Mexico | Comboni Lay Missionaries

WYD Portugal 2023 and CONAJUM Morelia Mexico 2023

14 September, 2023 by Alberto de la Portilla

Two congresses with the same objective.

I am referring to the World Youth Day (WYD) Portugal 2023, an experience lived with members of my family and friends that I met along the way; as well as the National Missionary Congress in Morelia Mexico CONAJUM. There I had the opportunity to meet again with friends, bishops from different parts of the world and the country, lay missionaries from other institutes and young people eager to discover their vocation. Not to mention the sharing and teamwork with my Comboni Family where priests, sisters, seculars and lay people were able to listen to each other and support each other. That is why I thank Pope Francis and the Pontifical Mission Societies for inviting us to continue to be part of this project that Jesus Christ inherited from us, the building of his Kingdom.

These events are spaces where our Catholic Church allows young people to meet Jesus Christ through a number of activities where prayer helps them to have a personal encounter with Him; common themes for their growth, pilgrimages that create bonds of friendship, sharing to reach agreements, knowledge of other cultures, forums, concerts, marches, as well as being able to tour the City of Joy in the vocational fair where the encounter with the variety of missionary charisms of the church allow them to know different realities that sensitize them to the needs of others.

It is inexplicable the common experience of praying, listening to stories, laughing, suffering, singing, dancing, crying, struggling, communicating, sleeping, dreaming, admiring, breathing, in the same place embracing the LOVE OF GOD.

All this diminishes any problem or worry because we know that God loves us and protects us by giving us that time to heal any wound and choose what is good for our life, just as we are and where we are. These words fill us with hope to continue walking our path with the confidence that in the falls GOD will help us to get up and in the achievements he will teach us to share them, the communion that these encounters generate gives us the strength to return to our reality and look for the way to give life where there is death.

The central message of Pope Francis to the youth gives us as missionaries the courage to take the Gospel to all the realities that this world presents to us in communion with the bishops. These words that help us to know how to continue in our reality, are the key to make the Gospel come alive. To open our arms and welcome with Love our brothers and sisters who need us is the legacy that Jesus Christ has bequeathed to us. Let us leave indifference behind and act with coherence; because we can all do something to change our reality of death that haunts us today.

I invite you dear brothers and sisters to discover God’s plan in our lives so that leaving behind our fears we can embark on the journey of the mission betting on Justice Peace Integrity of Creation JPIC and the Values of the Kingdom of God.

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Beatriz Maldonado Sanchez, CLM

Taking care of our health

10 July, 2023 by Alberto de la Portilla

Health Care Formation Course for the CLM of Mexico.

The Comboni Lay Missionaries of Mexico are grateful for the course of Formation for Health Care through Biomagnetism that took place from June 24 to 30 at the Oasis House of the Comboni Missionaries in Guadalajara. Elías Arroyo Román, Comboni Missionary and a medical doctor, and Claudia Araujo Facilitator, who shared their knowledge and experience with us.

To fix our gaze only on a transcendent God far from human reality, or to look at man only from science as an organic and material being, are two reductionist visions that threaten the integral wellbeing of man. Health care brings, from the data of divine revelation to the medical mission, the essential values and criteria of valuation that bring health professionals closer to an authentic humanization of health services.

The formation of CLM in health care, together with the practices of love for the neighbor, is to transcend the community work in health services to be able to recognize God in the other, especially in those who suffer and need comfort through each of the spaces of medical care in the mission to which we are sent as simple as it may seem; it is necessary and of utmost importance; having humanization as the fundamental axis of being and doing in the health care of our needy brothers and sisters.

Rocío Adelina Quintero Hernández

Comboni Lay Missionaries in the Radio program Women of Religious Diversity and the Feminist Struggle

9 February, 2023 by Alberto de la Portilla

A small house, a large patio, a small living room and a blue booth were the spaces for the meeting between a lay woman who acted as host, an Anglican woman, two representatives of the Hare Krishna community, an agnostic online teacher, two CLM women, a Comboni priest and the State Coordinator of Religious Affairs. The topic? To discuss whether it was possible to talk about feminism from a religious point of view. Crisol de la Alegría, Radio y Televisión was the host thanks to the invitation of Father Mario Escalera, Coordinator of Interreligious Dialogue in Monterrey.

They talked about the history of feminism, the main representatives, the struggles that women of yesteryear had to fight in order to obtain achievements that today are a normality for those of us who live in this era.

Is it possible to speak of a feminism based on religious diversity? Throughout history there has been, yes, a patriarchy that oppresses, however, religious organizations have been opening the way to talk more and more about the rights and responsibilities that women have not only in the field of associations that promote different forms of faith, but also in the daily life that sees women increasingly as important pillars of the dynamics of societies.

Is there a Secretariat for Equality and Inclusion? Yes, there are efforts in the current government such as the creation of the Secretariat for Inclusion and the Women’s Secretariat in order to promote education in the respect of women’s rights and the promotion of their powers as creative citizens, agents of change and people responsible for productive life.

What can women do from their trenches to achieve nonviolence against women? Sorority is definitely an important response. This empathy and accompaniment in the pain of a woman who has in other women a support that will lead her to discover new ways to overcome the barriers that, because of gender inequalities, are still experienced today, will help us to overcome not only violence, but also the different forms of discrimination and disadvantage.

How can we educate children to see the father-mother God without religious patriarchalism? Begin to promote the image of a God who is not only father but also mother, that is, a God who, as he presents himself, just “is,” without distinction of gender or race.

