Portugal – Page 10 – Comboni Lay Missionaries

Feast of the CLM, the joy of sharing as a family

30 July, 2018 by Alberto de la Portilla

“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” (Jn 14:6). A biblical phrase that stood out at the end of Saturday during the prayer closing the afternoon of the weekend we spent as CLM family in Viseu,

At the beginning of this Saturday I had that yearning to see the usual faces in the Comboni house of Viseu who had welcomed me so often during my formation. The journey. A journey proposed to all those who feel in their hearts the ardent passion of belonging to this CLM family.

Starting this day made me remember Marisa, Cristina, Paula, Neuza who are now in mission and who followed me closely in choosing my CLM commitment. I remembered Tiago Santos who could not continue with us, Flávio Soares whose life stays close to us, but whose journey is temporarily moving him elsewhere, Rufina who, as I understand, is very dedicated to the refugees, Patrícia Bernardino, whose whereabouts I do not know, but who followed a beautiful journey of vocational discernment. And lots more. Many who filled this house and who have turned this house into a record of my growth that God allows us to manage.

Starting this weekend allowed me to go beyond myself and get reacquainted with this family that has grown, and is still growing, with beautiful people with a missionary soul in their hearts moving them towards the hearts of the poorest and most abandoned. It is great to recognize this growing family to whom I proudly belong!

This is a family getting together to evaluate the year just past, in order to understand the journey just finished and talk about it. A family gathered to talk about important documents that will be the background of our International Assembly in Rome during this 2018. And discussions followed in favor of our movement, conversations giving birth to ideas for our future. And what pride we felt to see the commitment of the lay folks and of those in formation, expressing the will to improve, in the image God wants as the ideal of the CLM. It was a tiring Saturday that ended in a rhythm of prayer. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Together we prayed to be on this journey both individually and as a movement.

Sunday was the day to welcome our friends and relatives. A great day of animation when together we were even able to speak with Marisa and her community in Mozambique. And how exciting to find her happy in her mission, so adapted that she even mixes up the pronunciations of Portugal and Mozambique. We saw videos from Paula and Neuza who described clearly their mission in Arequipa, Peru and how important it is how to act before people, a mission that invites us to focus on the person, and on society in its details. A social, communitarian mission. We also saw a video from Flávio and Liliana in Piquiá, Brazil witnessing to their work with a people demanding better and dignified living conditions, and who get together to celebrate the harvest.

At the end of this time of witnessing, we heard from Fr. Joaquim Nogueira recently returned from Ethiopia. It was wonderful! How many difficulties, but also how brilliant were his eyes as he told us about what the Comboni Missionaries have achieved together with “these poorest and most abandoned, to whom nobody goes.”

The Eucharist and lunch followed and we ended the afternoon with a time to “laugh with God.” It was a session of laughter therapy animated by Fernando Batista, creator of the project laughing more who also has a great mission – proclaiming Christ in a funny, relaxed and faithful way.

Then we were sent out. And we left. One by one we returned to our homes, but with the certainty that we are walking together following “the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

CLM Carolina Fiúza

CLM Community “Ayllu” in Peru

24 July, 201813 July, 2018 by Alberto de la Portilla

To be a community is to share what we are with others, is going to the peripheries.
In this video we share what we live in Villa Ecológica (Arequipa, Peru) and the work we do with the elderly, children, families and patients at a social and pastoral level.

See and know our way, what we are, where we are and with whom we are.

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CLM Ayllu in Peru

You, me and the us God calls us to be

4 June, 2018 by Alberto de la Portilla

You were the community I never chose but with which I always wanted to be. Maybe because in the differences I find a little more of myself, and together we reveal a little more of ourselves.

With you I learned that you do not do mission by yourself, and what I need from you. You crossed my path and even without knowing you opened your heart and accepted me as a companion on our journey, yes, because basically this is a journey we walk every day in this piece of land beyond the realities that we both knew.

You extended your hand when I thought that nothing made sense. I realized, on that night when we prayed together and everything seemed to be crumbling, that God does not make mistakes in his plans for each one of us. You were and you are my support when everything seems hard and difficult. You are a word that does not hide, eyes that speak, you are yourself.

With you I learned the dimension of sharing and of giving, in this triangle of love, in the dynamics of the I, the you, the we.

Many times you are the eyes seeing much beyond what I see. The heart that listens to me, when I need to talk. The arms that hold me and sustain me. The hand that is always there when obstacles appear on the way. God knows why he put you on my way, and now I know it as well. May God help me to watch you and to know how to make sense of your presence in my life and in our journey.

What together we are able to be is what moves this community in search of the mission of Jesus in the world. We are silence, we are laughter, we are criticism and demands, we are limitations and the infinite, we are also the stubbornness of our lives and apprenticeship, we are tears often shared between my crying and your shoulders or embrace. We are often prayers when in silence we look at the reality in which we live.

Come what may, it does not matter. What matters is that in our imperfections we want to be of God.

We are witnesses of those who accept to grow together. We are Andrea and Paola (Paula in her native land), lives that God united to walk in the direction of a love which is learned daily, a love born of mistakes, exercised in prayer, made of silences and often of glances that say it all, made of extended hands and chores shared, of bad moods and stubbornness, of different perspectives and of two ways of acting that complement each other.

