Formation – Page 22 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

Celebrating our talents and experiences as CLM II

27 July, 2022 by Alberto de la Portilla

After a well-deserved lunch break, we resumed the workshops with the missionary witness of the Portuguese community of Fetais. The Portuguese CLM decided last year to open a community presence in the outskirts of Lisbon. In a neighborhood with a great diversity of nationalities, where migrants from former Portuguese colonies in Africa stand out, but where there is also the presence of Latin Americans and people of Asian origin. All this with Portuguese, many of them of gypsy ethnicity.

All this great diversity makes living there a very different experience from what is usual in the rest of the country. Undoubtedly a melting pot of cultures that brings a lot of richness, but sometimes with many difficulties linked to their condition of exclusion.

This experience also gave rise to a debate on the rights of migrants in the European Union, the common policy that does not facilitate immigration and how the unequal demands of one country or another can also cause people to be more disadvantaged depending on local legislation.

Then the CLM from Spain helped us to deepen into a very elaborate presentation of the importance of political advocacy in our missionary action in Europe. To become aware of how Pope Francis encourages us to a positioning and an ever greater political responsibility as lay people because politics, as a service to the common good, definitely marks the lives of the people. How important is the influence on the change of legislations, the sensitization of the people for the different issues that affect so much as the care of the planet, migrations, etc.

The presentation was accompanied by the external intervention of Sister Benjamine who spoke to us about the work done by Talita Kum against human trafficking at the international level. Brother Simone spoke about the work of VIVAT International and the pressure they are trying to put on the UN and Geneva to change global policies, and Father Lorenzo shared with us the struggle of the Church and Mining network against abusive mining activities in Latin America. All of them reinforced the responsibility and the need for work in this sector that we have from Europe.

The last session of the day was in charge of the CLM from Italy, who presented several of the projects they are developing in different parts of the country. From the reception of migrants in the community La Zattera in Palermo. A place to organize their lives, to rest and to integrate into the new society.

In this line, Venegono explained to us the projects that they develop from Combinazione, such as the various shelters for refugees that they run, where they act from the first reception to a last resort on the way to an independent life where they facilitate the exit from the previous resources.

They also explained the work of awareness raising in schools. Bringing the realities of the world to children and young people, with awareness-raising projects adapted to different age groups, sometimes with the testimony of African migrants. Or even with the edition of a book that helps to enter and embrace more the reality of a changing society and the protagonism of everyone in this society, especially the youngest.

Finally, Simone shared with us the experience of life as CLM in the Comboni religious community of Castel Voturno and especially his work in the Black and White association that seeks to offer educational and leisure alternatives to the children of migrants who arrived in Italy and who even being born in Italy do not have the right to Italian citizenship. Also how this resource becomes the only place of leisure or study possibilities for these boys and girls due to the poor conditions of the neighborhood where they live.

To end this intense day we were able to have a time of quiet and prayer together organized from Spain. A simple prayer in different languages, where we could place at the Lord’s feet all that we have shared, the needs of all those we serve and our willingness to continue on the path wherever He calls us.

With the Our Father in each of our languages we closed this beautiful day of sharing and dreaming together from the gifts and services that each one of us develop. Surely it will have enlightened many for new initiatives and encouraged everyone knowing that we are together in this common cause which is the Kingdom of God.

A hug to all of you and thanks to those who participated because with your contributions you made us grow.

Alberto de la Portilla. CLM Central Committee

Celebrating our talents and experiences as CLM

26 July, 2022 by Alberto de la Portilla

With this suggestive title, the European CLM held a workshop last Saturday.

First of all, we would like to thank the European committee for the effort of organizing this meeting for several months. It was not easy, but in the end it worked very well and the simultaneous translations made it possible for CLM from different countries to participate and take advantage of everything that was shared.

The idea of the meeting was to offer a variety of content and experience according to the interests, activities and commitments that we as CLM develop in Europe or from Europe.

