America – Page 96 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

My experience of mission in Arequipa – PERU

21 July, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

This first year has just flown thanks to the Father. All mission experience is rewarding because you share your life and surely is more what you get than what you give, or we better say “share”. Jesus invited me through St. Daniel Comboni to recognize the African Mission in the Comboni parish of “The Good Shepherd” in the city of Arequipa and more specifically in the community of St. Daniel Comboni in Villa Ecológica. You have to encourage yourself, especially with prayer asking that we can discover the way where He wants to lead us and be docile to follow. The CLM brothers of Spain Gonzalo, Isabel, Jose and Carmen left a living experience in the community of Villa, they cannot forget. They allowed my arrival to be warm and now I feel increasingly identified with the community.

I began my service teaching a course in electricity and plumbing to a group of high school students. We hope to repeat this year in the new environment that is being completed to build. With Brazilian sister Sharliman Alencar Lobo, who stayed with us for six month and started the project at the library to help children with their homework. A single mother or father alone constitutes many families. Many parents go to work because of low income, so many of these young families cannot afford the time to be with the children in the afternoons to help with their homework and to complement the education received in schools. In some cases, they ignore their responsibilities as parents to their children. Many children are not well fed and are in need during the evenings until the arrival of their parents. The learning experiences in the communities of HUARIN and RONDOS in the Sierra de Huanuco has served us well, and therefore we share a glass of milk and a piece of bread to complement the opening hours of the library, doing more bearable daily life of children. The truth is that we are missing hands and would be nice to have help from a CLM brother, to form a community, tired together with happiness and feel that we are in community returning something that gives us the Lord’s love.

I also assumed the catechesis of adults. I accompanied a group of 12 adults in Villa in preparation for confirmation and two couples were married. It is a great joy to see them eager to know their faith and I always ask the Holy Spirit to give me the necessary lights to share the issues and my life experience with my limitations, trusting in the presence of God who gives us the strength to continue this work.

Due to the circumstances I have happen to be alone. I live in the parish house and make community with the priests of the parish, this has allowed me to continue strengthening me spiritually and be part of the parish reality, but I’m a little distant from the reality of the community of Villa Ecológica. My mission is divided in two. On one hand my profession as plumber and electrician and a bit more knowledge allow me to serve the needs at home and in the parish. All this is performed mainly in the morning. On the other hand, the development of pastoral work in the afternoons or evenings as required. The community of Villa is young, is learning to walk with the help of its own people and is necessary to let them have their own experience of being church and simultaneously accompany to further deepen their faith and help them to discover the style of St. Daniel Comboni “Save Africa with Africa”. I try to encourage them and help them discover how the Lord is working in their lives.

This month ends the collaboration of Anna, the German Lay young volunteer who came for one year to assist in the “cradle St. Daniel Comboni” in Villa Ecológica. She has participated in choirs and brought some economic aid to the most needed families of the area brought from her German home parish. Anna has collaborated with Pamela in the catechesis sector called “Canteras”. In Arequipa there is a pending work, to encourage the formation of a CLM Group. Mary our mother, who cares for me and my family, care also to help you, brothers from the group of Lima to pronounce the Yes to the mission, so that this mission can continue and others start.

Pedro Enrique García H. CLM Peru

To make common cause

18 July, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mk 6, 30-34 (XVI Sunday, O.T. July 19^th 2015)

We read today five verses from Mark’s chapter six, verses that are a transition between two big stories: the martyrdom of John the Baptist (a painful experience for the disciples and for Jesus himself) and the multiplication of bread (a clear sign of a God that sustains his humble people in the desert).

Theses verses are a transition text, but not for that less meaningful. In fact, the text is full up with deep and clear feelings in two directions: the community of disciples and the crowd looking for a better life quality. In Jesus we can contemplate a double movement, similar to the double movement of the physical heart, from the community to the crowd and back. As it happens with the physical heart, the same happens with community and mission: one movement cannot be without the other, community and mission go together. Let us meditate for a while on those two concrete movements of love:

Tenderness towards the members of the community

Mark tells us about the way Jesus receives the disciples returning from the mission: he welcomes them, listens to their stories and invites them to rest, as he used to do in Bethany.