We are what each one can give of herself. We are in what you are and teach me to be. We are in what we mutually learn. We are from where we know we come from. Love.

When I realized that I was called to mission, I knew that I was being called to be community. In this journey I knew that God was calling me to be community with Andrea, as humbly they call Neuza in Peru. Arriving in Peru I understood that it was time to cross the desert. Even so, when I arrived in Peru I felt happy, totally happy and realized that Andrea was part of this happiness. A happiness filled with obstacles and difficulties, joys and hilarious mistakes, and for all this, complete. When I was called to journey with Andrea I knew and still know that God wants to teach me something through her. We met people in our lives to make us grow, to make us holy, to teach us how to walk and get closer to God. To walk with Andrea demands accepting that there will be complicated and difficult times, but that even in silence she is always there. She knows when you wake up crying and comes to hug you and only returns to bed when she is sure you are alright. She is there looking at you when it seems the world collapsed on you and instinctively she will cry with you to share your sorrow. To live with Andrea is like climbing and descending mountains with a sore stomach from too much laughing. With Andrea I feel capable of facing the greatest difficulties on our journey. With Andrea there is not a boring trip or waiting for a bus. With Andrea there joy in every step in the mission. Andrea puts up with fatigue, pain, and suffering and accompanies me up and down the roads. With Andrea I meet Jesus in every corner. To live with her is a constant learning experience and a journey that I propose to do every day. I am happy and I trust that we are happy even in the days when I am frail and everything looks grey, you are always there at my side to love me just as I am. Just as with the love of God, to be community with Andrea is not easy, but it is enough to know how to love and to be loved. To be community with Andrea reminds me of Pope JPII’s quote, “To love is an act of the will,” because I want to love her every day on each step of our journey.

To live in community and share everything in our lives is not easy. But when we want to and we do it with love and for love, when we do it knowing that it is God who unites us and stays with us at all times, everything is fine. To be community is to be available to walk not in me or in you, but in us. To be community is to stick together in happiness and to share the crosses. To be community is to know how to give space and bear hugs. In community we share the biggest gift God has given us, life. Together, in community, we bring joy to every house we may visit, we pray wherever, we sing wherever and we live in Vila Ecología in the beautiful house we call home.

We are you and me, we are us.

Ayllu Community , Neuza (Andrea) and Paula (Paola)

Human Relations and Group Life – 4th FEC Formation

16 May, 2018 by Alberto de la Portilla

Human relations and group life was the formation theme of the FEC during the weekend of April 14-15, 2018, directed by the educator Paula Silva.

The topic was quite interesting since it made us reflect over several musical themes and planted in us questions over the literary meaning of the songs, projecting them on the reality of our missionary life.

For instance, the “Lista” by Oswaldo Montenegro generated 10 questions about ourselves that made us remember the past and reflect on the present.

Another example was the “Contenedores” of Xutos and Pontapés, with seven questions that made us reflect on our going to the missions, asking us about what we would take along, what we would leave, what we knew about the place where we were going and how we thought we would feel once we arrived there, starting a new life, starting from nothing, with the possibility of going even farther and establish the objectives of our remaining in the field of volunteering.

We hear the witness of Susana Querido who was in Angola for six months and belongs to the Ondjoyetu missionary group.

We ended with the Eucharist, followed by lunch and then returned home.

CLM Nelly Gomes

The Journey Diary – news from the mission in Peru

11 May, 2018 by Alberto de la Portilla

We share a piece from the Journey Diary of April from the Parish of Christ the King in Vergada. Today we have news from Peru by the CLM Neuza Francisco.

To love is to go out

Since getting here I have discovered love on a daily basis. A love that constantly demanded and demands us to move out, move out from ourselves, from what we already know, that demands a journey. We must love the world and all that in it reflects the love of God. Here I found another way to love, I found a love that is available, simple, born of honesty from what I have and by sharing we make it possible to give and to receive. In a very disinterested way. A love born of growing together, like brothers. Here is where I ardently feel that I must be. It is in these brothers that I daily here the voice of God. It is in the ups and downs of the big mountains surrounding me that I constantly meet smiles, tears, and meet arms awaiting me, eyes reflecting history, a lot of history.

Along these dirt paths where I walk every day, I meet witnesses that convert me and make me thank God, the miracle of life. I am grateful for having been one of his chosen ones. A little at the time, I start knowing not only their faces, their expressions, but their names, their homes, their families. Many times I hear from afar when the call me “Andrea, sister Andrea.” Yes, here we are all brothers and sisters.

Someday I will tell you the story of my name. I feel I am one of them. We are family.

Ah, Peru, who stole my heart!

Sharing what they have, yes, often they give you the little they have and the lot they are. Very often on my way back I carry in my lap half a dozen apples from the man who comes to the seniors meeting, together with a banana from the man who runs a food store, plus corn from one of the families I visited or two or three potatoes from a sick woman.

Each day we accept to grow together. Each visit we accept to carry each other’s cross. We are words of mutual guidance, we are smiles, we are silences of the confessional, we are tears. We are, as a consequence of being, fragile and many are the times when on our knees we reconcile ourselves with love.

In the humility of each person crossing my path I meet the face of God, a merciful God.

In the daily joys and sorrows I meet the meaning of life. And every time I read it, I see a family, a group of children waiting for me, I see arms, the arms of Christ.

Nueza Francisco, CLM in Mission, in Peru