The meeting began with the intervention of the CLM from Germany who shared their great work on the theme of Peace. They began by supporting Comboni projects for the development of peace in Sudan and have been expanding this range to the different conflictive realities that we face on the planet and even at the local level in our immediate environment. All this with a methodology of approach that seeks to understand the conflict and promote valid solutions for all.

Following this, the CLM from Poland encouraged us to reflect on how to raise awareness of the work we do and how to raise funds for it. They emphasized the importance of including collaborators, not only as someone who can give occasional help, but to establish a link that allows us to follow up on the work we are developing and make people feel that they are part of it. Various initiatives and possibilities were presented to us. Afterwards, different initiatives were shared from other countries that are being carried out and are bearing their small fruits.

Then we had a time of reflection on the mission as a family. It was a rich time where, from experience, we shared what it means to be in mission as a family. The misunderstanding sometimes on the part of some who think that being on mission means having a lot of time to do activities while from experience we realized that it is really our testimony of life, in this case as a family, which brings us closer to the people, to their day to day life.

We also reflected on the importance of choosing places where the family can be. Where the level of violence is not high and at the same time it is possible to have a minimum of education and health care for the children. Also the importance of dialogue in the family, especially when the children are reaching adolescence and youth and are making their own decisions and life choices. In general, we found that it is a great enrichment for children. Undoubtedly a very nice topic and very linked to our lay reality.

In this way we finished the morning sessions and went for lunch.

Tomorrow we will finish telling you about the meeting 😉

Greetings to all and each one of you

Alberto de la Portilla. CLM Central Committee

From wild market and consumerism to a loving tender care for life

20 July, 2022 by Alberto de la Portilla

According to some prophetic calls, which have been announcing either a post-modern, or a post-religious, or better a post-capitalist era, we are now dropping into a post-hope one with a never-ending story of increasing domination of the capital owners, more disadvantages and social injustice for the hindmost in society, increasing pollution, a tremendous unconscionable abuse of water everywhere, and rivers and oceans full of plastic and chemistry. What is more, some groups of people show less commitment and more political disaffection. Nevertheless, we are meeting people who keep asking witty, remarkable, and important questions about how to manage: Is democracy still there? Is our planet earth still to be saved? What could we do?

We see these and similar questions already as a sign that humanity, that some reasonable and intelligent people still have resources in themselves and want to live according to their dignity and noble-mindedness. That is encouraging even for us. Despite many difficult situations, catastrophes and injustices, they and we do not resign, we do not give up, we do not remain passive. It is not enough to feel anger, to look for the guilty ones. Hate and violence are not in place. On the contrary.

Let us start again anew, let us come together to analyse situations in the light of the Gospel and of the Social Teaching of Pope Francis. Together we will find new ways to do better, first of all we ourselves, and then we will take courage to propose to others these new ways we find for the present and for the future. With loving tender care for LIFE!

We started thinking about writing this message to you while approaching the feast of our Lady of Mount Carmel. You have certainly heard about the Dolomite Mountains in Italy and about the fact, that the mountains have changed face. So, we were inspired to look at our Lady of Mount Carmel as the caring Mother of Jesus of Nazareth, and as a role model leading a genuine life in contact with nature, in simplicity of relationships and in a creative way of life. We love to contemplate her and her family, with Joseph being the carpenter of the village. We see her enhancing wood, trees, herbs, and flowers. We see her collecting water with reverence and doing the domestic work thriftily and economically, being unpretentious, making the most with little things. With love and care for LIFE.

We feel called upon to continue our profound transformation in ourselves, in our mental and practical doing, as well as our Transformation Campaign for a new lifestyle, for a simpler life, in a way that we do not add destruction and worsen the desperate condition of our Mother and Sister Earth. Let us all leave behind the usual wild market and consumerism mindset and become families and communities with an integral human and environmental development mentality.

Let us think anew of planting trees, of always treasuring and saving water, of looking at our fields with veneration and of cultivating in us and around us an attitude of maximum respect for the Sacrality of Creation, like our ancestors did. Let us think of eliminating plastic from our everyday life and invest our creativity on how to substitute it. This is actually an affirmation of our faith in your creativity!

