Mission animation – Page 5 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

We celebrate our CLM Day

14 December, 202111 December, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

Once again we celebrate our CLM day, the third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of joy.

It is a special day for all CLM since at the last assembly held in Rome in December 2018 we approved that day so that we can all celebrate our missionary vocation together.

It has rained a lot since then. Of particular relevance is the pandemic we are going through that reminds us of the fragility of our human condition and how small our common home is.

In the past, when the flu or any other virus entered our home, it would pass from one member to another as soon as we were careless. This is what is happening with this coronavirus. It passes from one person to another, from one country to another, from one continent to another. This invisible enemy shows us not only our weakness but the interconnectedness of all humanity. Each new variant reminds us that it is something we must fight together, no one will be free and if we are not able to share the vaccines and remedies that are being discovered, it will spread again and again.

It is a cry for solidarity, not to hoard, because we are all in the same boat.

Our missionary vocation has always been a gift in this sense. We know and feel that we are one big family as humanity. We feel the weakness of our brothers and sisters and we make ourselves available to go out to help others, leaving home, work, friends, family….

It remains a challenge for us to share what we have discovered or have been given as a gift. It is in our hands to share the richness that each people we have visited, with whom we have shared our lives, has brought us. Caring for, accompanying others has given us much more joy than the little we have been able to do on our part.

It is not a theory, it is a life experience… that we cannot keep silent but share with everyone.

A wonderful world has been given to us. Achieving a dignified life for every person on this planet will allow all of us to better enjoy our own life.

Recognizing that we are all children of the same Father-Mother God who loves us and wants us to love and care for each other as brothers and sisters is the joy we want to share with everyone.

In communion with the rest of the Comboni Family and the whole Church we encourage this to be possible.

To celebrate our vocation is to reaffirm ourselves in it, to remain faithful to the call we have received, to recognize that we are limited, but tremendously loved… and since we cannot keep this Love, we go out to share it with all humanity.

We approach the mystery of Jesus born in a manger on the outskirts of a small village in Palestine… welcomed among shepherds and simple people. May we know how to contemplate and understand this mystery that helps us to place ourselves in history….

Happy day to all CLM around the world and thank you very much to all of you who support us working hand in hand, with your prayers, with your financial help… with your closeness.

A big hug

Alberto de la Portilla, CLM Central Committee

America Your Life Is Mission!

2 December, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

It is with great joy that we write again, with a heavy heart for leaving Brazil, a beautiful community and generous people, but with enthusiasm and hope for returning to Guatemala.

Through reunions with family, friends and friends of our communities and parish we feel welcomed and loved, through long distance calls and messages with our dear friends “mineiros”, we began our process of reinsertion; despite being our country of origin we have been resettling, recognizing places and people, being amazed by the changes in the children and young people and they also by ours.

Today we return with a heart full of many learnings, of moments lived full of love and mercy of God, but especially with a personal purification that we know still continues. We come with much strength and energy to work for the Kingdom of God, to tell everyone what we have seen and heard, all that God has taught us.

In that joy our CLM community of Guatemala organized a mass and a welcome meeting for us, they “threw the house out the window” as the good Guatemalan would say. It was a very comforting welcome and the most important thing to recognize is that we have a community that has been supporting us at all times, with its difficulties and challenges, but it is a certainty that this work of God is nothing more than a work done in community with the hands and knees of many.

Today, as we begin our life again as a family, with a different way of seeing things and realities, with a heart that asks for justice and peace. We entrust ourselves to your prayers, we also unite ourselves in prayer to all those who are about to leave or who are on mission, so that all together in this unity, we may meet the true face of Christ and have the same feelings.

May St. Daniel Comboni continue to intercede for the needs of all missionaries and continue to be so active at the Lord’s side that more religious and lay vocations may be rediscovered and directed.

Long live the mission, long live the family, long live St. Daniel Comboni!

Camey Figueroa Family, CLM Guatemala

May our joy be your joy!

9 November, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

The Community of Comboni Lay Missionaries of Central America Province are happy and grateful to the Lord Jesus under the intercession of St. Daniel Comboni because on Sunday, November 7 at Casa Comboni in the Eucharist we prayed to God for the period of Formation and Mission of Mercedes and Maxi, who will live their Community Life Experience for 6 months in the Parish of Santo Domingo de Guzman in the Municipality of Santo Domingo Xenacoj.

An activity full of blessings and where the CLM shared why this Community Life Experience is important with the family, friends and CLM community of our sent ones.

