Spirituality – Page 55 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

Message of Fr. Enrique for the feast of the Sacred Heart

12 June, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

“We ask for the grace to become joyful and happy consecrated people because we carry in our heart the treasure of the love that flows from the pierced Heart of the Lord, which St. Daniel Comboni discovered as the foundation on which to build his mission and to which he committed himself without setting any limit. May the trust in the Heart of Jesus become also for us a source of an eternal love that will help us to live our consecration as the most beautiful gift that we have been given. Happy Feast day of the Sacred Heart.” Fr. Enrique Sánchez G., mccj, Superior General.

Consecrated in the Heart of Jesus

The words consecration and consecrated, with all their synonyms, can be enhanced and integrated in our lives, especially during this year earmarked for the religious and consecrated life, to the extent that we allow ourselves a moment for reflection and, perhaps even more, for gratitude for this gift.

At the same time, these words are likely to be emptied of their meaning and the richness they evoke, if we do not compare them with the experiences of our life; if we do not give, through our life, an authentic meaning to what we assert in words.

We are consecrated. Very little is needed to make this proclamation which, however, is not so obvious when we ask our life-witness to express the content of what has been the choice of our life.

Although it must be said that there are extraordinary examples, very close to us, of people who have treasured their consecration and whose life has been transformed into a light that can penetrate the darkest shadows, now we need to stop and ask how much our consecration to God defines and characterizes our identity and our acting.

To reflect on our consecration can become an extraordinary occasion to better understand what we mean when we identify ourselves as persons consecrated to God for the mission.

Our missionary consecration

To help us in our reflection, especially on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, I would like to share with you some brief thoughts that might be provocations for asking us to what extent and how much we are living our religious consecration and mission.

Pope Francis invited us to do a memory exercise, to recognize in the past the gift of our vocation, of our charism, letting flow from within our heart the gratitude and thankfulness for this gift. He recommended us to contemplate the present of our consecration to live it with passion, without making calculations, with the generosity and enthusiasm of the first moment, when in the silence and complicity of God we heard our name pronounced and dreamed of a mission without frontiers.

The Pope asked us to look to the future with hope, which means confidence in God, in his proximity, in the certainty that He continues to cherish in his heart a plan for humanity that no one can frustrate, because it will always be a project of love and love does not halt in the face of obstacles.

To live our missionary consecration in this way leads us to rediscover, to experience again the joy of the first moment of our call, and to say in simplicity: Lord, how great you have been in setting your eyes on me. You could not have bestowed on me a more extraordinary gift.

Being a missionary was the best choice that you have done for me; thank you, because you have remained faithful and because what has happened to me so many years ago continues to maintain its freshness.

Thanks for this missionary present that is a challenge to us. Your call is sometimes in danger of being overshadowed by so many obstacles that we find in our path. We lack your passion, your enthusiasm, your courage in not letting ourselves be overcome by the indifference of our time, the consumerism that surrounds us, the superficial hedonism that assails us with its traps that increase our selfishness and superficiality.

We need missionary passion, first of all to believe in you with all our heart, to find you in the brother who suffers, in the sister who is abused, in the young man condemned to live without the possibility to dream of an appropriate future, to come out of our shelter and comfort.

Lord, it is good to recognize with humility and simplicity that we lack the passion which is not afraid of sacrifice, renunciation, abandonment, the passion that allows us to leave everything to make of you and your mission the most important thing of our life.

You gave us a vocation that makes us privileged people, because for us you have chosen, as a place to meet you, the poorest, those farthest away, those who do not count in the eyes of our contemporaries.

“The hope of which we speak – says the Pope – is not based on numbers or enterprises, but on the One in whom we have placed our trust” (2 Tim 1:12).

We want to live, and we cannot but do so, in the hope of when we have been witnesses of your fidelity, your trust, your kindness toward us. We are not scared of tomorrow because we know that you have preceded us and prepared for us the morrow that will be completely different from what we could have established with our own efforts and our resources.

