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.
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!
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.
In Guatemala we, the local CLM, started this year 2019 asking God to enlighten us on where we were going to serve this year. In Santa Caratina Pinula we are continuing with the program of child nutrition of Chispuditos. However, we are temporarily leaving behind the monthly day of mission experience there and we are ready for a new location… to bring joy… faith, hope… peace… consolation, in solidarity with the injustice and deficiencies suffered by other Guatemalan brothers.
Now the Lord is bringing us to the municipality of Chinautla, in the Guatemala department.
Its center is Santa Cruz. It is located in the northern part of the department of Guatemala, only about 12 km from the capital. They are famous for their hand-made pottery. The entire population is indigenous and they are ethnic Pocomam.
They have been suffering under a lot of political abuse and corruption, because the mayor’s office has been monopolized by the same mayor since 1985. He has always supported whatever government has been in power, until he was arrested for corruption in 2015. In spite of the arrest, this individual was able to have his own niece elected mayor for the 2016-2020 term and got out of prison a few months after his capture, the gravity of the accusations facing him notwithstanding.
The people are poor and abandoned… the municipality of Chinautla does not allow the garbage trucks to drive over there, because they want to discourage the people so they will leave and then they will be able to exploit the village construction material. So the locals throw the garbage here and there, especially in the river that crosses the village, because they do not know where to put it, or how to take it to the main dump. They live in extreme poverty, have no place to go… nor will they want to… it is their land… all of them are owners.
That is where Jesus has guided our steps… all for his honor and glory. Fr. Roberto Gómez Palma is the pastor of Chinautla, people are mostly Catholics and the evangelical sects have not done much of anything. We have been there a couple of times, on February 23 and March 16, and we already see that the people are friendly and trusting. They send their children to our activities. Both the older and the younger ones come on their own, very independent and sure of themselves.
We ask the Lord to give us all we need to proclaim the Kingdom and share the joy of the Gospel. Also that he give us light to identify the needs where we can cooperate as Comboni Lay Missionaries. We place ourselves in the hands of Providence and trust in the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, in the style of Comboni.
“Holy and Capable, making common cause with the poorest and most abandoned”
(St. Daniel Comboni)
Lily Portillo
CLM-PCA, Guatemala
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