To Mercedes and Maxi we accompany them with our prayers and may the Holy Spirit be their guide and teacher and may they keep in mind the Comboni Identity and Charism and always remember this beautiful writing of St. Daniel Comboni “My missionaries must always keep their eyes on Jesus Christ, loving him tenderly and trying to understand better and better what it means to have a God who died on the cross for the salvation of the world”.

Miriam Herrador

CLM Guatemala

Celebrating World Mission Sunday with new CLM candidates

3 November, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

During the weekend of the World Mission Sunday we were fortunate to have the opportunity to meet with some people who have approached the CLM group in Spain to get to know each other and to make a vocational discernment.

It is always a good opportunity to share our vocation and, to the extent of our possibilities, to serve as a help in the vocational journey of new missionaries.

We believe that in this time of Pandemic many things stopped, but not so the Spirit that is always present and does not rest. If the Lord continues calling new workers to his harvest, we want to be open to accompany this journey in the measure of our possibilities.

Last year we had several online meetings with the group but finally this year, and given that the levels of contagion of the pandemic have decreased, we were encouraged to hold a face-to-face meeting where we could all meet. Always maintaining the necessary prevention measures in these times.

It was a nice weekend where we moved from all parts of the country to share our time, to share what has brought us and to start walking together.

At the beginning of the year it seems important to us to establish the proposed path, the calendar of meetings and the themes we offer. We know that it is an effort for everyone to travel, to prepare the topics, to free the different weekends of the meetings to be able to participate, but we believe that it must be a serious path. It requires an effort on the part of all, but if the Lord calls us, our response must also be serious and committed.

The weekend is dedicated to getting to know ourselves better, to begin to work on our life line, our life history with the Lord and the events that have brought us to this particular moment in our lives. Also to understand our relationship with God, for that is what discerning a vocation is all about.

We hope to have established the basis of the path to follow. This path will be made with face-to-face and online meetings, but also with the personalized accompaniment of each candidate and the possibility of participating in local meetings as well as in national meetings with the rest of the CLM in Spain.

As it was on the day of the World Mission Sunday, we could not but share our joy with the parish of St. Angela de la Cruz in Madrid that hosted us for this event. We were able to help animate the celebration, bringing something of our life in Africa and Latin America, bringing closer the reality of some of these countries and our life experiences.

We prepared the celebration between candidates and CLM together with the choir (who gave us a nice surprise gift) and the catechists of the parish. I think it was a nice and participative moment where the children as well as the rest of the community could approach in a different way to this World Mission Sunday.

We continue to pray that the Lord will continue to call new missionaries and that we will know how to accompany them in their vocational journey.

There is still a great need for missionaries, so we encourage anyone who feels this call to approach one of our groups and make a vocational journey. Let us know how to say Yes like Mary.

Greetings to all of you.

Alberto, CLM Spain

Celebrating Easter

11 May, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

To celebrate Easter it is necessary to be prepared, that is what we have done as a group of Comboni Lay Missionaries in Sahuayo (Mexico), we have continued working from our current reality, it has not been easy to have to adapt to a mode where we have to put distance to protect each other, we have covered our face but not our Spirit and that is how we have done the activities that are needed to continue walking in our missionary journey. Our information retreat, which had already been scheduled for the second time, was favorably carried out, thanks to Quique and Vero who set the date as coordinators in consensus with the group, when the time came not all those who had been contemplated participated, more people arrived who questioned our Being and Doing as a group.

In the Formation Juan José has been the one who prepares our themes for growing, we also ask for the support of the Comboni Missionaries who have always been part of our formative and spiritual growth and on this occasion the Comboni Sisters were also present and shared with us the theme Comboni Family, they made us experience the richness of our Charism and the aspects to be improved, these moments of growth helped us to keep in mind that God has a specific mission for each one and that in the group we can put in common what each one has for a better use of it.

As a culminating moment we have been able to celebrate the Missionary Day (JORNAMIS) where young people have the opportunity to share topics that help them to grow, share their dreams, express what they think of what the world offers them today, learn about vocations to discover their calling and make the commitment to be useful to those in need making us aware that we are brothers in Christ. This space has been recovered after months of paralysis due to the pandemic and today it is once again an apostolate for the CLM Monica, Manuel and Ricardo who have the grace to work with young people.

When the time came, Holy Week was already at the door where we had the opportunity to celebrate in different ways, with the Family, working and some of us were able to go to a mission in the communities of Guerrero where we have already worked as Laity and also to communities near our city that are more isolated than usual for us. It filled us with strength to live with people who share with us what they have without expecting anything in return, opening the doors of their homes to share food with each of us, supporting us in everything we needed and most significantly sharing our faith. These were experiences that allowed us to experience the Risen Jesus from our particular life, moving that which should be purified and transformed with his Love.

CLM Beatriz Maldonado Sanchez