We let you here an interview made in Radio Vaticana to Carlos Barros, coordinator of the CLM in Portugal, on the CLM Assembly of Europe held this past week in Viseu.
Portugal
Comboni Lay Missionaries meet in Portugal
The European Assembly of the Comboni Lay Missionaries (CLM) is taking place from August 21 to 27 in Viseu, the mother-house of the Comboni Missionaries in Portugal. There are 74 adults and 22 children from Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Poland and Portugal in the meeting. The Comboni Missionaries who work with the CLM in their respective countries are also present. Two representatives were invited from the Comboni Sisters and Comboni Seculars. It is a week with a detailed schedule of prayer, reflexion, sharing of experiences and relaxation.
The CLM organize their European assemblies every three years. They intend to mark moments of togetherness and joy and to give continuity to the reflexion of the main themes from previous meetings.
The last European meeting took place in 2013 at Krakow, Poland. That meeting singled out some issues that were considered priority to be deepened in groups and individually, at CLM level in every country of Europe. The issues were related with the CLM life. This week’s issues are: identity and vocation, formation, organization and coordination, economy and sustainability, communion and Comboni family.
The goal of all this work is to share the journey of every single group on each of the single issues. This sharing among people from different countries will assist the CLM members to feel better integrated in their missionary vocation.
The specific goals that are targeted at the end of the assembly are:
- To celebrate the CLM vocation, starting from the characteristics that are common to all groups;
- To share vocation experiences made by members from different countries in order to know the lifestyle of one another;
- To reflect upon the journey already made in Europe and at intercontinental level, where they are aiming at and what is lacking to reach the goal;
- To draw some inspiring lines to help the CLM to walk better united and to be engaged at all levels;
- To strengthen the ties as the CLM European Movement and their sense of belonging to the Comboni Family.
“The meeting would not be possible – said Paula Ascensão – without the effort, availability and dedication of the Viseu community. The Comboni Missionaries opened their doors to us and they showed availability to host the CLM formation and meetings in their houses. When we asked to organize the European CLM assembly in Viseu, they gave a positive answer and they are helping us organizing it. It is thanks to them that the Portuguese CLM are able to welcome almost 100 European CLM here in our country. We are very thankful. And we ask prayers from all who are following us from afar, so that this European assembly may to be successful and produce much fruit.”
Long live the newlywed!
With great joy we wish a lot of happiness to the Comboni Lay Missionaries of Portugal, Veronica and Alcides.
That your union may be blessed by God and may it bear fruit in your Christian and missionary witness.
Portugal CLM
Witnesses of a Common Journey
On August 7 of this year 2016 in Viseu, Vila Nova do Campo, we celebrated the missioning of the CLM Marisa Almeida with a Mass presided over by Bishop Ilídio Leandro in the parish church of Vila Nova do Campo.
José Tolentino Mendonça says: “With a friend at your side, no journey will be too long.” This journey made together with the CLM seems to have started yesterday. It feels like yesterday when I started it with Marisa, the CLM whom we gift with “all that we are.” To have known Marisa has been one of the greatest treasures that this journey has given me. Just like in this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus came to repeat once more: “Do not be afraid.” He knows us. He knows our deepest fears, our anxieties, our obstacles and the wounds we need to heal. But, in the face of all this, he repeats: “Do not be afraid.” Often, so very often, we are fixated on our weakness, our fears and our insignificance. Many times we repeat by words and by the way we live” “Lord, I am so small, sinful, weak and helpless.” And he continues to repeat to us: “Do not be afraid.”
This is what happens to you. It happens to me and the same happens to Marisa. Many were the times when silently each one of us asked: “I? me? My God! With all the people who are daring and courageous, you pick me?!” Very often we have thought of not being up to it. But he does not choose the able ones, but enables those he chooses. It is to us, frail and sinful, that God gives the Kingdom of Heaven. This was the treasure I found in the CLM and that all of you are invited to follow and discover in life: Love. Love is what keeps us here. Love is what sends us out. And when we dare to follow, share and live this love, we are and we experience a bit of the Kingdom that the Father has prepared for us in Heaven. He puts us on his journey and for this we are here.
But I am not alone. None of us lives in solitude. Marisa does not exist for herself. We are together as I often say. And this being together is going with her, even though we are oceans apart. It is because she experienced and felt this love that Marisa answers the call with a YES. She makes mistakes, like the rest of us. She falls, like us. She is afraid, like us. But in her heart she listens to Jesus who tells her: “Do not be afraid.” And she trusts in him enough to say YES with her life.
We go with her, stay with her and are missionaries with her. Mission is accomplished by the feet of those who go, the knees of those who pray and the hands of those who help. By doing this, we stay together. United we experience the love of God.
At this point, I thank the entire Comboni Family, present through the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus, the Secular Comboni Missionaries, the Comboni Sisters and the Young in Mission, to the entire community and to all those who are close to her, physically and spiritually – you turned this moment an experience of love, a bit of heaven. Let us feel challenged, like her, to trust in God by answering YES to his invitation to love. “To think of a loving person is to pray for her,’ says St. Teresa of the Child Jesus. For this reason I invite each one of you to think of Marisa so that her mission may be rich and fruitful!
Do not be afraid, let us stay united!
Paula Sousa. Portugal
Family Feast, a celebration of love and life sharing
It is exactly like the title says: An experience of the unconditional love that unites us, that allows us to get close, to share in prayer and in community.
A new weekend, a new gathering and a new meeting again. On this weekend a new year of formation came to an end, a year filled with smiles, tears, discoveries, love, joy, friendship and a deep discovery of our own selves and of our relation with God. It was a year filled by God and by his merciful love for all of us.
In those eternal beginnings there was space for meditating, space to reflect over the different moments, the different instants that built up each of the weekends we experienced. We had time to share with those who during the whole year gave of their best for us and with us, such as the coordinator, and what it means to have our own individual experience of God, lived in the bosom of the Comboni Family.
They were two days for sharing the best of ourselves, the best of what God gives us freely as a gift – life.
During this weekend, as a family, we prayed, shared, were ourselves and allowed others to be, we laughed often, wished for peace, we were loving and living witnesses of the joy of the Gospel.
Between the laughter of the children and the wrinkles of experience, we gave thanks to God for each and every one who was present, for those who were absent, even though present in our hearts, for we were more than just those present, we were the Comboni family, spread across the four corners of the globe.
It was an extraordinary experience to witness the love of Christ present in each of the members of the family as they arrived, the gaze of a father and a mother bringing us closer. A family gathered to celebrate one of God’s greatest gifts, family. And so it was as a family that we allowed space and time for God to talk to each one of us by way of all those who shared in his joy.
Through the testimony of Márcia Costa we came close to the missionaries spread across the world, who proclaim with their lives the Gospel of Jesus. With the announcement of the departure of Marisa Almeida we were all touched by the blessing that her life among us has meant for us, and by her abandonment in the arms of God and in the motherly gaze of Our Lady, mother of mission.
To be a Comboni Lay Missionary is in itself to be family, a family that welcomes, helps, protects, that sows God-given seeds, that sees them grow and see the light, and bears fruit. It is a family that prays and shares, that grows and helps to grow, that nurtures and gives life. It is like a gaze that does not forget, a flower losing its petals, it is simply us.
To be a Comboni Lay Missionary means being nearer to God’s love and give living witness with our own lives.
It is good to be family with all of you.
Neuza Francisco (Portugal)
