For the Lay Comboni Missionaries who this month are celebrating their Intercontinental Assembly: that the Holy Spirit may accompany them, illuminate them in making decisions for the good of the mission, and keep them faithful to their vocation. Let us pray.
Dear confrères of the Province of Mozambique,
as the General Council, we follow with great concern the news and images of violence and destruction of public and private property coming out of Mozambique as a reaction to fraud and lack of transparency in the announcement of the results of the general elections – presidential, legislative, and provincial assemblies and governors – last 9th October.
The popular demonstrations, which were supposed to be peaceful, degenerated into acts of violence, which were forcefully repressed by the police forces – especially in the big cities –, causing over twenty deaths and hundreds of people injured. These manifestations of violence, which generate only hatred and death, anguish and fear, have prompted us to express, on behalf of the Institute, our closeness to each of you and to all the people of Mozambique.
We know that the whole country is going through a difficult time, and that, as a rule, those who end up suffering the harmful consequences of violent conflicts are the poorest and most defenceless people.
As the situation worsens, we ask all the confrères to remain vigilant and informed about events, and to show solidarity with those seeking truth and justice, in communion with the local Church. Undoubtedly, resilience can and must help us overcome the present adversity and find peaceful ways to give direction and hope to the people and the country.
Our presence in Mozambique over the past 77 years, inspired by the Word of God and the testimony of St. Daniel Comboni, has always stood out for its concrete ability to take on a style of mission that is committed and inserted in the reality of the people, and to make common cause with the joys and sorrows of those entrusted to us.
We encourage you, therefore, to continue to be in solidarity with the people around you, passing on to them the hope born of the Gospel. Today more than ever we are called to proclaim the Good News of peace as the only way to build a society based on respect for human dignity and concern for the most disadvantaged.
We thank God for your witness of dedication to the people with whom you share the mission, and we also feel solidarity with all Mozambican men and women who long for a better future and – today above all – for peace.
We also hope that the deep Christian tradition and the ancestral values of the people will be the pillar from which to start a serene and just reflection that will help overcome the current polarisation of forces between the government and civil society.
We pray for an immediate end to the violence in Mozambique and ask for the intercession of Saint Daniel Comboni that he may help you to live this painful moment with faith and hope.
May God bless you, protect you and give you the strength and wisdom to face these difficult times.
Let us remain united in solidarity, praying together for peace.
The MCCJ General Council
On Sunday, October 27 at 10 a.m., the Pontifical High Mass was held presided over by the Metropolitan Archbishop of Cotonou to mark the 50th anniversary of the presence in Benin of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus. After this great celebration which was attended by the Reverend Father Provincial of Togo-Ghana-Benin and several Comboni religious, the Reverend Father Chaplain invited us to the fraternal agape organized for this purpose by the Community of Comboni Missionaries residing in Benin.
After the feast, an information session and official launch of the formation of the Comboni Lay Missionaries was presided over by the Reverend Father Chaplain of the Comboni Lay Missionaries in the presence of Rose, Ulrich, Isabella, Dénise, Esperanzia of myself and the Scholastic Constantine. The Reverend Father Chaplain entrusted us to the good care of the Scholastic Constantine for our formation. From 10 a.m. when we started the celebrations, we left at 3:45 p.m. We were all very happy with the feast of COMBONI and the beginning of our accompaniment by the Reverend Father Chaplain.
Lucien Aboe
That the Comboni Family, rooted in hope and joy, may accompany the young people who are preparing to live the 39th World Youth Day, supporting their search for happiness and fullness, helping them to become protagonists of a new humanity. Let us pray.
«The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me, For the Lord has anointed me He has sent me to bring the Good News to the poor; To bind up hearts that are broken, To proclaim liberty to captives, Freedom to those in prison, To proclaim a year of favour from the Lord » (Isaiah 61,1-2a)
«The Catholic, who is used to judging things in a supernatural light, looked upon Africa, not through the pitiable lens of human interest, but in the pure light of faith; there he saw an infinite number of brothers who belonged to the same family as himself with one common Father in heaven […] then, carried away by the impetus of that love set aflame by the divine light on Calvary Hill, when it came forth from the side of the Crucified One to embrace the whole human family, he felt his heart beat faster» (Writings, 2742).
Dear Confreres, Pax et Bonum in the Lord Jesus, the missionary of the Father!
It is with a profound feeling of joy and gratitude that we greet you on the occasion of the So-lemnity of Saint Daniel Comboni. This celebration reminds us that we must keep both the “memoria” (anamnesis) both of the Founder, lived with immense passion, and his death, accepted as a gift of love for the poorest and most abandoned, in such a way that the life and mission of every spiritual son and daughter of his may truly become “love incarnate” in our missionary service.
