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
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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
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Day TWO: Passion for Africa
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Text from the Cardinal: “I have loved everything about Africa.” It is to you that I am now coming, O my dear Africa. I had sacrificed everything to you seventeen years ago, when compelled by a force that was obviously that of God, I left everything to dedicate myself to your service. Since then, what travels, what exhaustions, what sorrows! I recall them only to forgive and to express once again my invincible hope of seeing the portion of this great continent that once knew the Christian religion, to return fully to the light and the truth, and the one that has hitherto remained immersed in the most frightful barbarity, to come out of its darkness and death. It was to this work that I dedicated my life. But what is a man’s…
17th novembre 2024 with Cardinal Lavigerie
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16th November 2024 with Cardinal Lavigerie
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Day ONE: Passion for God
+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Text from the Cardinal: “A strong and ardent attachment to Our Lord” Ultimately, under a variety of forms of expression, a single sentiment inspired them. This is the one Our Lord asked of Peter to make him Head of his Apostles; the one St. Augustine, the Doctor of our Africa and of the whole Church, proclaims the unique law of Christians; the one I took myself for my motto (Caritas): love, the love of God and that of so many abandoned souls. This love has supported me, in the midst of the hardships and privations that have worn my life out before its time. It is also this love that will give you strength, heroic self-sacrifice, and perseverance. Love them, then, as a mother loves her sons, in proportion to their misery and…
15th November 2024 with Cardinal Lavigerie
Link to download the PDF 20241115 A Year With CML200