Maybe you remember a fil by Pier Paolo Pasolini, some time ago, on the gospel according to Matthew. It was a very interesting and moving film, but –if I remember it properly- in it Jesus was a prophet quite severe, with a long face and severe words… Certainly, Jesus was quite clear in his denouncing a false religiosity. But what we read today shows us another Jesus: tender, welcoming, giving attention to the needs of his disciples. This is a human attitude that I feel we need so much in our everyday life: in the family, in the Christian community, in the apostolic group. Quite often we wish so much to do well, we try to be so perfect, we wish the best for our family or our Church. So much so that we risk becoming hypercritical, intolerant, angry, negative… Let us pray that we imitate Jesus and learn from him this tenderness that makes us able to be welcoming to people near us and to care for one another.

2.- Sensible to the needs of the crowd

The attention to the small group of people near him does not make Jesus indifferent to the need of the crowd; rather it’s the opposite: together with the community he becomes more sensible to the needs of the crowd of people that are like sheep with no shepherd; they are hungry of bread, understanding, love… The attitude of Jesus has been imitated by so many disciples, among which Daniel Comboni, who arriving at Khartoum (Africa) said to the people: “I want to make common cause with each one of you”.

Before so many people that today, as in the times of Jesus, are looking for a better health, a better and more just food, a real dignity, a sense of life, real love, the answer of the disciple missionary it’s not indifference, it’s not look away, but to “make common cause”, to share the problems ,expectation and possible solutions. This making common cause will give way to many initiatives of solidarity, but the first thing is not to be indifferent, to allow the situation touch our heart, to move our feelings, to share with the people; from that sharing will come out our concrete help, knowing that if everyone does its best, the miracle of brotherhood will take place.

Fr. Antonio Villarino

Roma

Missionary joy

12 July, 2015 by Alberto de la Portilla

The June monthly meeting of the CLMs of Mexico DF It was held in the house of the Comboni Missionaries in Cuernavaca. A beautiful and quiet place next to the famous devil´s alley. Yes, you read that correctly, the devil. According to the legend, more than five centuries ago, the intrusive devil helped to jump Hernán Cortés on his horse Rucio, a ravine five meters long for safekeeping of tlahuicas ancestors who closely followed his footsteps to kill him.

Juanita, CLM for several years and frequent visitor of the seminar for many others, was in charge of preparations for our arrival. The reception was warm although a little rainy, which did not stop performing activities under an atmosphere of friendship and joy. In the morning, we did the prayer of Lauds. The main theme for those who came to know the group was the action of the laity in the church. And in the afternoon Father Joseph Infante, brother of Pedro Infante, as he presents always with a big smile, shared with us the devotion to the Sacred heart of Jesus who lived St. Daniel Comboni and how he trusted that divine heart all his projects and concerns. In the evening, we had the celebration of the Eucharist and in our prayers we do not forget all the Comboni family, absent CLMs, and the election of the following day.

On Sunday, some had to leave early. Others took a little walk around the cathedral, where indeed we received the blessing of Bishop Ramon Castro for all CLM Group. So our meeting this month invited us to advance in prayer, sacrifice and keep walking united by the mission, encouraging one another. Thank God for his presence.

CLM México

The Mission of the Twelve and our mission

11 July, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mk 6, 7-13 (XV Sunday O. T.: July 12^th 2015)

After being refused by the people of Nazareth, Jesus, according to Mark, set up a new stage of his Mission involving in it the Twelve, the seed of a new people who accepted the Kingdom of God and made it flourish in villages and towns. In the text of Mark that we read this Sunday, we can find many points of meditation useful for our live as disciple missionaries. I just reflect a bit on four of them:

He called the Twelve and started sending them

The Mission is not a fruit of a personal initiative, but of a call. On the way of missionary discipleship there are moments in which it seems that it is us that take the initiative, it is us that have a project for humanity, an interesting ideology, our clever way to look at things. But real discipleship only starts truly when, passed the stage of a self-centred mission, we come to realize that it is the Lord that calls us and sends us.

Moses and other important prophets have gone through this experience: Mission usually ends up in complete failure when it is taken as a personal way to become somebody in society, while it becomes fertile when it is taken as an answer to a call from God.