Dear friends, let us create something new! Let our homes be centres of new LIFE, quality of LIFE, like we have always seen in our vision and mission as “Social Ministers”, “Social Entrepreneurs”, “Social Transformers”. Together we dare! Together we will succeed! With loving tender care for true LIFE!

“Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs.” (LS 1)

“I do not want to write this Encyclical without turning to that attractive and compelling figure, whose name I took as my guide and inspiration when I was elected Bishop of Rome. I believe that Saint Francis is the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically. He is the patron saint of all who study and work in the field of ecology, and he is also much loved by non-Christians. He was particularly concerned for God’s creation and for the poor and outcast. He loved, and was deeply loved for his joy, his generous self-giving, his openheartedness. He was a mystic and a pilgrim who lived in simplicity and in wonderful harmony with God, with others, with nature and with himself. He shows us just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace.” (LS 10) “Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it. It is true that there are other factors (such as volcanic activity, variations in the earth’s orbit and axis, the solar cycle), yet a number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases.” (LS 23) Due to wild exploitation! “Let us mention, for example, those richly biodiverse lungs of our planet which are the Amazon and the Congo basins, or the great aquifers and glaciers.” (LS 38)

“In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the word ‘creation’ has a broader meaning than ‘nature’, for it has to do with God’s loving plan in which every creature has its own value and significance. Creation can only be understood as a gift from the outstretched hand of the Father of all, and as a reality illuminated by the love which calls us together into universal communion.” (LS 76) “Yet God, who wishes to work with us and who counts on our cooperation, can also bring good out of the evil we have done. The Holy Spirit can be said to possess an infinite creativity, proper to the divine mind, which knows how to loosen the knots of human affairs, including the most complex and inscrutable.” (LS 80)

“A prayer for our earth”

“All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe, and in the smallest of your creatures. You embrace with your tenderness all that exists. Pour out upon us the power of your love that we may protect life and beauty. Fill us with peace, that we may live as brothers and sisters, harming no one.

O God of the poor, help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth, so precious in your eyes. Bring healing to our lives, that we may protect the world and not prey on it, that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction. Touch the hearts of those who look only for gain at the expense of the poor and the earth.

Teach us to discover the worth of each thing, to be filled with awe and contemplation, to recognize that we are profoundly united, with every creature as we journey towards your infinite light. We thank you for being with us each day.

Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle for justice, love and peace.” (LS 246)

All of you please feel embraced with our daily prayer and affection,

Fr. Francesco Pierli MCCJ / Sr. Teresita Cortes Aguirre CMS

Community Experience in Guatemala

23 May, 2022 by Alberto de la Portilla

St. Daniel Comboni had an IMMENSE LOVE FOR THE SOULS OF THE POOREST AND ABANDONED and this can only be lived from a MISSION EXPERIENCE.

For the CLM of Guatemala, having accompanied Maximina and Mercedes in their process of Community Experience, is today a school of learning full of LOVE AND MISSIONARY HOPE; why, many may ask, because each member of the community has participation; Everyone in prayer, in the economy, in the personal accompaniment, in the formation in so many activities that a missionary experience needs and no one said no, we are all in the same boat where GOD the FATHER guides us under the intercession of SAN DANIEL COMBONI, Our Mother the Virgin Mary and SANTO DOMINGO DE GUZMAN Patron of the Community of Xenacoj who opened the doors of his house and his heart, so that they could carry out this experience during 6 months.

In these 6 months there were doors so wide that they were easily passed, but also so narrow that they required for them and the community to be full of prayer, wisdom, understanding, tolerance, tiredness and full of FAITH to be able to pass them.

Thank you Merceditas and Maxi for your availability and abandoning yourselves to the poorest and neediest whom we are sure you carry in your heart and were for them your first school of FRATERNAL LOVE and COMMUNITY UNION.

Miriam Herrador

CLM Guatemala

Letter to the Comboni Family

12 May, 202210 May, 2022 by Alberto de la Portilla

“Let us all toil with no other aim than to gain more souls for Christ: let us join hands together. Let the vow, the objective and the commitment of all who love Jesus Christ be one.”

