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…
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…
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…
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…