Comboni Lay Missionaries

Meeting to celebrate the 150th nniversary of the “Plan for the regeneration of Africa”

congreso RomaAfrica, Continent on journey.

Dear friends, while participating to the 13-14-15 March meeting on “Africa on journey”, organized on the occasion of the 150 years of the “Plan for the regeneration of Africa”, inspired by God to our founder St. Daniel Comboni, I offer you, as a reflection, the Fulvio de Giorgi’s conclusive synthesis that collects the substance of these three day workshops, intensely and joyfully lived in the exchange and in the encounter of the whole Comboni family.

The meeting has seen its conclusion in the Eucharistic celebration presided by card. Fernando Filoni.

We thank the General Mother Luzia Premoli who opened the meeting by wishing us her welcome and presenting the program of these days, and thank, as well, the General Father Enrique Sanchez Gonzalez who closed the meeting workshops with the invitation to develop in our life and in our missionary work the reflections which emerged out of the meeting itself. “We have walked together and it has given us the opportunity of breathing new fresh air, the one – we cannot deny it – that, as we know, is now changing the whole human world. Now starting from this new sensibility, says fr. Enrique, Comboni’s dream reveals itself to be beautiful, actual and greatly challenging.

Let us remember that Africa has no need of donors, because it is able to grow by itself and is ever more conscious of its own strength, as our missionaries realize while living on the spot.

It is not by an accident that our institutes are themselves getting strength   through so many confreres coming from Africa and this fact is the demonstration of how true is Comboni’s Plan. Africa has to become the protagonist of its own history.

congreso RomaThe gift of the Pan received by Comboni was not a gift just for him, but it was for all those who, after him, were going to live with the strength of the Spirit contained in it.

The fact is that Africa has got something which nobody else has. It has a life of its own; and this is a particular, precious gift for all mankind. It is a thing that can’t be explained, but must be lived; it is an experience of love. Therefore I wish for all of you to continue this way, i. e. to continue with new freshness this experience of love for this new African youth”.

I leave you this beautiful synthesis on the topics of the meeting, which has been prepared by Fulvio De Giorgi. I have brought it home in order to share it with you.

My greetings to all of you and a fruitful mission as well.

Rosanna Braglia, CLM Italy

congreso Roma “If Daniel Comboni were here, on seeing all this, he would have his heart full of consolation and of joy at the spectacle of such a grown up Africa, of the sons and daughters of his institutions involved in this great project, of his dream partly already a reality with so many fruits, as well and especially in women’s laity, and partly still just a track which has to be followed for the future.

This is the main fruit of our meeting and it keeps on calling us to set us in a new direction. It is fundamental to say this, and all the participants to the meeting have underlined it, that about Africa there must never more be a negative, catastrophic, sad way of looking.

Pope Francis reminds us that “only the ones who look for the happiness of their neighbours, can be missionaries”. A thought which reminds us of what Comboni said: “It is the Sacred Heart of Jesus that helps me to overcome all the enormous obstacles I have to face in order to make true my Plan for the regeneration of the African people with the African peoples themselves”.

The key words are two: ‘PLAN’ and ‘HEART’.

The first word is “PLAN” [here it is to be taken into account that in Italian the corresponding word has several meanings. Note of the translator]. What is a Plan? It is project which challenges the critical capacities of each one and asks as well for the commitment of the will supported by great hope.

All of us, any continent we come from, are called to decolonize our hopes, our designs, our plans, our ways of looking, trusting in a hope that is greater than we are, and supports us in our commitment. The decolonization of the way of looking cleans up our eyes and helps us to see well the fact that Africa is keeping on growing, and that Europe can become its partner in its positive factors. The fact is that in Africa we can find a kind of New Renaissance. Europe can cooperate to it, by walking together in friendship.

The Africa of the African peoples has told us that it wants to live in fullness its life at the side of the other peoples. Therefore (decolonizing the way of thinking and overcoming stereotypes) dispersion and transcontinental emigration in all directions are a source of benefit in spite of the fact that they are caused by the inequalities existing inside the Country itself of the emigrants, and of the great sufferings they bring with themselves.

But it is important not to fix these events once and for all inside a negative horizon of death, but to set them free and regenerate them as an occasion, as a chance, for a more various and more beautiful world.

