OGF 6/2019 Need for structural changes in Mission
The world is in transformation, and so is mission today. We all notice the changes in the world around us, in the fields of digitalization, globalization, communication, as well as some negative effects such as: the complexity of the digital world, the problem of cultural and religious identity, and the loneliness of modern human beings.
OGF 5/2019 (2) A eucharistic prayer over an awakening world
On the Feast of the Transfiguration in 1923, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin found himself alone at sunrise in the Ordos desert in China, watching the sun spread its orange and red light across the horizon. He was deeply moved, humanly and religiously. What he most wanted to do in response was to celebrate mass, to somehow consecrate the whole world to God.
OGF 5/2019 (1) There are three different kinds of spirituality. We need them all
Where should we be casting our eyes? Upward, downward, or just on the road that we’re walking? Well, there are different kinds of spiritualities: spiritualities of the Ascent, Spiritualities of the Descent and Spiritualities of Maintenance, and each is important.
Pope Francis’ almsgiver restores power (illegally) to homeless shelter in Italy
In what he described as a desperate gesture, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the pope’s almoner, climbed down a manhole last Saturday evening, May 11, to restore electric power to a building in Rome occupied by some 450 homeless people, including more than 100 children. They had been without electricity and hot water for almost a week.
Ethiopia: The Monastery of Hayk
The importance of Hayk begins in the thirteenth century when Iyasus Mo’a founded a monastery on the island. The most notable presence in the monastery is a manuscript of the Book of the Gospels written between 1280 and 1281, which is considered the oldest manuscript existing today in Ethiopia.
5th Sunday of EASTER (C)
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another” (v. 35). We know that the fruits do not make the tree alive, however, they are signs that the tree is alive. Good works do not make our communities Christian, but these works give evidence that our communities are animated by the Spirit of the Risen One.
Vocation story: My mission service, listening
Fr. Pawe Opiola, is a Comboni Missionary from Poland. He is working as parish priest in Kanyanga Parish, among the Tumbuka people in Zambia. He tells us his story.
Pope Francis’ new sex abuse rules are a revolution for the Catholic Church
With his new motu proprio “Vos estis lux mundi,” Pope Francis shows that he is taking the abuse crisis very seriously. The new legislation came only months after the February 2019 abuse summit in Rome. The time and tone of the new law are revolutionary, yet the law is solidly grounded in tradition.
How people around the world view religion’s role in their countries
In a recent report on “global views on diversity, gender equality, [and] family life,” the Pew Research Centre in Washington has examined how people around the world view religion’s role in their countries.
4th Sunday of EASTER (C)
How to recognize among many voices, that of the true Shepherd? It is necessary to accustom the ear. He who hears a person only for five minutes and then for a year does not hear him anymore, will find it difficult to distinguish the other’s voice in the crowd.
Oral Literature: Why the Bat flies at night
0nce upon a time, the bat and the bush-rat were great friends. All day long they would go hunting in the bush together, dodging between the tall grasses and the stunted trees, and finding good things to eat. When evening came, they would take turns to cook the meal and then eat it together.
Ethiopia: The Monastery of Debre Damo
It is the largest and the most important. The monastery concentrates certain original characteristics that do not occur in others.
3rd Sunday of EASTER (C)
John wants the Christians of his community to come to understand that Jesus, while being on the “shore,” that is, in the glory of the Father, is always beside them every day and continues to resonate his voice, calling, talking, and indicating what they should do.
The Monastery of Debre Libanos
From its very foundation, Debre Libanos grew in prestige and power until it surpassed all the other monasteries, thanks in the first place to the personality of its founder, Tekle Haimanot, but also to the permanent support of political power. It is still today at the head of the monastic life in Ethiopia.
Western Christians should learn from the Sri Lanka martyrs
The question the Sri Lanka massacre, and others like it in places such as Egypt, Nigeria and Iraq, pose to Christians in the West is: what have we sacrificed for the faith lately? What have we suffered for the suffering God?
2nd Sunday of EASTER (C)
How can we see him? Like the disciples: through his wounds. Gazing upon those wounds, the disciples understood the depth of his love. They understood that he had forgiven them, even though some had denied him and abandoned him. To enter into Jesus’ wounds is to contemplate the boundless love flowing from his heart.
