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
