Collaboration - In the Comboni Family

A gift that is unknown cannot be appreciated.  In the Comboni Missionary vocation, collaboration is, above all a gift to be received with gratitude, before being a duty to be performed or an attitude to be encouraged. The Comboni Institutes of Priests/Brothers and of the Sisters along with Lay-missionaries have a long history of collaboration and is represented in many of our documents. I will look at some dimension of collaboration in the following days, that which we try to live and that help us appreciate better the gift of communion received within the divine call, to become part of the Comboni Missionary family for missionary service.

From biblical foundations, the beginning of Scripture reveals to us that we have been thought of and wanted by God and are created in God's image! The vocation of the human person to communion with God and with others is innate in his or her very nature; "And God said, let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves... male and female he created them" (Gen. 1:26-27). The work of creation is, in fact, the work of Trinitarian love. The image which the human creature is called to reflect, is that of a God in communion.

The human person, created in the image of the "divine communion" is called to rediscover that the communitarian/relational dimension of life is not an option, but rather the very condition for growth and development.