(Writings 2182)

Dear Comboni Missionary Women and Men,

We, the members of the General Councils and the Coordinator of the CLM, having gathered together from 22 to 24 of last April, at the native home of Saint Daniel Comboni in Limone, and moved by the desire to make you participants, at least in part, of what we lived and shared, write this letter to you desiring that the communion we experienced may reach all of you, there where Providence has placed you, to serve and give your lives for the sake of the proclamation of our Crucified and Risen Lord.

It was the first meeting that could be held in person, after the time of isolation caused by the pandemic with all that it entailed, with the high price paid, even with their lives, by so many brothers and sisters. Such was the pandemic that it forced the postponement of the General Assembly of the CMS and also the General Chapter of the MCCJ which will be celebrated in June of this year during which the CMS are celebrating the 150th anniversary of their foundation and will have their General Chapter in October. All these reasons have given meaning to this meeting, not least the synodality to which the universal Church invites us, and the very fact of our being a Comboni Family is, in itself, an expression of a synodal Church. Walking as a Comboni Family is not optional, it is not even the meeting of the leaders, but it is life in the communities, in the concrete missions where one lives and works with shared objectives.

Our “coming together” as a family came about quietly but, in fact, it has evolved due, not so much to the result of programming as to the perceived desire and the awareness of belonging to a common root. Coming together is always an opportunity to grow in the awareness of being part of the same charismatic family because this is how St. Daniel Comboni thought of us, and an occasion to strengthen the commitment to continue to feel part of it; the fruits that have grown over time confirm that this it is the right path.

Our proclamation and witness, beyond the ministries and services we are called to give, is, first of all, to live as brothers and sisters, members of the same Family: without this witness, even the most beautiful activities lose their value. All those who have experienced collaboration and working together as a Comboni Family know that it is not easy and, for some, this implies a commitment to be able to appreciate the value of collaboration. However, we sincerely believe in it and invite you to keep this horizon as a desirable goal.

We wanted to have this meeting also to evaluate the progress made so far, taking as a basis the letter on collaboration written in 2017 and the work on ministeriality that involved a large number of members of the CF, thanks to the commitment and dedication of the appointed Commission and to other trained and qualified collaborators. We thank the Lord who surprised us with what we were able to achieve and above all for those who participated and enjoyed this journey.

Bro. Antonio Soffientini, sharing the reflection on this theme made by the Italian province of the MCCJ, invited us not to attach an adjective, a “label” limiting ministeriality, because ministeriality has many expressions and is not only towards “the external, ad extra “, but also” inward, ad intra “and the latter often escapes any mapping. All the services that the life of the CF requires are ministerial: training, authority, administration, coordination and accompaniment in every phase of the life of the members, from the beginning of the journey to old age.

A lasting sign

The General Moderators of the four expressions of the Comboni Family wished to express their unity and the desire to see the growth of the seed which the recognition of the Charism of St. Daniel Comboni has generated in them in recent years and which these two days of encounter have revived, entrusting it to an olive tree planted by all of us together, in the soil of the birthplace of Saint Daniele Comboni. Thus, next to the centuries-old olive trees dedicated to various relatives of San Daniele Comboni, one dedicated to the Comboni Family will grow.

Now there remains the challenge of continuing the journey and for this reason, we wish to “pass the baton” to the new General Councils of the MCCJs and CMS who will be elected in the upcoming General Chapters, asking the CMS and CLM to act as a “bridge” and link for the future journey together.

May the Good Shepherd of the Pierced Heart show us the way and, as he promised, walk with us until the end of time.

The General Council of the Comboni Missionary Sisters

The General Council of the Secular Comboni Missionaries

The General Council of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus

The Coordinator of the Central Commission of the Comboni Lay Missionaries

“This Institute, then, becomes like a little Cenacle of Apostles for Africa, a centre of light sending to the centre of Africa as many rays as the 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 the spread out” (Writings 2648)