EASTER Vigil and Easter Sunday (C)
We, like Peter and the women, cannot discover life by being sad, bereft of hope. Let us not stay imprisoned within ourselves, but let us break open our sealed tombs to the Lord – each of us knows what they are – so that he may enter and grant us life. Let us give him the stones of our rancour and the boulders of our past, those heavy burdens of our weaknesses and falls.
Wednesday, Meditation III: Betrayal
Here then is Judas, the balancer of the books, the “hander over” of Christ to his Passion, the tragic man of despair. Look on him. For this is Judas’s night. And so it is also our night, the night of misplaced desire for control, the night of misguided despair of mercy, which only God’s Son can cure and heal.
Tuesday, Meditation II: Gift
As we start to follow the gospels into the heart of this unfolding story, that question of costliness and loss of control becomes our first focus in the most striking fashion, and it comes in the form of an excessive and “costly” gift by a woman: a whole jar of expensive ointment wasted, and an exuberant expression of human love and gratitude.
Monday, Meditation I: Invitation
There is, in a sense, only one thing that matters as we stand at beginning of Holy Week: it is a question of invitation. Think of it first, perhaps, as an invitation to a drama. Shall I this year attend this drama of love and betrayal? Shall I bring to it all the anguish and ecstasy of my own loves and betrayals, or shall I stand at a distance…
Journey in to Monasticism and Monasteries in Ethiopia
The nearly 800 monasteries with hundreds of monks still living in some of them, tell us that monasticism in Ethiopia is far from being condemned to a rapid disappearance. However, it will depend on the capacity to renew itself that monasticism continues to play in the Ethiopian Church the fundamental role it played in the past.
Palm or Passion Sunday (C)
At the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus manifests himself to the shepherds: the last, despised people, the unclean of Israel. Then he spent his public life among tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes. At the end with those who die: not with the saints. Also at the end—it was to be expected—he is among those he most loved: the sinners.
Oral Literature: The Rice Flower
A long time ago, a woman named Mak Kantan and her daughter, Melur, were known to make the most delicious kuih (dessert foods) in the village.
The persecution trap: vulnerable Christians are running out of allies
The worldwide persecution of Christians is likely to intensify in the coming decades. Can anything be done to stop it?
5th Sunday of Lent (C)
This page of the Gospel today does not disturb less than yesterday. It does not leave tranquil those who continue to claim the right, from the unassailable fortress of their respectability, of hurling stones no longer with the hands, but defaming, isolating, uttering harsh judgments, fueling distrust, spreading gossips.
Is Pope Francis naive in pursuing dialogue with Muslims?
An Iraqi member of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue says the pope knows there are risks, but…
Australia’s Disgraced Cardinal: Paradoxes, Ironies And Martyrdom? – Analysis
The nation is polarized, if not traumatized by the verdict. Much of the debate is extremely heated with many angry about the failings of the church. Others say Pell has been made a scapegoat. He was convicted upon the evidence of a single person without corroboration or forensic evidence.
4th Sunday of Lent (C)
We must celebrate and rejoice—says the text (v. 24). They began only because every time one of the children goes out, the feast stops. It will be final and without end only when the door will be closed and all the children will be inside.
The Fathers and the Spiritual Understanding of the Scriptures
In our attempt to place ourselves under the teaching of the Fathers to give a new impetus and depth to our faith, we cannot omit a reflection on their way of reading the Word of God. It will be Pope St. Gregory the Great who will guide us to the “spiritual understanding” of the Scriptures and a renewed love for them.
Lent with Jesus in the Desert
“Re-enter your heart! Where do you want to go, far from yourself? Re-enter from your wandering which has led you outside the way; return to the Lord. He is quick. First re-enter into your heart, you who have become a stranger to yourself, because of your wandering outside: you do not know yourself, and seek him who has created you! “
3rd Sunday of LENT (C)
Unlike other evangelists who speak of a barren fig tree that is made almost instantly dry (Mk 11:12-24; Mt 21:18-22), Luke, the evangelist of mercy, introduces another year of waiting, before the definitive intervention. He presents a God who is patient, tolerant of human weakness, including the hardness of our mind and our heart.