Here we are: more beautiful! The expositions of photos, the sculptures, the films and music offered in this meeting oblige us to recognize, generally speaking, the great beauty and aesthetic creativity coming from the new African art, from the new cinema. And our hope can better see what is positive, underlying connections which are going to become projects and plans growing around us.

The word “Plan” [having in mind the Italian word] includes also the idea of levelling out, that is of filling up vallies and lowering mountains, of putting all things to the same level. And here we are reminded of the sermon in Mathew’s Gospel, the one of Jesus on the mountain, the one Luke calls Sermon on the Plain, where we read also the threatening word “Woe to you rich!”. If all of us are on the same level, we can look each other directly in the eyes; in this way injustices and inequalities become unbearable. “Throwing down the powerful from their thrones and setting up the humble” is the dynamic of the MAGNIFICAT.

In this way we understand, as Samia Nkrumah (minister in his country) has said, that it is a right for the African peoples that they may control their economy for the benefit of the peoples of Africa themselves and may find the way for Pan-Africanism.

To set at the same level means to fill up the valleys and the abyss of corruption in the government lists; it means also to recognize that the walk to African democracy must be autonomous and new and not in the European forms. Certainly it will be a walk with lights and shades, of corrupt and dictatorial governments; but even the failure of the african leaderships must not slow down the understanding of the citizens in order to set to a better level their political directories, so that these ones may be uninterested about their particular profit and form agents of social trasformation, as Efrem Tresoldi said (Nigrizia), quoting Pierli.

Levelling means also to throw down the mountains of enmities and hatreds, the mountains of internal wars and of the accumulation of arms, as Maurice Simoncelli (Archivio Disarmo) has demonstrated; “always looking for the levelled way of peace and stability” according to the observation of Alfred Mantica (Interventions of Italy in Africa). The result will be that the Africas at the plural, towards which our walk is directed, are the Africa of justice, the Africa of peace, the Africa of the safeguard of creation, the Africa of rights.

But “Plan” [considering another meaning of the italian word] reminds us also that it is better to proceed “slowly”. The ones who know the letters written by Comboni should remember that he used to say: “Yes, many missionaries are in a hurry; you however go slowly.” Exaltation of slowliness (!), if it means “patient, perseverant listening and discernment, walking together without leaving anybody behind”. It means, then, an inclusive and participative ecclesiological plan, with a female profile, too, as sister Luzia Premoli (general superior of the Comboni Sisters) said together with sister Elisa Kidanè (Comboni Fem); a plan which is being put into practice in the small Christian communities, as card. Petrer Turkson told us.

From many sides it has been noted the importance of historical information in order to overcome the wounds of past discriminations and of more or less recent civil wars. All countries and continents have gone through them; but all of us must tell each other that, in order to go on, we must talk to each other and look together for a purification of the memory and of a history, if not co-participated, at least inclusive of the different points of view.

Patience and discernment are necessary, and not a hasty simplification.

Patience = going slowly. Also as a Church that reconciles and lives as God’s family, we have the task of asking ourselves about the salvation history that is evolving in God’s today and about the responsibilities to which we are called.

The second word is “HEART”. The Heart of Christ. The heart has two fundamental movements: systole and diastole.

In the Heart of Christ these two movements are incarnationism and escatologism.

On one side, incarnation. The Gospel penetrates and becomes flesh in all today cultures in order to make them flourish into liberation and salvation. A penetrating Gospel becomes inculturated taking on itself the cultural complexities in the pluralism of evolving identities. Today the Gospel has a half-cast face.

This incarnation, then, can discover, accept, give the due value, as the (theologian) Martin N’Kafu has said, to all the signs of the time, wherever they may be. Only in this way we shall have an African theology, not because it has been re-elaborated in Africa, but because it can collect in itself and make flourish all the seeds of the Word spread in African cultures and religions, excluding no cultural, geographic and human element.

This incarnation, as Cècile Kyengue (member of a european parlament) has told us, looks for the primacy of life and therefore is opposed and fights against any human being’s traffic and against the new slavery, i.e. against the horizons of violence and death in which it is Christ himself who is badly treated and killed.

In this enculturation, step by steps with the incarnation, a great role and a great responsibility is put on the modern means of communication, on TV and press. Frs. Jules Albanese and Fabrizio Colombo have underlined this aspect together with the guests of the round table.