We are not afraid to decrease, to die, because we are convinced that, wherever you are, life cannot but win and that it will always be you the one to write the beautiful history of the mission, which will also become ours.

A consecration lived through small and large details

When we speak of consecration, I intend to say that we are referring to an experience, to a life that makes us live through the small and large details of our existence and of our daily work, as we fulfil the dream that we carry in our heart as the ideal that drives us to go farther and farther.

I intend to say that being consecrated is nothing but accepting with joy that our life is in the hands of the One who gave us our existence. It is to accept that we are the Lord’s possession, that we are or we are becoming God’s gift to humanity.

How many times we have heard that the consecrated persons are people who have freely agreed to give up everything to allow God fulfil his dream of love for humanity.

It’s nice to think so, because it helps us understand that the consecration is not a work that comes from our own will or ability, but an experience of great freedom, generosity and above all of deep docility.

What does it mean to be consecrated to God?

To be consecrated to God is to educate our heart to be always open and willing to what He wants to do of us. In this sense, consecration is synonymous with abandonment, obedience and courage, because with the Lord we know where the adventure begins, but we do not know how far He will take us.

To speak of consecration means entering a world in which our parameters are no longer applicable, because we enter the world of the mystery of God, which breaks all our logic and our calculations and turns everything upside down, as He becomes the protagonist of our history and the master of our existence.

And here we can think of many sayings in the Gospel: “You did not choose me, no, I chose you” (Jn 15:16); “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17).

What great strength resounds in Paul’s message when he remembers how he was chosen and how, in his ministry as an apostle, he has realised that “We know that by turning everything to their good God co-operates with all those who love him, with all those that he has called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28).

So, the question that arises is very simple: who is, after all, the one who is consecrated?

How many times have we to recognize that in our lives we have advanced because the Lord has not pulled back? How many times have we to realise that were not our qualities, our merits and our virtues that made us worthy of the gift of the choice that the Lord made us?

We have a great responsibility in preserving and developing the grace received from the day we said yes to the Lord. Will we always remember that God calls and does not change his opinion over time? To which loyalty does He challenge us?

St. Daniel Comboni’s witness

“Since I have an extreme need of the help of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Sovereign of Central Africa, the very joy, hope, fortune and the all of her poor Missionaries, I write to you, my friend, the apostle and faithful servant of the divine Heart which is so full of love for the most unfortunate and abandoned souls on earth.

How glad I am to spend half an hour with you, to commend and entrust to the Sacred Heart the most precious interests of my trying and difficult Mission, to which I have vowed my whole soul, my body, my blood and my life!” (Writings 5255-56).

The consecration of the Comboni missionary, to be a real source of happiness, will always have to try to respond to this clear conviction of Comboni, a consecration that will be born of the experience of love that flows from the Heart of Jesus. The Heart of God who has loved so much humanity and who had no hesitation in handing over for love his Son, his only Son.

It is from this love that our consecration originates and finds support. It is and will always be from this open Heart that we can receive the light and strength to live only for God and for his work. It is from the Heart of Jesus that we will have to learn how to become God’s people who find their joy in serving the mission with an undivided heart.

It will always be the Heart of Jesus to help us look to the future without falling into discouragement, sadness and disappointment, because from the Heart of God new things are always born for the good of all those who open themselves to love.

Like Comboni, we must learn not to be scared by the difficulties of the mission that we are called to live. It will always be a difficult and laborious work, but we must not forget that it is the mission of God, not ours. It is the mission of the Lord in which we are called to become mere collaborators and facilitators of his love.

As our holy founder, we too are invited and called to live fully the gift of the missionary vocation, willing to devote all our heart and soul, becoming men of deep faith, accepting with joy to witness through our poverty, our chastity and our obedience, and always trying to create environments of intense fraternity.