As a Christian community, how can we join the feminist struggle? It is not absurd to think of women of faith fighting from their trenches for a change that benefits not only themselves, but society in general; that seeks the integration of feminine and masculine efforts for the construction of a peaceful, supportive, inclusive world that defends dignified life and cooperation to achieve technological, social, scientific, educational, economic, political advances and, of course, a growth in our religious institutions that share a liberating faith that promotes love.

Definitely, a feminism from the faith is possible, understanding our doctrines as a source of wisdom for living together in harmony and having as a premise that it is people and not genders who should matter, because in the eyes of God, the dignity of each and every one is the same.

By: Silvia Tapia Jiménez (CLM of Monterrey, N.L., Mexico)

Returning to the CLM path in Mexico…

14 December, 2022 by Alberto de la Portilla

In Mexico, after participating in our continental meeting in Peru, we met on October 15 in an extraordinary meeting called by our MCCJ advisor, Fr. Filomeno Ceja, to get to know each other better, where the elections of the national leaders of our group took place: Beatriz Maldonado, coordinator; Hortensia Licona, Economy; Silvia Tapia, missionary animation; Adán Aguilar, formator and Rocío Quintero, Justice and Peace. We set ourselves the task of establishing the concrete lines of action so that each commission could take up again the path based on our national reality, being aware that it is necessary to update ourselves and rediscover the concrete field of action to be followed.

We have carried out a diagnostic questionnaire that will facilitate the realization of our work plan for 2023, and in dialogue with the coordinators we are analyzing what we will be able to do in the following year. The organizational chart has already been updated and we have the task of reading our directory in order to review it and modify what needs to be renewed. Also, to the extent of our possibilities, we are making our overdue contributions in order to fulfill our contribution to the international common fund and thanks to the collaboration of two benefactors we will be able to send something for the communities of Kenya and Mozambique, a flyer has been made to promote vocations in the Comboni family within our missionary animations.

We were invited to participate in the week of UIC Theology, we were offered to participate in this meeting, the central theme was “Co-responsibility and participation of the Laity in the Evangelizing Life and Mission of the Church” it was very enriching to be able to live it. These are spaces in which we can receive training that help us in our Christian maturity, updating our ways of serving in our church.

Fr. Filomeno took on the task of visiting the local groups and getting to know the reality of each one. For the moment we need to visit those in Monterrey who have shared with us that they are supporting the missionary animations; Manuelita, Rosy and Minerva also accompanied him to visit the parish of Metlatonoc to make an analysis of the reality that will allow us to make a decision about the needs that we find and what we can contribute, it is a town with a richness in its traditions and the way in which the faith has been preserved, since it was seen and commented the need for a committed lay presence in the parish, being necessary to have a decent place to reopen a mission experience as CLM in coordination with the MCCJ and the parish.

By the grace of God I had the opportunity to close this liturgical year participating in an assembly of the Pontifical Missionary Works of the Mexican Episcopate OMPE, in the XIX national meeting of Lay Missionary Institutes Ad Gentes “MILAG”, we have introduced ourselves and we have put in common the way we accompany people who want to be part of our group briefly describing our formation process; thanks to the international formation guide that we have it was easy to explain it.

We were introduced to the missionary project “Laity in Departure” which will be enriched and implemented after this meeting, there is a very important figure which is the “Diocesan Animator of Lay Missions Ad gentes” that we will propose to the dioceses and that will be appointed to work in communion with MILAG and the OMPE. We have proposed candidates who could exercise this service together with the diocesan director of missions and his team.

Before the beginning of this liturgical year, soon to begin, we have programmed “Celebrate the CLM day” virtually, this Third Sunday of Advent, praying the missionary rosary, each local group will lead a mystery, it will be a moment of prayer that will help us to integrate as a group, in the joy of getting together to celebrate that we share our being CLM and we are in tune with our missionary work. Meditating on the life of Jesus Christ under the intercession of our mother the Virgin Mary. United in prayer for the good of the mission, we will continue to communicate.

Beatriz Maldonado, CLM Mexico

CLM American Meeting

4 October, 2021 by Alberto de la Portilla

On September 25, 2021, the American CLM Committee: MCCJ Fr. Ottorino Poletto, Beatriz Maldonado and Mireya Soto, with the accompaniment of Alberto de la Portilla, were pleased to meet with the CLM of America and some of Europe, to have a formative conference, given by Father Dario Bossi, with the theme “the vocation of the laity in the socio-political and ecclesial context of America“.

Father Dario Bossi is a Comboni Missionary, currently provincial coordinator of the Comboni Missionaries in Brazil. The theme was developed in three important points: Colorful spots (to understand the situation where we are), Christian lights (lights that from the faith and the Church help us to understand the reality and provide ideas) and CLM Mission (some ideas that as missionaries, in our case Comboni Missionaries, we can develop).

He explained that America is a continent with cultural richness, natural resources, and in the face of the storm that humanity is going through, we CLM have the commitment to dialogue and act in favor of the poor and the needy, hence the hope and the lights that we have such as the Encyclicals of Pope Francis in which he speaks of the commitment to nature and the need for a Church to go out; The mission ad gentes and our relationship as Comboni family.

The conference has been recorded and you can listen to it and analyze it (here below in Spanish) for further enrichment of our groups.

Our meeting ended with the prayer that Christ taught us, giving thanks for having gathered and shared.

“Divine works are born and grow at the foot of the cross“. St. Daniel Comboni.

Mireya Soto, CLM American Committee