The General Council of Comboni Missionaries writes a Christmas message to the Comboni Family around the world. “Christmas is a seed of hope because God enters into our history in order to transform and recreate it in a new direction. This is best understood from the victims, the poor, the landless and the homeless. Our Founder has made his life a project of love and common cause with the least”.
Christmas offers provides us with the time to contemplate God in the fragility and in the hope that a new world is possible. We are called to discover the signs of God’s presence in a world marred by the senseless violence that destroys humanity and renders the future uncertain. In this past year we have been following with concern the situation in Syria and in some countries where we are present, like South Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mozambique, Mexico, Colombia. The presence of our confreres in these situations is a sign that we are convinced that God is also there, however limited our missionary activity may be. Christmas is also an opportunity to give fresh energy to our fraternal life, learning to look at one another with the eyes of the Father, walking as a family where we know how to forgive and accept ourselves as we are.
The migratory phenomena have reached exceptional proportions because of wars and deep levels of economic inequality. Millions of people are forced to leave the security of their homes in search of a more decent life. Our Institute is committing itself more and more each day with this reality to be a sign of God’s presence, who recreates life and opens the heart to solidarity in a society that is becoming increasingly closed in on itself.
Christmas is a seed of hope because God enters into our history in order to transform and recreate it in a new direction. This is best understood from the victims, the poor, the landless and the homeless. Our Founder has made his life a project of love and common cause with the least. The whole of his life was configured by the passion that springs from the gospel through an intimate relationship with the Father. Our Institute was born from this fruitful experience of Daniel Comboni who tirelessly struggled against the injustice which the most abandoned endure.
God became incarnate in the fragility. We too today, as an Institute, feel fragile, but it is in this weakness that we are more creative and open to the spirit. We feel the need to listen, welcome and take upon ourselves what Jesus tells us at this particular time, which is also the time of salvation. We hope that the celebration of Christmas may help us to incarnate our charism in each reality we find ourselves, so that we may be the creative presence and signs of the Kingdom.