Even artists tell something similar to that prophetic experience. Poets, for example, often say that it’s not they that look for words, buts it’s words that look for them; in fact, poetry reaches a special forceful expression when somehow it “imposes” itself to the poet, who has maybe worked hard with the words, but at the end he feel that the inspiration came as a gift. On the same way, in our missionary discipleship there must be a moment of surprising grace, an awareness of being freely called, breaking our barriers and our desires of self-control and personal ideologies or pretentious self-made projects… Only then Mission becomes really the Mission of the Lord, fertile, even if it has to go through failure and cross.

Two by two

Sending the disciples out “two by two”, Jesus follows the Hebrew tradition, according to which, messengers are sent two by two, so that the message conveyed by the spokesman will be confirmed by his companion. Going on mission two by two the disciples sustain each other on their witness giving more credibility to the message of the new brotherhood.

Moreover, mission “two by two” is no longer an individual, private mission, but it becomes a social, public proposal. Certainly, Jesus used to pray for hours alone, but his mission was always public: in synagogues and streets, in towns and villages, in private houses and public places. Jesus’ mission was not a private but a public and social affair. This does not mean that it makes mission easier, but a more authentic and credible one.

To enter peoples’ homes

In the missionary practice of Jesus there are no reserved places: he preaches and heals everywhere. Jesus’ mission does not exclude the Temple, but neither remains limited to it. Looking at that, we are sure that the Church’s mission today cannot be confined to parishes; it has to come out of parish’s premises and go to meet people wherever they are and live.

To announce the nearness of the kingdom

Nearness: this is a key word in Jesus’s experience and mission. Jesus announces, with words and actions, that God is near to people and He performs actions of healing, liberation, forgiveness and love that makes people rise up and walk. This is the power Jesus has, the power that shares with his disciple missionaries, the power that make people rise and walk as free children of God.

Fr. Antonio Villarino

Roma

God among the kitchen pots: Jesus carpenter, son, brother, neighbour

4 July, 2015 by Antonio Villarino

A commentary on Mk 6, 1-5 (XIV Sunday O.T: July 25th 2015)

Mark shows Jesus as a travelling master, who, after some time in and out of villages and towns near to the Galilee Lake, goes back to Nazareth, where He grew up and where He was not accepted by his neighbours, because He was just one of them. Mark explains this refusal with the well-known sentence: “No prophet has ever been accepted by his own people and at home”. And he concludes saying that Jesus was astonished at their incredulity.
It seems to me that Jesus’ experience – his refusal by his own people- is quite common and on my view reflects two errors that very often we make:

1) We imagine God as someone far away from our everyday life.
It happens all the time in history and in all religions; many people think that God has to be looked for in extraordinary events: in wonderful places, big cathedrals, special sanctuaries, in a very important person, over the clouds…. As if God would have nothing to do with what we are and do in our simple and ordinary lives. But Jesus teaches exactly the opposite; He teaches that God becomes one of us (Emmanuel): He is born as a displaced person, works as a carpenter, goes to the synagogue every Saturday, drinks, eats, and makes friends… And in all that He is and acts as the loved Son of the Father.
One way to explain this experience of God’s presence in our ordinary life is the famous sentence by Saint Theresa of Avila: “God is also among the kitchen pots”. That’s it: Do not look for God in extraordinary events but in the simple facts of your everyday life: in the working place, in the family, in friendship, in the honest fight for justice and peace… Certainly also in the simple and sincere prayer (with not so many words or gesticulation)… “Among the kitchen pots”.

2) To let a heavy heart grow in us and become cynics and hard with our neighbours
There’s a saying that goes more or less like this: “the person with les respect within a temple is the one who works in it”… That may happen to all of us with the people we live with: the members of our family or community, co-workers, parish priest… Living near them, we are in danger of seeing only their limits and defects, overlooking the many good deeds that they probably are doing. So far from taking the opportunity of our nearness to love them and understand them, we end up in a hipper-critical attitude that makes it difficult for us to discover the message that God wants to give us through tem, in spite of their limits and defects. God will not come to us in the dress of a perfect person, but in the concrete reality of people around us.
As I meditate on this text form Mark, I pray to the Lord to acquire that humility that makes us able to recognize Jesus in the humble prophet of Nazareth and in the people that live with me and are for me a sign of God’s presence in my concrete reality, with its opportunities and problems, its rights and wrongs, its successes and failures.
Lord, do not allow me to become arrogant or cynic like the people of Nazareth. Let my heart be always open to acknowledge your humble presence around me, in spite of my own limits and the limits of others.
Fr. Antonio Villarino
Rome