Remaining in Him

We know that there is no mission without contemplation, that there is no vocation without prayer. Unless we work with God, our action will always remain a human effort. “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it”,  the psalmist tells us. We also know that: “The missionary acknowledges that he can do nothing without Christ who sends him, and that the spreading of the Gospel is linked to prayer” (Rule of Life 46.1).

Comboni taught us that the mission starts from Christ. It is Christ himself who takes us to the mission. “Anyone who has discovered Christ – as Benedict XVI reminds us – must lead others to Him.”

Evangelization is our most important mission and, as missionaries, we cannot but “speak of the things which we saw and heard” (Ac 4:20). The missionary, therefore, communicates a lived experience. Inadequate spirituality wounds the Gospel of the mission. “A charism, wrote Paul VI, does not sit well with mediocre people or lived just any way: either it is lived fully or it is betrayed. Truly, either one gives everything to Christ or one gives nothing at all”.

Comboni did not seek members who were nothing but dead souls in well-nourished bodies. He wanted holy people who were capable of being “all things to all men” and to live in the most arduous and difficult situations. All in the name of Jesus Christ.