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| Sharing on the prayer for the gift of Holiness |
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| Scritto da Delegation South Africa | |
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“Prayer for the gift of Holiness”
Note: To prepare this material, each of the four communities of the Delegation of South Africa, reflected on a verse of the prayer for the gift of Holiness. Father, source of all good,
Pour upon us your Spirit Who enables us to walk On the way of missionary holiness, According to the charism of Blessed Allamano. Father, source of all good - The Father is indeed the source of all good: it is from Him that we come and it is to Him that we tend – since we are His children, created by Him out of Love before the beginning of the world. - The good of which the Father is the source reveals itself to us as Holiness. - The Hymn of the morning prayer of Friday of the third week (Liturgy of the Hours) leads us in blessing the Father because He’s the “Lord of life, to whom all living things tend, the source of holiness and grace, our first beginning and our end”. - The Father, head of the Trinity, is the source of the Mission: in sending us His only Son He sent us all He had, all He is. Pour upon us your Spirit - Since the Spirit is the motor (EN, Paul VI) and the protagonist (RM, John Paul II) of the Mission, there is no work, action, word, apostolate or witnessing that can be put forward without Him being present. - The will of the Father – who is the source of all Holiness and Mission – is all we pledge for as we seek His Spirit to help us in the missionary work. Who enables us to walk - Our life, as Consolata Missionaries, is a journey in togetherness with the people with whom we are called to discover and announce God’s Consolation – Jesus Christ, the only name in which there is salvation. On the way of missionary holiness - As Consolata Missionaries we are not arrived or accomplished yet, we are on the way in as much as Holiness becomes our horizon and our daily challenge. - Yes, we are called to be holy, but as Consolata Missionaries: in accordance with the will of the Father and in faithfulness to our religious family – a community of brothers entrusted with the spreading of the Good News to all peoples. - A Missionary holiness that has to be expressed is concrete terms in one’s everyday life. According to the charisma of Blessed Joseph Allamano - The immensely rich Charisma of our Blessed Founder calls us to a continuous deepening through study and meditation as well as through new developments in faithfulness to our history and tradition. - From our Founder we inherited Holiness as an ongoing process – first saints then missionaries – incarnated in our evangelization work as Consolata Missionaries Enlighten our minds
to discern the ways of the Spirit which lead to the transformation of each of us into a new creature, fully aware of the signs of the time, and ready to offer answers based on love. Some signs of the times in South Africa: - All kinds of movements and mobilization of the people - Immigration: people from many parts of Africa coming to South Africa - Urbanization: there are individuals and families that regularly alternate their residence between urban and rural areas and others that move to town for a long stay - Refugees, street people and others who prefer to live either alone or with just some friends; all kinds of poverties and violence; unemployment; corruption, etc, are some results of this national and international movements - Religious, social, political associations, syndicates, sects and movements - Opportunities to change life (job, life style, etc) - Lack of vocations and all commitments for life - Diabetes, cancer, HIV/AIDS and similar diseases Some signs of the times in the Consolata Missionaries Family: - Inter cultural communities - Formation Houses of studies set up in different contests - Variety of pastoral and academic experiences - Increase of elderly missionaries - Presence of Lay missionaries Discerning the ways of the Spirit in South Africa and in the Consolata Family: The process of discernment is important for each one of us. The growth of the person in his holistic reality: we can discuss in order to take decisions only when we are in the process of growing, accepting ourselves as we are, in harmony with ourselves and others. Growing in this way is an individual decision and then it still relies on our ability to use properly the gift of freedom that is coming from God. We can help and challenge each other, but nobody can delegate personal responsibilities on others. This includes a spirit of prayer attentive to the will of God: “…your kingdom come; your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…” “God wants everyone to be saved and reach full knowledge of the truth” (1Tm.2:4) We must be able to accept the challenges coming from our society, from the Church and the confrères. In this journey the “Personal Project of Life” and the “Community Project of life” play an important role: planning, experiencing life, evaluating and considering the plan again, it becomes a kind of dialectic towards maturity that becomes holiness. The spirit of unity wanted by Blessed Joseph Allamano, is an essential tool in this process of searching within ourselves, our missionary-religious communities and society at large. One confrère becomes a spiritual guide for the other and vice versa, and this is a way to know and to appreciate each other in a spirit of freedom and responsibility. Above all we allow the action of the Holy Spirit, protagonist of this renewal in us and in the people. The grace of God transforms our hearts and guides our actions; the example of Mary, the handmaid of the Lord is for us an encouragement not to be afraid to continue to collaborate with the plan of God. Towards our transformation, becoming new creatures (new realities): As missionaries, we use the expression “evangelization” most of the time to indicate our way of work. In the spirit of the “Evangelii Nuntiandi” (Paul VI, 1975), each one is invited to receive the daily Good News in his own life; therefore each missionary or religious community is supposed to be evangelized before reaching out to other people. If we are evangelized, then we can evangelize others. Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to pray every morning before going out to serve the people. In our struggle to understand and live the example of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples in our missionary-religious communities, we also struggle to share the Gospel with the people. We know that the Word of God is not always sweet as honey and we cannot buy it with money, but it is a matter of experience of life characterized by a relation with God and our neighbour. Objective: a service based on Love For a community of missionaries, we experience the beauty and riches of different cultures, personalities, talents etc., but also the human limits to practice the “spirito di corpo” wanted by Blessed Allamano; life becomes a continuous inter-action with the Grace of God. It is positive for us to be aware of this strife and to let God do his work in us. In this way we get the wisdom needed to give possible and practical answers in front of the challenges that society presents to us. Considering the Acts of the Apostles and the history (tradition) of the Church the person and its dignity is always at the centre: in it we meet Christ, with the person we make our journey towards maturity. To give our life serving humanity as Jesus did, we need that freedom and responsibility that will set us free of abuse, paternalism and intolerance; in this way the other one is a friend, brother and sister. Nice to see also the dialectic of celebration and life together, indeed it is Jesus in the Eucharist who nourishes us, so our friendship strengthens us; in the Sacrament of Reconciliation he gives us another chance, so our human weakness becomes an opportunity to grow together. Let the fire of mission burn within us so
that we can bring to the whole word, in communion with you and our brothers and sisters, the Good news of the Gospel and the bread of charity. What does it mean to be a holy missionary?
Today, holiness has this strange/unusual/bizarre connotation of self-importance. Someone holy or spiritual is someone who is out of touch with reality, someone who doesn’t get the real world. This is a challenge, but in reality the world is starving for the answers from the reality they face. Holiness is a gift, it is a grace from God, and hence our faithfulness and commitment to our charisma assimilated in our way of life ought to be a sign / reflection of a bit of what God is like. Likewise our way of being should make easier for the others to believe in God. That is the Good news the world is thirsting for from a holy missionary. If our life and charisma disagree the mass of onlookers will accept our practice and reject our preaching. Make us poor, humble and chaste,
Witnesses of hope and consolation, And servants Concerned with our brothers and sisters Whom we meet on our journey, Through Christ our Lord. Amen. REFLECTION: - To be poor: In the context of the Missions means availability, flexibility and above all to be ready to go, wherever we are sent.
Poverty is not only to be understood in a material context, but also, to be ready to die in order to rise again in a new life (culture, traditions, and so on). To live the vows….. to donate our lives to the missions totally. To be able to see the will of God among the poor. To be fully engage in the places where I or we are called to fulfill our missionary vocation. To inculturate ourselves; to be open to walk together and to discover the seeds of the Kingdom of God in the way people live out their Christian faith. To be happy: to be a sign of hope and consolation to the people where we are posted... People will believe for what we are, not for what we preach. Joyful hope, to live and to experience among the people a joyful life. To be able to be and to live with the sick, with the orphans, with the lonely, with those are downtrodden in the society where we live out our missionary call. Charity towards the unloved, downtrodden, those who don’t count in society. - Humility: to be ready to do the will of the Father (Mary the one who was ready to do the will of the Father without reservations). - Holiness means to be Servants and builders of humanity together with people in the places where we are sent to fulfill our missionary vocation, and also to look for the seeds of the Kingdom and to build up the community of believers. The Founder used to say: First holy, then Missionaries... We believe, that our main task as missionaries is to bring JESUS CHRIST to the people.
People will understand, will follow and will believe if there is an example of life. We cannot succeed in our missionary work if the spirit of Jesus is not present. |
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