America – Page 55 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

“God invites me to discover my missionary vocation”

28 August, 2019 by Alberto de la Portilla

I am Monica Cervantes Suarez, I am 18, and I was born in the city of Sahuayo, Michoacán. I am about to start my university studies majoring in integrative medicine. I wish to share with you my experience in this missionary journey. Beginning when I was denied access to the career I wanted, I started looking for something else that would fill this void I felt, because I was far removed from God, and even though my parents are active in Church family movements, I kept a distance from all that.

I must confess that, if I had any missionary inclination, it was more out of curiosity about knowing different cultures and traditions, above all for the adventure, for seeing new places, etc. I had the opportunity to attend a national mission congress for children and adolescents with the them: “WITH JOSELITO IN THE MISSIONARY HEART OF VOCATION.” I really did not know what I was doing there and at the beginning I felt out of place, but everything changed within me when I realized that I needed to discover my life’s mission.

After this experience, I decided to get in touch with the CLM Beatriz, who had spoken on the Missionary Vocation and given an account of her life at the Congress, to ask her to let me attend the mission camp. Having received a positive answer, I started with my formation to attend the Holy Week Mission Camp. I was waiting for my departure day with much enthusiasm but, when the time came, I felt both a lot of fear and at times joy, because what I had been awaiting for so many years was about to come.

We arrived at the parish of Metlatonoc, a community of Vicente Guerrero, where I stayed for a week. We faced several difficulties to get there, including a long journey, and steep uphill roads where we had to leave the car and walk to the place. But staying in the community I had the chance to discover that there is greater joy in giving than in receiving and also that a missionary learns from the community that accepted us with joy and enthusiasm. We worked as a team. We worked with the girls, forming three teams to share the themes and the eucharistic celebrations. Because we had no priests, we did not have the Eucharist, but we had the celebration of the Word in which I was chosen to lead the Easter Vigil. I felt a great responsibility and, wanting everything to turn out well, I was very nervous. Just the same, by the end I felt the peace and joy of having lived this great experience. Without a doubt, the Lord was able to seduce and trap me so that I may continue to serve. Coming back, I could look at life differently, trying to see always the positive side of things. I continued to follow the missionary activities and the meetings that have helped me to discover my vocation.

I just finished attending another National Youth Missionary Congress in July, in Villa Hermosa, Tabasco. The theme invited me to go beyond myself: CHRISTIAN YOUTH AT THE PERIPHERIES OF THE WORLD. There I could share experiences with people of my age who, just like myself, have questions as they try to discover their journey in a life of service in mission.

Now I am anxiously waiting for the formation retreat that will take place at the Comboni Seminary of San Francisco del Rincón, Gto. There I will start the process of formation as a Comboni Lay Missionary, since I feel that I identify with the missionary charism of St. Daniel Comboni.

Mónica Cervantes Suarez

Vocational and missionary week in Balsas, Brazil

20 August, 2019 by Alberto de la Portilla

Some members of the Comboni Family (a priest, a brother, a sister and laity of the Group of Comboni Spirituality), most of them originally from the diocese of Balsas, held a week of missionary and vocational animation in Balsas (MA) in the parishes of Our Lady of Perpetual Help and of St. Anthony. There were several celebrations with beautiful testimonies, moments lived in a family atmosphere and missionary passion. The activity was also held in view of the Great Parish Missionary Week that will take place in November in the same city, and also marked the celebration of the 25th anniversary of consecrated life of Sr. Maria do Socorro Ribeiro, a Comboni Missionary Sister of Balsas, which was celebrated on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary and Day of Religious and Consecrated Life in Brazil. The missionary and vocational week was an initiative of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish and was carried out with the commitment and participation of the Group of Comboni Spirituality together with some invited religious and missionaries.

Fr Raimundo Rocha, mccj

Prayer Intentions of the Comboni Family August 2019

1 August, 2019 by Alberto de la Portilla

August – That families, through their life of prayer and love, become ever more clearly “schools of true human growth”. Lord hear us.

The color of love

26 July, 2019 by Alberto de la Portilla

Perhaps our idea of mission and of the world is a little rosy, but for me mission is a rainbow of colors, emotions, instants and learning. Mission is more than the vast blue sky I embrace every day at the beginning and at the end of it, it is more than the brown color of the desert’s sand that covers the ground. It is also more than the green of the scenery where some trees fight to stay green, or the grey of foggy days hiding the volcanos. Mission is an immensity of colors. It is the color of the faces that make me smile and the color of the stories I listen to hour after hour reminding me about what we are made of, and it is the color of all those hearts that teach me how it is possible to love more. But it is also the color of the smiles, the hugs, the tears and the color of the natural and human scenery. The daily mission to stick with them has a lot of colors.

They are the children who call to me in the streets or in the kindergarten, where I joyfully share my returning to being a child with them, giving myself without fear. They are the elderly who freely dance when they come to visit since, allow me to say it, for them we are often the only family they have. There are real stories of survival and struggle. Or the families when we gather to share it all, which is the sum of individual parts because it through this occasion that we meet and donate of ourselves without preconceptions or conditions, simply because that’s the way it is. It is also in the daily visits where I find the true meaning of my walking around and where I see the colors of the world here and now. Here in this little burg I daily live the experience of being me, with the essence of all the colors I feel inside and of those I allow myself to see in the world.

I confess to you that often I allow myself to be molded by them, by their experience of life and of God, that I allow myself to observe and where I have many teachers. So, I allow myself to get out of myself in order to learn from them. I always believed that they did not call me for nothing else but to love. To love these people, this culture and these customs. To love in all its aspects, in the falls in the errors, in the getting up and with the hope of being a better version of myself every single day. And even though over a year has gone by, I keep on learning from them – we learn together. Thus, each day I discover another color both inside and outside me, in this interchange of life, histories and faces where every day I discover the color of love.

PS. Love is not of one color. Love will also have the color you choose!

With love and gratitude,

Neuza Francisco, CLM

Prayer of the Comboni Family 2019 May

5 May, 2019 by Alberto de la Portilla

May – That women may be ever more aware of their specific role and talents and participate fully in the life and leadership of the Church. Lord hear us.