoncelli (Archivio Disarmo) has demonstrated; “always looking for the levelled way of peace and stability” according to the observation of Alfred Mantica (Interventions of Italy in Africa). The result will be that the Africas at the plural, towards which our walk is directed, are the Africa of justice, the Africa of peace, the Africa of the safeguard of creation, the Africa of rights.

But “Plan” [considering another meaning of the italian word] reminds us also that it is better to proceed “slowly”. The ones who know the letters written by Comboni should remember that he used to say: “Yes, many missionaries are in a hurry; you however go slowly.” Exaltation of slowliness (!), if it means “patient, perseverant listening and discernment, walking together without leaving anybody behind”. It means, then, an inclusive and participative ecclesiological plan, with a female profile, too, as sister Luzia Premoli (general superior of the Comboni Sisters) said together with sister Elisa Kidanè (Comboni Fem); a plan which is being put into practice in the small Christian communities, as card. Petrer Turkson told us.

From many sides it has been noted the importance of historical information in order to overcome the wounds of past discriminations and of more or less recent civil wars. All countries and continents have gone through them; but all of us must tell each other that, in order to go on, we must talk to each other and look together for a purification of the memory and of a history, if not co-participated, at least inclusive of the different points of view.

Patience and discernment are necessary, and not a hasty simplification.

Patience = going slowly. Also as a Church that reconciles and lives as God’s family, we have the task of asking ourselves about the salvation history that is evolving in God’s today and about the responsibilities to which we are called.

The second word is “HEART”. The Heart of Christ. The heart has two fundamental movements: systole and diastole.

In the Heart of Christ these two movements are incarnationism and escatologism.

On one side, incarnation. The Gospel penetrates and becomes flesh in all today cultures in order to make them flourish into liberation and salvation. A penetrating Gospel becomes inculturated taking on itself the cultural complexities in the pluralism of evolving identities. Today the Gospel has a half-cast face.

This incarnation, then, can discover, accept, give the due value, as the (theologian) Martin N’Kafu has said, to all the signs of the time, wherever they may be. Only in this way we shall have an African theology, not because it has been re-elaborated in Africa, but because it can collect in itself and make flourish all the seeds of the Word spread in African cultures and religions, excluding no cultural, geographic and human element.

This incarnation, as Cècile Kyengue (member of a european parlament) has told us, looks for the primacy of life and therefore is opposed and fights against any human being’s traffic and against the new slavery, i.e. against the horizons of violence and death in which it is Christ himself who is badly treated and killed.

In this enculturation, step by steps with the incarnation, a great role and a great responsibility is put on the modern means of communication, on TV and press. Frs. Jules Albanese and Fabrizio Colombo have underlined this aspect together with the guests of the round table.

Therefore a positive growth of communication in Africa, considering together digital and paper, runs on the line of internet, always making visible and transparent the positive side which is growing in it, like “THE PEARL”, defined by sr. Elisa Kidanè, in the deep respect of the person. The matter is not to give voice to the ones who have no voice, but, perhaps, to give no further voice to the ones who have already too much of it. Therefore the task is to go on decolonizing the way of looking also in Comboni mission press.

But at the side of the first movement, the Heart of Christ has the movement of the escatologism, i.e. the capacity of detaching one selves from any injustice, any idol, any horizon limited to this world. All of us Christians, any continent we belong to, are like foreigners in this world, “we are in the world, but we do not belong to the world.”

François Kamkindi said: “I feel at home in many places”: This is nice, but we can say more “The kingdom of which we are citizens, our true country, is not this world”.

I conclude with a saying of the 12th century, of a great mystic, Hugh of St. Victor: “The one who finds sweet his country, is but a tender beginner. The one for whom every land is one’s own land, is already a strong person.”

“But the only perfect person is the one for whom the whole world is a foreign country.” I took this sentence from a Bulgarian author who lived in France, who borrowed it from Eduard Said, a Palestinian who lived in USA, who, on his side, took it from a German author exiled in Turkey!”

Fulvio De Giorgi.

[Mozambique] Missionary Animation in the Parish of the Holy Cross

18 March, 20169 April, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

The fourth weekend of each month, the CLM in Mozambique, have the habit of meeting for basic training and lifelong learning. These meetings are mainly for training but on certain occasions a parish is chosen for Missionary Animation. As it was done this March 28, in the Parish of the Holy Cross, in the city of Nampula, starting on Saturday afternoon, we presented ourselves at a group of this parish, consisting of singles and young couples.

We share the word of God and we talked about the movement of the CLM at the level of Mozambique and in the world. Deepening phrases of St. Daniel Comboni who says: “Save Africa with Africa”, “I die, but my work will not die”, “thousand lives for a mission,” “The works of God are born and grow at the foot of the Cross “; all this was cause for our reflection.

Once finished on Saturday, on Sunday 29, we were in the community of San Juan de Brito, which belongs to the same parish where our animation culminated with much joy and coinciding with Palm Sunday. Where is celebrated the day of youth. At the end of the celebration, we met to continue talking about our movement, particularly the activities in the parish of Carapira and the Industrial School.

Therefore, after the presentation of the phrases of St. Daniel Comboni, we mentioned above, people with the need to reflect, requested the translation in their local language (Macua). Among other translations, focused heavily on “Saving Africa with Africa” in macua “Wopola w’África nor Africa”. They gave various examples. Believers of this community were moved from this animation, having the need to be more informed. So, we left an opening dialogue through our contact.

Another important aspect that we talked about was the family that is rich because today has Priests, Brothers, Sisters Laity and secular.

By last, we appreciate the availability and receipt of the parish, and this community. At the end they still offered us some products of “machamba” (orchard).

By Rui Evaristo Assane, CLM candidate