Even for us, the great challenge of the consecration will be the willingness to sacrifice everything for others, for those we meet in the mission. This also means acceptance of martyrdom, which will ask us to impregnate the heart of our brothers and sisters with our lives offered up in our daily existence, in humble and hidden service, in joyful acceptance of the surrender of ourselves to allow God to manifest his love.

Only if educated in this school of love, which is the Heart of Jesus, we will be able to experience in total freedom the choice for the poorest, and to give a face to the love of God, through the construction of a more just, more caring, more respectful world, capable of generating the happiness that we all carry in our heart as the only true yearning of our lives.

We ask for the grace to become joyful and happy consecrated people because we carry in our heart the treasure of the love that flows from the pierced Heart of the Lord, which St. Daniel Comboni discovered as the foundation on which to build his mission and to which he committed himself without setting any limit.

May the trust in the Heart of Jesus become also for us a source of an eternal love that will help us to live our consecration as the most beautiful gift that we have been given.

Happy Feast day of the Sacred Heart.
Fr. Enrique Sánchez G., mccj
Superior General

In the footsteps of Jesus – spiritual retreat in the streets of Berlin

11 June, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

On May 13, three women of the small group of German CLM went to Berlin, to make a spiritual retreat in the streets. We were anxious, how will that be? Full of gratitude we can say that it was worth it! The Jesuit Christian Herwartz and the Comboni sister Margit Forster affectionately accompanied us. Each of us made her personal and profound experience, going to places that made possible an encounter with God in a special way: the jail, a drug sales point, a meeting place for the homeless, tourist places in the center… Like Moses, we take off our sandals (fears, prejudices, judgments) and in the holy places we find God in a new way. Unfortunately, we had to return home on May 17. It was a brief but very rich experience, especially together. THANK YOU!

Barbara Ludewig CLM Germany

“Do not forget me”

6 June, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mk 14, 12-16,22-26: Corpus Christi solemnity, June 7th
The Corpus Christi solemnity -celebrated on Thursday in some places and on Sunday in others- is an excellent occasion to reflect and become aware of this great Christian reality. After having read the piece of Mark’s Gospel that the liturgy offers us today, I share with you three points of meditation:

1) To remember a loved person
As we grow in age, we tend to keep a set of “things” that remind us of people we love specially. We gather a set of memories that usually “materialize” (take “flesh”) in pictures or other objects that acquire for us a meaning and a value that go far beyond its physical value. It happens to me, for example, with my father’s cap; after his death I kept it as a very special and meaningful object. I look at it, I handle it on my hands, I cover my head with it… and all this makes me feel in communion with my father.
It occurs to me that something similar happened to the disciples after that last supper, when Jesus, before confronting his death, ate with them the Passover meal, broke the bread (real image of his broken body), passed the cup of wine (image of his split blood) and said words that sounded more or less like these: “Do not forget me, remain united, love each other, go on with the work of the Kingdom. I am with you to the end of the ages”. The disciple took seriously those gestures and words, as a testament of love, and kept them alive, generation after generation, up to our days. Now we are part of that sacred faithfulness to the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
The Eucharistic celebration is not a “heavy duty”, a clerical affair, a magic rite or any other similar false appreciation. To celebrate the Eucharist is to be in communion with our Friend, Brother and Master Jesus and, in Him, enter in communion with the Father, enjoy His presence and renew the certainty of His love that nourishes us and pushes us to love and serve others, specially the most abandoned.

2) The best part is still to come
Jesus’ last supper is part of the Israel’s secular tradition. For Jews it was quite clear that God has acted in their history: liberating them from slavery, supporting them in the difficult crossing of the dessert, helping them to overcome the exile… All this was celebrated –and continuous to be celebrated– every year with the Pascal meal, as a feast of memory and hope. If God was with them in the past, his help will be there also in the future.
For us the Eucharistic celebration moves on the same lines: celebrating the memory of Jesus we renew our hope (in spite of our sins and failures) and our engagement for the future: Jesus was with us in the past, but He is with us now and He will always be in the future. In a sense, as we celebrate the Eucharist, we are sure that the best of our live is still to come; that, every day that passes by, we are approaching the Kingdom of God more and more.