OGF 4/2019 The Church is suffering from Holy Spirit atheism
There are some today who maintain a propositional, unidirectional, top-down understanding of the development of doctrine and church discipline that can only be decided by those who are ordained and be passively received by the lay faithful… avoiding or rejecting the role of the sensus fidelium…
Cardinal Marx: church needs to seriously discuss celibacy, role of women and sexual morality
German Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich speaks during a news conference at the bishops’ spring meeting in Lingen March 11, 2019. The sexual abuse scandal and demands for reform have changed the German church, the cardinal said at the end of the meeting.
2nd Sunday of Lent (C)
Jesus listens to the Law and the Prophets who spoke to him about his death and Resurrection. In his intimate dialogue with the Father, he did not depart from history, he did not flee the mission for which he came into the world, although he knew that to attain glory he would have to pass through the Cross.
OGF 3/2019 Pope Francis’ Lenten Meditations
The season of Lent is a favourable time to remedy the dissonant chords of our Christian life and to receive the ever new, joyful and hope-filled proclamation of the Lord’s Passover. The Church in her maternal wisdom invites us to pay special attention to anything that could dampen or even corrode our believing heart.
Sri Lanka: Comboni Missionary sisters in a tea plantation
Sri Lanka is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the south eastern coast of India. Since March 2012, the Comboni Missionaries are present in this country with a community in Talawakelle, the mountainous heart of the country, a paradise between tea plantations and waterfalls.
Oral Literature: The Leopard and the Boy
Long ago and far away there was a wealthy man who had several wives. All of a sudden, this man learned that his town was to be invaded by men from another tribe.
1st Sunday of Lent (C)
Luke above all speaks of every kind of temptation, therefore, the three frames he depicted had to be interpreted as a synthesis of all the temptations. They represent, in a schematic way, the wrong ways of dealing with three realities: with things, with people, with God.
Lent – “We Meet Along The Way”
Brother Michal Davide Semeraro, Benedictine monk, “rereads” the three Lenten practices – prayer, almsgiving and fasting. Prayer as openness to transcendence, fasting as “discipline” and almsgiving as an opportunity to understand that “in every woman and in every man is hidden a poor person who is waiting to be discovered”.
Lent with the Desert Fathers
A man asked abbot Antony, “What shall I keep, that I may please God?” Anthony said: “Wherever you go, have God ever before your eyes. In whatever you do, hold by the example of the holy Scriptures; and in whatever place you abide, don’t be swift to leave [out of restlessness]. These three things keep, and you will be saved.”
Message of Pope Francis for Lent 2019
The celebration of the Paschal Triduum of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, the culmination of the liturgical year, calls us yearly to undertake a journey of preparation, in the knowledge that our being conformed to Christ (cf. Rom 8:29) is a priceless gift of God’s mercy.
8th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Jesus wants that the Christian proposal is made with great humility, with great discretion and respect and, above all, never judging those who cannot understand it, those who do not feel like accepting it. The possibility of having a log in front of the eyes is not remote and must not be forgotten!
Zambezi River: Threats and Opportunities for the “Great River”
The Zambezi River is one of Africa’s main energy assets and could become as well one of the continent’s main water highway, but many threats ranging from climate change to the risk of collapse of the Kariba dam, must be addressed.
Oral Literature: Nigeria: Thunder and Lightning
A long time ago, both thunder and lightning lived on this earth, among all the people. Thunder was an old mother sheep and Lightning was her son, a handsome ram, but neither animal was very popular.
South Sudan: Blessings in disguise
“We are three Comboni Missionaries who serve a parish of around 25,000 Catholics spread over about eighty villages. Any place can become a chapel. We missionaries divide and visit these places as best as we can, usually two or three times per year. All journeys are on foot because there are no roads for vehicles in the county.”
7th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
There are three categories of people: on the lowest rung are the wicked (those who, while still receiving the good, they do evil); higher are the righteous (those who respond to the good with good and evil with evil); finally there are those who respond to evil with good. Only they are the children of God.