Therefore a positive growth of communication in Africa, considering together digital and paper, runs on the line of internet, always making visible and transparent the positive side which is growing in it, like “THE PEARL”, defined by sr. Elisa Kidanè, in the deep respect of the person. The matter is not to give voice to the ones who have no voice, but, perhaps, to give no further voice to the ones who have already too much of it. Therefore the task is to go on decolonizing the way of looking also in Comboni mission press.

But at the side of the first movement, the Heart of Christ has the movement of the escatologism, i.e. the capacity of detaching one selves from any injustice, any idol, any horizon limited to this world. All of us Christians, any continent we belong to, are like foreigners in this world, “we are in the world, but we do not belong to the world.”

François Kamkindi said: “I feel at home in many places”: This is nice, but we can say more “The kingdom of which we are citizens, our true country, is not this world”.

I conclude with a saying of the 12th century, of a great mystic, Hugh of St. Victor: “The one who finds sweet his country, is but a tender beginner. The one for whom every land is one’s own land, is already a strong person.”

“But the only perfect person is the one for whom the whole world is a foreign country.” I took this sentence from a Bulgarian author who lived in France, who borrowed it from Eduard Said, a Palestinian who lived in USA, who, on his side, took it from a German author exiled in Turkey!”

Fulvio De Giorgi.

First recollection of the aspirants CLM in Ghana:

LMC Ghana

As decided at the preceding meeting, we had our recollection on this 21st at Mafi-Kumase where our chaplain resides. The theme of the recollection was RECONCILIATION. The schedule of the day was as followed: first talk, a breakfast, confession and personal prayer, lunch, personal meditation, second talk and mass.

The development of the topic took three main parts: the definition of reconciliation, fertile grounds for reconciliation and the obstacles to reconciliation. Reconciliation is a gift from God. He is the initiator who searches for the lost ones for the restoration of harmony. Reconciliation is needed to better our relationship with God, each other and with ourselves. Father said that sins separate us from God. Among the fertile grounds, our Chaplain mentioned the admittance of responsibility, making up of the relationship, the need for the offender and the offended to see the necessity to better their relation, patience and tolerance, humility. The offended has to give to the offender the benefit of doubt. Those are some of the attitudes that lead to reconciliation. For the obstacles, he mentioned the stubbornness of the offender, the pride of both, shame, the sense of righteousness, intolerance, anger, guessing people’s hidden motives and the fact to retaliate. Sometimes, the culture also does not create a conducive environment for reconciliation. It is a fact where e.g. it is believed in some cultures that the elderly person cannot be wrong. For a younger one who is truly right to accept this part of the culture up to reconcile with his offender is a great challenge.

Before the mass, we decided on the coming meeting on the 11th April. We also elected Vivian Mackenzie to be our treasurer. Just after the mass, we departed from the place.

Justin Nougnui, coordinator.

Letter from Gulu (Uganda)

LMC en Uganda

Here in St Jude (Gulu), we are a community of 4 CLM who live and work here. We are very lucky, because around us live some Ugandan CLM, Comboni brothers, sisters and fathers who are much opened. We know that all the time we can count on them, when we need something they always help. We feel a big big support from them. Even when we had difficult time here, when we were a bit down, they came to us to give us a good word, to speak, to be with us. This particular moments showed us that we are really a family not only when is a big feast, celebration but we are together also in difficult and sad time. It was very nice to feel it.

We organised our community life, which is very important for us. Every day we discover how big blessing community is for each of us. It is nice to come back from work and speak, talk about doubts, about nice and bad moment, it is very nice to have this opportunity to share. Every one of us is involved in many things but we have our own community moments. We pray together every day. Each of us is responsible for one day per week and prepare evening prayer. We have our own small chapel in the house, so in the evening we gather there to pray, share and give thanks for every day, praying also for strength and love for next day. Wednesday is our community day what means we go together to the Mass that we offer for our community. Another time when we are together are during the meals. This is time when we can share our work, experience, ask about something, discuss and received advises.

Once a month we have a retreat day that is in Layibi. Sometimes we ask father to prepare something for us and sometimes we just go to think, to be calm and to pray in peace. Usually is half a day and later we have a chance to speak with fathers in Layibi to ask about a lot of things, to compare our experience, to received some advices from them, because they have long experience working among Acholi people.