This memorial of the heavenly birth (dies natalis) of our Holy Founder challenges us to deepen his charism, as the living heritage that must animate us in matters of mission in the world of today as “missionary disciples” of Jesus, in a Combonian manner.
Recently, we recalled the 160th anniversary of the founding charismatic experience lived by Comboni on 15 September 1984 during the triduum in preparation for the beatification of Margaret Mary Alacoque, as he prayed at the tomb of Saint Peter in Rome. It was an experience that led him to conceive the Plan for the Regeneration of Africa. That Plan is not just a text, a mere operative strate-gy or a dream to cling to but the fruit of inspiration “from above”, from the Holy Spirit, that is, that “called” Comboni and sent him to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus to the poorest and abandoned.
Thanks to his great passion for the salvation of the Africans and his missionary enthusiasm, by his life he “gave flesh” to that Plan. After him, his missionary men and women – his authentic “sons and daughters” who make his dream their own – have continued to “incarnate” that Plan with their life, their generosity, their spirit of sacrifice and their apostolic courage. We continue to do this today, while broadening and updating the original inspiration of the Founder no longer in Africa alone but in every continent, with the same spirit (charism), in the world of our time, still inhabited by persons and peoples who suffer, who are marginalised, exploited, vilified, the victims of atrocious injustice and even killed. In recent months, the situation in Sudan has become particularly dramatic, due to a con-flict that seems to have no end.
take to heart the main insights of that Plan. We would like to list some of them.
First of all, the conviction that the evangelisation of Africa must be realised by the Africans themselves, that they must not be mere spectators but become the protagonists of a new history of their own of liberation and dignity.
Second, the heartfelt appeal addressed to the whole Church to commit itself in its entirety to promoting the evangelization of Africa, calling it to gather together and commit all the missionary forces existing in the world of that time and inviting them to cooperate in a true synodal spirit.
Thirdly, the vision of mission as essentially the binomial of “The proclamation of the Gospel” and “human promotion”. A century would pass before the Church convoked the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and Pope Paul VI announced the regular convocation of the Synod of Bishops (1965). The third Synod, in 1971, produced a powerful document capable of sustaining the living ac-tion of the Church regarding the problems of justice and peace on a global level. The following state-ment of the bishops is splendidly courageous and prophetic: «Action on behalf of justice and partici-pation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preach-ing of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation» (Justice in the World, 6).
We must not fail to grasp the prophecy, the actuality or the urgency of the missionary proposal formulated in the Plan, characterised by a true missionary spirit and strategies that are valid for our time and our humanity of today. It is not unjustified to see in the vision of Comboni a veritable harmony with the thematic of the Synod on Synodality taking place in Rome at this time and which we, the children of Comboni today, are called to make our own.
However, to discover the richness of the vision of the Plan and make it operational in our lives, we must adopt the attitude of deep prayer and docility to the Spirit that the Founder had. We ask the Holy Spirit to descend upon us as He descended upon him, enabling him to “See Africa’s hour” and to feel within himself an irrepressible desire to dedicate himself entirely as a “free gift” to a new Afri-can mission that would respond to the urgencies and challenges of his time.
Ultimately, it is a question of always having the courage to start from the Lord, to be driven by his Spirit, without ever falling into the temptation of self-referentiality, which not only impoverishes the mission, but also destroys it, just as the Rules of 1871 remind us: «Completely emptied of self and deprived of every human comfort, the Missionary to Africa works only for his God, for the most abandoned peoples in the world and for eternity » (Rules of the Institute for the Missions of Africa, 1871; Writings 2702).
It is obvious that the Plan conceived by Comboni, before becoming a written document, was al-so a dream and a passion, an uncontainable force in his heart that overflowed in charity. We can say that the Plan is the expression of a love so genuine and heartfelt that it became a source of mission.
We too need to have such love! Let us ask ourselves: what passions drive me to live the mission today? How does my heart leap when I encounter injustice, oppression, cold indifference, and the many other evils of our society today? In the quotidian of my life, is there still space, time and open-ness to God for His Spirit to enter my heart and sustain it? To what extent does my love for the poor oblige me to give myself completely to them, arousing in me such a strength as to transform my life into a gift of love?
In this “missionary month” of October, we have the opportunity to follow and live the Synod of Bishops. Let us take advantage of these experiences of ecclesial communion, in sincere listening, in fraternal welcome and in walking together, aware that the Spirit who inspired Comboni can also in-spire us and help us to overcome our weaknesses and produce fruits that are an expression of the per-ennial concern that God has for all his sons and daughters, especially the weakest and suffering.
We ask for our Comboni Family the gift of being filled with a love that becomes real, as a con-crete response to the challenges of today’s mission, always ready to make common cause with the poor.
Best wishes to everyone on this joyful solemnity!
Rome, 10 October 2024
The MCCJ General Council
