The Heart of the Good Shepherd is the source of the missionary passion in St. Comboni. In the Heart of Jesus we find the stimulus and explanation for the total self-giving to the mission of the Comboni Missionary who is "patient and strong in bearing with difficulties, exhaustion and apparently useless labor" (Rule of Life 2.2).
St. Daniel Comboni lived his missionary vocation inspired by the spirituality, challenged to conform his life, to that of the Good Shepherd of the Pierced Heart. He understood that the Heart of Christ beat for Africans and for the excluded, victims of injustice and oppression ~ and was moved to make common cause with them.
The contemplation of the Crucified one with the Pierced Heart brings us to see his face in the person of the poor and of the crucified of history, the most marginalized human groups and creates in us the attitudes necessary to respond to the call of Jesus in others. The Cross of Christ and that of others becomes the inseparable companion of the Comboni Missionary.