We have created our first community project. We created this educational project for children to give them opportunity to go to school or to continue education. Education in Uganda is very expensive, parents must pay a lot of money and really, they do not have. So we decided to make this project for this kind of families, children. We included also our workers. Each of them could choose one child from family and we paid one term of school year. The same situation is with our mothers. Other part of our project is to support children for whole year. With the help of one of our worker, we chose 11 children from very poor families and we decided to support them for whole year. Of course, we chose children who are really good, whose results were good and who wanted to continued learning. All of them they are from Secondary School and their situation at home is very difficult. Most of them they are orphans, another with father who is drunker, another with many children so studying is impossible. So we support them paying them school fees and other requirements (like exams fees, uniforms).

About our work… I (Asia) still help bro. Elio to keep properly administration and account department. This kind of work I do it up to lunch break. Later I am a teacher and special need’s teacher. I try to introduce English, because our children have a big problem with that. I also work with one autistic girl, I try to find a communication channel with her. I want this lessons to let her grow up, spread horizons. I work also with older children. I prepare them to exams, the last exams in the school.

Ewa spend much time with the babies while their “mothers” work in the barn (before they were alone by the compound doing all sorts of “dangerous” things for them).

 

Also put some movies to the older kids that are a little “off the hook” for the kind of life that has been here more focused on the kids. Ewa is very in touch with everyone, and that we “drag” to play basketball, volleyball or whatever with them…

An institution level she is responsible for workers, to bring some control schedules. Also enjoys working with mothers in the physical work every day, putting corn, millet, beans and other things to dry, then you put them into the silos.

With older boys we have a beautiful project, we want together to put in order dormitories and prepare an special place for them inside with tables and chairs to allow them to read, draw and talk instead find them every time around the compound with nothing to do.

Carmen is ordering (with them) to “whitewash” the rooms, we painted the lockers, they were very old and faded colour, with the colours of the Ugandan flag, who elected them, and now we will put the names with “cool” letters.

After we want also to paint a scene (or some sports or movie) on one of the inside walls. We will use the projector to copy the image because of that all of them can help (obviously, everyone wants to participate).

I help with the organization of storage and distribution of food, clothing and other necessities for children. Everything is posted to better manage resources.

I like to work in the store like Ewa, we are very proud of how foods are perfectly placed, after much work, for use it in the dry season.
In our free time we enjoy sharing with children with mobility problems, for all of us they are very special.

Monica is doing a great job with them, physiotherapy to try to remove some of that rigidity that has blocked the majority. She is also doing gymnastics with children who have trouble mobilization but well “head” and they love it.

All enjoyed when sat together with them in the fresh atmosphere, with music, toys, changing position, with the help of lots of colourful cushions we have done with the old foam mattresses.

We felt at home despite some misunderstandings arising from the difference in our cultures, but the will is good and we are taking good care of each other. In times of difficulty, we greatly appreciate being together and being so well, we thank the community that we are.

As you can see, we are involved in many activities. Every day we try to find something different to do with children to change some routine. Every day we try to do our best to our best to make their lives better, happier and more interesting.

CLM in Gulu-Uganda

Peace, joy, forgiveness, mission

A commentary on Jn 20, 19-31 Second Sunday of Easter, April 12th 2015

vigo-hermanitas++++In this second Sunday of Easter we continue Reading the 20th chapter of John’s Gospel, which tells us what happened in that “first day of the week”, that is, at the beginning of the “new creation”, the new time in history that we are living as communities of Jesus’ disciples and missionaries. The experience of Jesus’ living presence among the disciples happens again eight days later, specifically meant for Thomas…, and it continues happening each Sunday (every eight days), when the Christian community gathers to celebrate the Lord’s presence.
The Gospel tells us that Thomas did not believe till he could see the hands and the wounded side of Jesus. It is precisely out of this “broken” side of Jesus, his totally self-given heart, that the Church springs up and the Spirit flows out into humanity with the wonderful gifts of peace, joy, forgiveness and mission. Let us see briefly:

P10009071) “Peace to you”
Jesus says the traditional greeting words used by Jews and some other cultures even today. Nowadays, we would maybe say something like this: “Hello, how are you, I wish you peace and wellbeing”. Not too much? Well, I think it is quite a lot. I remember when Pope Francis, just elected, came out at the St. Peter’s balcony and simply said: “Buona sera” (Good evening). It was enough for the crowd to react with enthusiasm and great joy. There was no need for a big and profound speech; only that: a simple word of greeting conveying an attitude of openness and friendship.
With this, I consider the importance and beauty of a simple but loving greeting among the members of a family, re-asserting each day that care for each other that gives joy to life; I think of a respectful and positive greeting at the working place; I see that stretched out hand that we give during Mass recognising in our neighbour a brother or a sister, even if we do not know each other; I observe that kind of welcoming gesture or word to the foreigner… I think of the World peace that we need so badly in these times of violence and conflict. In all these situations, Jesus is the first one to tell me: “Hello, peace to you”. So that I myself can repeat the greeting to others.
It’s interesting to note that, as He was greeting the disciples, Jesus shows his hands and side with the signs of the torture He suffered. That means that the peace Jesus is offering is not a “cheap” one. It was “bought” with His own blood. That means that peace in the family, in the community, in the working place, in the world, is not always easy, it’s quite often a difficult task… But Jesus –and we with Him– was not a coward, but a “warrior”, with no fear to suffer if necessary.

2) Joy: “The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord”.
The presence of Jesus, with His peace, produces joy, as it does the arrival of a friend, or the mutual acceptance in the family or in the community. It’s not a “superficial” joy, that hides difficulties, problems or even sins; it’s not the joy of the one who lies to himself in a false reality or in unawareness.
It’s the joy of the one who feels respected and able to respect; the one who knows He is loved and able to love; the one who believes He is really a blessed child of the Father. It’s the deep joy of somebody who found a sense and a mission for his/her life. It’s the joy of somebody who met Jesus as a faithful friend, a trustful master, and a Lord that wins wrong with goodness.

3) Forgiveness: “If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven”.
The joy of the disciple is not the joy of somebody that considers himself “prefect” or pretends to do everything perfectly. It’s the joy of that person who accepts to be forgiven and is ready to sow seeds of forgiveness. Jesus gave to His Church the Spirit of forgiveness, mercy and reconciliation. Pope Francis re-instated in our times this “mercy principle”. The Church is not a place of lawful righteousness or a Court of Justice; the Church is a place of mercy and reconciliation, a place where everybody has a chance to try a new beginning. Without mercy, humanity becomes impossible to live, because all of us are in need of mercy. Peace, mercy, brotherhood… we need them so much; they are a fruit of the Spirit the Risen Lord gives out to us.

4) Mission: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you”
The community of disciples, pacified, pardoned, built up as a house of mercy, becomes a missionary community, sent to the world to be precisely that: a house of mercy, reconciliation and peace. And really, how much does our world need that! How necessary it is to increase and spread out the communities of disciples that, as humble believers, become in the world spaces of peaceful greetings, forgiveness and deep joy!
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Roma

[Mozambique] Missionary Animation in the Parish of the Holy Cross

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The fourth weekend of each month, the CLM in Mozambique, have the habit of meeting for basic training and lifelong learning. These meetings are mainly for training but on certain occasions a parish is chosen for Missionary Animation. As it was done this March 28, in the Parish of the Holy Cross, in the city of Nampula, starting on Saturday afternoon, we presented ourselves at a group of this parish, consisting of singles and young couples.

???????????????????????????????We share the word of God and we talked about the movement of the CLM at the level of Mozambique and in the world. Deepening phrases of St. Daniel Comboni who says: “Save Africa with Africa”, “I die, but my work will not die”, “thousand lives for a mission,” “The works of God are born and grow at the foot of the Cross “; all this was cause for our reflection.

???????????????????????????????Once finished on Saturday, on Sunday 29, we were in the community of San Juan de Brito, which belongs to the same parish where our animation culminated with much joy and coinciding with Palm Sunday. Where is celebrated the day of youth. At the end of the celebration, we met to continue talking about our movement, particularly the activities in the parish of Carapira and the Industrial School.

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Therefore, after the presentation of the phrases of St. Daniel Comboni, we mentioned above, people with the need to reflect, requested the translation in their local language (Macua). Among other translations, focused heavily on “Saving Africa with Africa” in macua “Wopola w’África nor Africa”. They gave various examples. Believers of this community were moved from this animation, having the need to be more informed. So, we left an opening dialogue through our contact.

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Another important aspect that we talked about was the family that is rich because today has Priests, Brothers, Sisters Laity and secular.

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By last, we appreciate the availability and receipt of the parish, and this community. At the end they still offered us some products of “machamba” (orchard).

By Rui Evaristo Assane, CLM candidate

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