Africa – Page 82 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

Two lives restored

27 June, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mk 5, 21-43 (XIII Sunday OT: June 28th 2015)

We read today Mark’s chapter five, in which we continue watching Jesus on both sides of Galilee lake with a clear message of God’s nearness to the poor and those with a “broken heart”; a message that is conveyed, not only in inspiring words, buts also in concrete gestures that confirm the words and give them a kind of “physical” consistency. Jesus performs what we can call “messianic signs”, that is, concrete actions that reveal God’s presence among his people from both “sides” of the lake: Gerasa and Capharnaum

From “impure” to God’s children
In today’s Reading we are told about the story of two women (a twelve year old girl and a grown up woman who has been sick for twelve years). In spite of being impure (as a dead body or as someone loosing blood), both are touched by Jesus and they are restored, not only to live, but also to their dignity as God’s children, able to rise up (“Get up”), to believe (“Your faith has saved you”), and to share in the banquet of life (“Give her something to eat”).
Some people may look at this episode as if Jesus were a magician, with special powers, able to produce magic effects… Certainly I have no doubts about Jesus’ power. But I do not think that this is the right perspective to understand what happened in the river of Galilee Lake or what it continues to happen with many believers today. The right perspective is to consider this and other episodes as “messianic signs”, that is, actions and gestures that flow out of two fundamental elements:
–The extraordinary capacity that Jesus has to love and be in communion with people in their concrete situations, beyond and in spite of traditional taboos; to be in deep and close relationship with people, taking very seriously the reality of each person; to communicate to others his own experience of the Father’s loving nearness. As Benedict XVI says, only love redeems. When somebody is loved, he or she recovers the dignity and becomes able to rise up and have full live.
– The faith of humble people, who, threatened by sickness and death, raise their hearts and their hopes to God as their last refuge. In my missionary live in Africa, Europe and America, I have met quite often people like the dad of that twelve years old girl o that woman in despair because of a humiliating sickness.
Before such situation of distress, people look for any kind of possible help: medicine, prayer, advice… anything that can be a ray of hope. Many people rebuke them, scoff them, pity them… But they need to be taken seriously and respected in their anguish and hope. This is precisely what Jesus does: from his deep experience of communion with the Father he is able to be in communion with those God’s children who are crossing a sea of difficulties and despair and having doubts about their own value and dignity.

Word and action
All human beings, included those who appear most self-assured, are feeble creatures exposed to sicknesses, suffering, despise, dangers and, after all, death, even if a miracle expands our limited time of existence. That’s why I do not think that the objective of Jesus’ miracles was to extend for a while our live, but an altogether different live, marked by the confidence in a real, dignifying and fruitful God’s love. After Jesus “sign” to them, the two women we see in today’s reading could say truly: “I am important for Jesus, I am important for God, I am important for the community of Jesus’ friends. What is important for me is not that I am sick, but that I am a GOD’s CHILD.
This is the central message given by Jesus. And to pass it out to people, He uses words and “messianic signs” that appear in a double quality:
–They are quite concrete and practical, related to the real life of people; they are a concrete help to solve a concrete problem of people’s life.
–They go beyond their concrete effect: even if they are quite material, they are more than that: they communicate something very especial about the person, empowering her to get up, enjoy life and become a helper to others
That is why the Christian mission, following the steps of Jesus, walks always on this double principle: word and action, faith and charity, material and spiritual. Both dimensions are essential and recall each other: word without action degenerates in lie; action without word misses its saving meaning.
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma

CLM aspirants in Ghana reflect upon the faith of Comboni

21 June, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

As agreed at our last meeting in Abor, this 13^th June, we met at Dadome, an outstation of Mafi-Kumase. This time, the theme of reflection is “the Faith of Comboni”.

Comboni is said to be of multifaiths. He has faith in God, in his vocation, in the Church, in his Institution. But at the top of all is his faith in God in which the rest come out. He has a doubt at the beginning about leaving his parents. But when confirmed by his spiritual director about the truthfulness and clarity of his vocation, he went straight forward. In his zeal to evangelize Africa, he went to the Pope Pius the IXth and even rectified a wrong conception on Africans. His faith in the Church pushed him to say: “Whatever displeases the Church displeases me.” He went forth declaring:” I have sold my will…I am totally obedient to the Church.” Though he was so engaged in the mission in Africa, he was ready to leave it if the Church ordered it. Comboni received his strength in prayer. He said: “Without prayer, we die.” His time of prayer was also spent for mortification. Comboni has a pragmatic understanding of faith because he thought that “faith is an antidote against slavery.”

After this discussion, we went on to think about few issues. The first is about our presence in the Board of Trustees of In My Father’s House, a Combonian Institution witnessing the Good News to the poor and vulnerable. The second one is the creation of a Vocational Center in the same Institution. We postponed any decision making on these two issues for our coming meeting on the 11^th July at Abor.

Justin Nougnui, coordinator.

