23rd November 2024 with Cardinal Lavigerie
Link to download the PDF 20241123 A Year With CML200
22nd November 2024 with Cardinal Lavigerie
Link to download the PDF 20241122 A Year With CML200
Day SIX: Charity Above all
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Text from the Cardinal: Charity is the master weapon, because it is the one that penetrates hearts and inflicts wounds of eternal life. Let this be the secret of your action (I.52-53). In our relations with the unbelievers, we must be inspired by a supernatural love for them; we must love them as Our Lord loved His Apostles. We must want to die for them, just as Jesus Christ died for his Apostles. (I.320). When I speak of charity, I do not speak only of the charity of almsgiving, I speak of the charity which knows how to suffer, to give oneself, to sacrifice oneself if necessary, and which, by this demonstration, finally forces the most hardened ones to say, “Those are really God’s disciples” (P.88). Reflection: Lavigerie was a man with a…
21st November 2024 with Cardinal Lavigerie
Link ot download the PDF 20241121 A Year With CML200
Day FIVE: Passion for the people and their cultures
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Text from the Cardinal: “Be all things to all people to redeem some of them.” [A Missionary] ought to approach the local people through all external habits, by language first, clothing and food, in accordance with the example of the Apostle: “I made myself everything to all to save them all”(I.52) (translated from the Latin Bible). Reflection: To draw them to Christ, we must not make others like ourselves, but make ourselves similar to them. This deep conviction underpinned the early stages of Africa’s evangelisation: in relation to Arabs and Muslims, to the peoples of Central Africa, of the Middle East in the Holy Land. Lavigerie opposed the the excessive Italianisation of the Curia, which he said undermined the Catholicity of the Church. He also opposed the systematic Latinisation of Orthodox converts to…
20th November 2024 with Cardinal Lavigerie
Link to download the PDF 20241120 A Year With CML200
Day FOUR: Passion for Mission
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Text from the Cardinal: “Be apostles, nothing but apostles.” My dear children, you are not ordinary travellers, you are not explorers, and yet you seem to copy in all your ways of doing and thinking what people like Stanley are about (…). You are apostles, you are only that; or, at least, the rest must come only in addition. I exhort you, resurrect in you these great thoughts of the apostolate. (…) I love you dearly, my dear children, but I would prefer to learn of your death than to see you miss the spirit of your vocation and become some type of African ‘Robinson Crusoe’, as I have told you sometimes. Lift up your hearts! This is the cry I send you through space to awaken your souls (I.121-122). The virtue proper…
19th November 2024 with Cardinal Lavigerie
Link to download the PDF 20241119 A Year With CML200
Day THREE: Passion for Humanity
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Text from the Cardinal: “Nothing human is foreign to me.” “I am a man, and I am familiar with everything human.” (Terence, from Heautontimorumenos, v. 77). It is a cry that started from Rome, and which echoes throughout the universe. I am a man; injustice towards other people revolts my heart. I am a man; oppression is unworthy of my nature. I am a man; the cruelties against so many of my fellow-creatures instigate only horror within me. I am a man, and what I would like to be done to give me freedom, honour, the sacred bonds of the family, I want to do in order to restore to the sons of this unfortunate race, family, honour and freedom (E.98). Reflection: Through the correspondence with his missionaries on the field, Lavigerie became…
18th November 2024 with Cardinal Lavigerie
Link to download the PDF 20241118 A Year With CML200