3) The room in the upper floor
To celebrate the Passover, Jesus needed a room in the upper floor… These words make me remember when Joseph was looking for a room in Bethlehem where Mary could give birth to his Divine Son… It seems that God cannot be born in our humanity, cannot be transformed into “bread and wine” without a place ready to welcome Him. As a matter of fact, it is quite difficult for a community to gather without a place for it (under a three, in a family’s living room, in a rural church or a cathedral), but , more than a physical place, God needs a human heart, a person, an open community, a family, a people… ready to welcome Him and accept Him. Only in that way, the miracle of His presence can happen. Am I this open person, where God can come and renew His Alliance with me and humanity?

Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma

[Portugal] We live the call to mission as Christians moved by faith and not by work

3 June, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

On Friday May 22, we had another meeting of the CLM candidates in Viseu. The theme of this training unit was Laity in the Church – a lay and missionary spirituality presented by Carlos Barros.

We started watching a movie that touched me very much “Selma march of freedom” which chronicles the struggle that Martin Luther King had to fight to grant the right to vote for every person, which ends with an epic march from Selma City to Montgomery, Alabama, and prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

On Saturday Carlos told us of spirituality, has talked a lot, but some of the phrases that marked me were “spirituality is a path to God,” “is a love relationship with Christ,” which is “life fed by Christ”. Christian spirituality is not just for some, it is a lifestyle…

We had the opportunity to reflect on the identity of the CLM in Articles 4 and 5 of the directory in which they asked us to think of some questions:

How do I evaluate my spirituality in the light of these Articles of the CLM directory?
Through this training process, have I gained awareness about some aspects contained in these articles?
Are there any points in these articles where I feel that I have not yet succeeded? What are they? Why?
Do you think that someday you will guide your life by the principles contained in these articles?

During the Saturday morning, we were still surprised to receive the visit of Palmira Pinheiro – Comboni Missionary Secular, newcomer of the mission; she shared some of her missionary life.

After the meal, which was nice, and with reinforced powers, it was time to return to work. Carlos continued talking about spirituality, and more specifically Lay Spirituality where we discussed the role of the laity in the Church and, indeed, following Jesus is “a demanding and challenging task”. We must take an active role, being available to serve and not to be served. We must be radical to assume “the call to live the mission as Christians moved by faith and not by work”.

During the evening prayer we reflect on “Go you also into the vineyard,” where Jesus invites us to be part of his vineyard, not just religious, but all the faithful laity, all the baptized, because we are united by Baptism. Each of us is part of the Church, when someone is not present, the church is poorer.

Jesus also invites us to live a different life as Lay, he invites us to live detached from material goods, family ties (which is for me the most difficult to think or imagine …) and have the courage to go … not be afraid to say “Yes Father, I am here…”.

In the evening we received the testimony of Fr. Ginno Pastor in Skype (new technologies do wonders like this) where we hear his mission experience, always in Mozambique, where it showed that Fr. Ginno talked about it with love. His smile when talking about the mission, his words radiated love for others, an example of which was poor with the poor, someone who was certainly one of them while living in the mission… The phrase that touched me more of his testimony was “the smile of the other pays for everything 🙂 .”

The night dragged on because it was a great night, Pentecost, where we had a small vigil where each of us was able to share what is “being Church” writing in a bunch of grapes when we feel as Church…” I am church when…”.

On Sunday morning we participate in the Eucharist with the community of Viseu, and was nice to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit … it was a very special moment. I felt again the desire to be radical, to be different and do what I do by faith and not by obligation, as someone said, “If it is inside and not out of obligation this reflected”. It is necessary to believe in the words of Pope John Paul II: “Christ takes nothing away, only gives” and is with the certainty of this love for us, which I continued commitment as a Christian… and I hope every day to say the Lord “Here am I…”.