“Let us cross to the other side”

20 June, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A Commentary on Mk 4, 35-41 (¡2th Sunday of O.T., June 21first 2015)

To cross boundaries
Last Sunday we saw Jesus by the Sea of Galilee teaching to a large crowd about the Kingdom of God in an inspiring language. Today we read how Jesus, on the eve of the same day, invited his disciples to get into a boat and cross to “the other side”. It is quite evident for me that this expression –“the other side”- has in the gospel a deeper meaning than just a geographical one. We know that the other side of the lake was populated by people of different culture and religious practices. As a matter of fact, several times in the gospels Jesus appears pushing his disciples to walk to other villages and towns and to go and meet Samaritans, sinners, pagans an other kinds of “different people”.
This missionary attitude of Jesus was assumed by the Church from the very beginning, after Resurrection, till our times. Paul, for example, was “forced” by the Spirit to cross the border from Asia into Europe (Macedonia); Francois Xavier expanded the Gospel to the Far East Asia; Daniel Comboni, with others, opened the borders of Africa to the Church… And son many other missionaries.
In our days, the Church cannot remain locked in a glorious missionary past. Also today the Church is invited by the Spirit to cross new geographical, cultural and religious boundaries to share the treasure of the Gospel with XXI century humanity: with refugees and migrants, with young people who look for a new future and old people who feel abandoned, people who move around as seep with no shepherd… We all should ask ourselves: To which side does Jesus invites us to cross today? Where are the boundaries to which that my family, my parish, my community should move now?

To get into the sea and resist the squalls
We know that in the Bible the sea is an image of the evil that we can meet in the world, with its dangerous waves and violent storms, that can destroy the small boat of our personal life or even the fragile community we belong to.
In fact, when we leave the small “protected world” of our routine, where we have everything under control, surely we face obstacles and problems that we are not sure how to overcome. When we leave behind the “existential walls” of our parish, family or community, most surely we will have to confront a hostile world, opposed to our way of life. The outside world can become a formidable threat to our weak faith and fragile community.
A moment like this is what Mark describes in todays’ reading, reminding us of the disciples lesson: they did not act as super-heroes; they acknowledged their fear and prayed very sincerely from their anguish. That was the moment to shout out to the Lord with great sincerity and conviction: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

…And the Lord was with them
Mark’s story brings to us the experience of those first members of the Church. They experienced persecution and strong oppositions; in those circumstances they doubted and were afraid, thinking that the Lord was sleeping and absent, but at the end they experienced that the Lord was very much alive and full or power over evil, in spite of their little faith.
For us, as for the first disciples, it’s very important that, in any missionary initiative, we carry the Lord in “our boat”. We should not go on mission only with our enthusiasm, strength and creativity. If the mission is just our own initiative, when the wind blows, most probably we are going to sink. But if we take the Lord with us (in his Word, his sacraments, his community, his Spirit…), when the difficult time comes, surely we are going to feel his presence, we will be able to shout out to him, He will answer and we shall reach the other side ready to spread the Good News

Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma

Seed grows of itself

13 June, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mark 4, 26-34, Eleventh Sunday, Ordinary Time, June 14th

We have already left behind the Paschal Liturgical time (Lent, Passover, and Pentecost) and the solemnities of the Holy Trinity and the Body of Christ. We are now again in the Ordinary time reassuming the reading of Mark. This Eleventh Sunday we read a few verses from Mark’s chapter four. As a matter of fact, I invite you to read the whole chapter so that you can have a better idea of Jesus’ message for today. From that reading, I share with you two reflections:

1) A crowd near the lake of Galilee
As you know, Jesus stablished his operational centre at Capharnaum, a small town by the side of Lake Galilee. His presence in that town and surroundings caused a great impact and people rushed in hundreds to get near him and listen to him, because his words were so especially clear, simple, and relevant that their hearts were “burning”. Jesus, farmer among farmers, fisher among fishers, worker among workers, felt quite at easy with that simple people, exposed to the sufferings and hardships of life, hungry for truth and sense, who found no answers in rigid and sclerotic traditions little related to real life. On the contrary, from an affective nearness to their worries an everyday fights and from his contemplative experience in the desert, Jesus was able to express himself in touching parabolic narrations, explaining the mystery of God and his kingdom in a language related to every day’s life in the fields, de fishing ports and the ordinary life.
The gospel of Jesus is made to be understood and preached from the every one’s ordinary life. Or spiritual life must be measured, not so much by the fine words we can say, but by or concrete life and actions.
And all those of us who have a responsibility in passing on to others the Gospel of Jesus (parents, teachers, catechists, priests…) have to look at this Teacher who is able to explain the presence of God in a language related to the concrete life of people.

2) Seed does not need to be pulled up
Forgive me this obvious reflection, but I think that it can help us to grasp Jesus’ message in today’s gospel:
Discúlpenme esta obviedad, pero me parece que sirve para entender bien lo que nos dice Jesús en el evangelio de hoy: “seed would sprout and grow…. On its accord the land will yield fruit”. Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is like a seed that God sows in our heart, our community, our family… and it grows of itself, as far as it’s welcomed in a well-kept land. For the wheat to produce fruit it does not help that somebody goes and pulls it up; it’s of not use to try hard and pull it up. No. Wheat must grow by itself, from its inner energy that God has planted in it.
Don’t you think that quite often some parents look like they try to force their children to grow from outside and impose on them fruits that God has not meant for them? Don’t you think that sometimes in our communities or families we try to force people to be what they are not? Do no happen to ourselves that we try to force ourselves to appear before others as powerful and immaculate, with the result that we become bitter, hypercritical, and negative?
I think that Jesus, with this parable of the seed that grows of itself is inviting us, not to be lazy or passive, but serene and trustful; He wants his disciple to trust the Truth and Love, the kingdom that the Father has sown on all o sous, in our communities and families. What we have to do is to cultivate our piece of land, freeing it from stones and rubbish. All the rest will be done in us by the Spirit.
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Rome

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