We continue in this issue of Missionhurst Magazine, to bring you stories from the mission situations around the world where we are engaged. We share these concrete accounts with you, our benefactors and co-missionaries because they allow you to know how much your support is needed and appreciated. We also share these stories to reveal the impacts made as we work together to alleviate suffering and bring the light of hope to our global family under God.
In this issue alone you will find that your companionship with CICM helps sustain a small medical clinic in Haiti, where poverty, chaos, and depleted resources otherwise render basic medical services non-existent. Your interest in the poor, underprivileged youth of Cameroon gives our missionaries the ability to cultivate volunteer programs providing much needed educational support. Your faith in our missionaries encourages them as they press into frontier towns and villages in Guatemala: a pastoral presence among these people is essential to accompany, train and strengthen pastoral leaders. Children in the Democratic Republic of Congo have faced war-ravaged communities and abandoned schools for years, but your compassion for their plight allows our missionaries to help those communities find ways to rebuild, in turn restoring the chance for education and hope for the future. In Kinshasa, the well-known and successful Christian mentoring and formation of thousands of young Catholic men and women has enjoyed 40 years of CICM involvement and support.
As you reflect on the missionary experiences contained here, please know that your co-missionary kindness is integral to the existence and success of not only these but countless other CICM endeavors: all for the purpose of sharing the light of the living Gospel to our brothers and sisters around the world. Amen.
Missionhurst Magazine
Considering the busy schedule of parish life and activities during Holy Week this past Spring, the notion of travelling to Arlington, Virginia immediately following Easter Sunday was exhausting. However, I had also been looking forward to attending the CICM US province assembly—taking place the week after Easter—so to Arlington I went. As soon as I arrived, I was energized by the joyful attitudes of all my confreres.
“Is God deaf?” That is the question once posed to me by a deaf child. It might seem like a simple “yes” or “no” question that could be answered with a little theologizing, but to me the real challenge was in understanding what the child needed to learn from that question. What exactly did he want to know?
It was in early 2013, after the CICM general assembly that I was officially sent to work in a new mission in the diocese of Almenara: particularly, in the Saint Anthony of Padua parish in the municipality of Jacinto. Having already worked in the diocese of Itabira and Marabá, this third assignment has helped to further widen my missionary perspective. Jacinto is located in the valley of Jequitinhonha, roughly 500 miles north of the state capital of Belo Horizonte. The most recent census shows that Jacinto has approximately twelve thousand residents.
There is a deep hunger for God’s word and His message of hope, peace and love among our local communities. In my humble way of pastoral visitation in the various communities under my care, I wish to support and enhance people’s faith by sharing the Gospel in their particular situations. I believe home visitation is a prime opportunity for outreach, especially to the neediest. It is an important method of living out my own faith: reaching deep into the day-to-day reality of our flock. Home visitation offers a precious moment of fraternal bonding and mutual growth in our parish. I see it as an opportunity to discover and recover God’s presence in people’s lives.
In my experience, it is always a pleasure to go back to the source: returning home to savor familiar foods and visit the places where I used to study, work, play and pray. The CICM missionary presence in the diocese of Boma, and especially in the Kangu parish, has marked the lives of so many people—myself included. A CICM mission station was established in Kangu in 1899. Kangu is a small community located in the center of the Boma diocese, in the westernmost region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