Andreia Martins (CLM candidate)

The mountain and the name of God

29 May, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Matth 28, 16-20: Holy Trinity Sunday, May 31, 2105

This Sunday dedicated to the Holy Trinity is, somehow, the highest point in our liturgical year. The disciple missionary, who tries to identify himself with Jesus Christ, receives today, in adoration and contemplation, a proposal to approach the mystery of God, a reality that is close to his most intimate identity (S. Agustin), but at the same time overrides every frontier and every human dimension. The Church offers today a reading of the last verses of Mathew’s gospel, where mention is made of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,
Let us reflect a bit on a few concepts that we can find in these last verses of Matthew:

1) To go up the mountain
Jesus meets his disciples on a mountain, in Galilee. It may seem an irrelevant geographical note, but I do not think so. In a sense, all of us are marked by geography. At least, on my side, I must say that some mountains have left a definitive mark in my personal life. I remember, for example, the Sinai majestic pics: there I could understand quite easily how Moses and Elia could feel the extraordinary presence of God (Cfr Ex 19, 20; 1 Kings 19, 8); I remember also the fantastic Machu Pichu in Peru, where I had de impression of being at the centre of our Planet and to enter into communion with the ancient Peruvians… In fact, for many religions and cultures mountains are a place of God’s revelation (theophany). And that can be easily understood: mountains help us to come out of ourselves, to overcome routine and superficiality, looking for the highest level of our personal conscience. And it’s precisely there, in the highest level of our conscience, that appears as a presence that cannot be expressed in words, but it’s clearly perceived as very real and authentic.
Jesus, on his side, used to go quite often to the mountain, alone or with the disciples, reaching, as the son of Mary, the highest level of conscience and communion with the Infinite Love; such an experience has become an extraordinary gift also for us, his disciples and brethren. Following his steps, we need also to climb continuously the mountain of our conscience, with the help of a place which invites us to overcome routine, noise and superficiality.

2) Adoration and doubt
Confronted with Jesus, identified “on the mountain” as the Son of God, the disciples experience a double movement of adoration and doubt. On one side, they feel the need to prostrate themselves and acknowledge the Divine presence in the Master and Friend, because only in adoration we can approach the mystery of God; word do not help and even sometimes they may sound almost like a “blasphemy”, in the sense that no words can contain that reality that one can just glimpse from our deepest conscience. That’s why, together with a sense of joy and adoration, the disciples experience also uneasiness and doubt: they are quite aware that they cannot reach to God and that all or words and concepts are limited and , in a sense, not completely truthful. All our concepts about God are inadequate and must be continuously corrected, with the help of the doubt, which lead us not to “sit” over what we have understood and to be ever open to new insights. God is awaiting us always in front of us on the way of history.

3) The name of God
Different people, cultures and religions, “grope about” for the mystery of God, giving Him different names according their own cultural experience. Israel, on his side, decided rather not to pronounce God’s name, because really no human being can “name” God. When somebody gives a name to something or somebody, somehow, he takes possession and manipulates the “named” object. But God cannot be possessed or manipulated. Nor even Jesus gives a name to God; what he does is to reveal his relationship with God as his Father and his Spirit. And He commands his disciple to go to the world and baptize “in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit”. When we are baptized, following this mandate, we do not name God, but we are consecrated to become members of that divine “family”. We –and the whole humanity- are called and consecrated to be in communion with this divine mystery of relationships and love.

4) God-communion
The most important religions have reached the idea of a unique God and this is an important step in the history of mankind. But Jesus, from the “mountain” of his human conscience, teaches us that God is unique, but not “single”; not “lonely”, but communitarian. In the same way, we, human beings, created on God’s image, are made to live in communion. None of us is complete; we need to be completed by others before reaching the image of God: Father-Son-Spirit. When somebody denies a member of the community is denying God. To adore God means to welcome Him/Her in the sanctuary of the conscience and, at the same time, in the concrete reality of every human being, in its marvellous singularity and diversity.

Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma