Final vows April-May 2022
We thank God with and for our four sisters who will soon make their final vows: Sr Pascaline Katungu from Goma DRC appointed to Arusha Tanzania. She will make her vows on 30th April 2022 in Our Lady of Africa Parish, Katoyi in Goma DRC Sr Scholastique Makita from Kinshasa appointed to Malindi in Kenya. She will make her perpetual vows on 30th April 2022 in Saint Gabriel Parish Yolo Kinshasa DRC. Sr Priscille Nisubire from Burundi appointed to Butare in Rwanda. She will make her perpetual vows on 8th May 2022 in Kiganda parish, Archdiocese of Bujumbura, Burundi Sr Anna Wójcik from Poland appointed to Lilongwe in Malawi will make her perpetual vows on 29th May 2022 in the Parish of Saints Peter and Paul and Our Lady of the Rosary in Kanie, in Poland. We wish them to be a good instrument in God’s hands for His…
Awakening the family Spirit
Collaboration is a process that enables people or individuals to work together to achieve a defined and common objective. Our Ukusijoni Common Project at the service of the refugees from South Sudan is a great and challenging mission. To accomplish this, we are privileged to be part of the team that consists of three Missionaries of Africa and the three of us MSOLA. We were sent together to achieve a common goal in participating in the Mission of Christ among our brothers and sisters now known as refugees. To be able to live this mission in a life-giving way, we got the opportunity to come together as the two institutes to spend some time together in Nairobi and to get some fundamentals that would help us in our ministry. Indeed, we treasured this time of formation. It gave us an occasion to see as a team the vision and the…
‘Come and see’ at the MSOLA house in Malawi
This article is an extract from MVA/MSOLA Network Letter n° 25 “Come and see” is a stage when a young woman who is interested in religious life comes to stay in our community. Just as Jesus did with his disciples when they asked Him “Master where do you stay,” He told them to “come and see” (John 1: 39). Here is a testimony shared by young Sphiwe Gervazio who stayed at our house in Lilongwe with three other girls, from 17th to 20th December 2021. Dear sisters! Receive our greetings from the warm heart of Africa! We are very grateful to God for the warm welcome we received from the sisters, the joy and peace we have experienced, the kindness and openness they showed us during our stay in their community. We came to the sisters and witnessed how they live their religious life. This increased the desire to join…
25 Years of Missionary Life of Sr. Maria Carmen Ocón
On December 7, 2021 Sr. Maria Carmen celebrated 25 years of missionary commitment among the sisters, families and friends. Next day the celebrations continued with our brothers the Missionaries of Africa, Fr. Stephen Ofonikott, Fr. Stanley Lubungo, Fr. Stéphane Joulain who also celebrated 25 years of commitment with their missionary oath. The ceremony presided by Bishop Claude Rault took place at the Generalate. Here is an extract from an article on Sharing Trenta Aprile that Maria Carmen was kind enough to share with us. My vocation story begins with a spiritual experience through God’s words to Abram in Genesis 12: “Leave your native land and your father’s house and go to the land that I will show you”. Since then, it has been a journey in which the verbs “leave”, “go” and “show” have been an essential part of my life experience. LEAVING: I have always found it difficult and…
Easter Sunday, Year C – 2022
A stone rolled away… A corpse… missing… “Strips of linen lying there”… Cloth wrapping the body “still lying in its place”… All these are seen, noted, but… No body lying there, NOBODY present! Yet, the gospel text tells us that when John had witnessed this scene, “He saw and believed.” (John 20:1-9) Daily events… Regular meetings… Occasional encounters… Ordinary situations… Unexpected happenings… Unusual occasions… Overheard conversations… Surprising details… Which of these? All of these? At times… sometimes… could be… will be… the signs that could lead us to make the personal experience that John made. We will see and believe. We will NOT see any body – not ANYBODY – but we will perceive a presence. We will recognize the Risen Lord with us as surely as he was 21 centuries ago! source: www.image-i-nations.com
Palm Sunday, Year C – 2022
The following reflection is about the Gospel at the beginning of the celebration before the blessing of the palms (branches) (Luke 19:28-40). A meditation on the gospel of the Passion will be given on Good Friday. A day of jubilation. A day where acclamation and recrimination compete surrounding a man coming into Jerusalem on a donkey. With cries of joy, the crowd acclaims him as the descendant of king David. The man’s adversaries want them to be shut up. The scene is familiar but… What is less familiar is Jesus’ attitude – in the past, he has been avoiding attempts to make him king (John 6:15). And now, he accepts readily the glorious welcome that people give him – he seems to delight in it! He does not shut up the people shouting praises but those who want to silence them. None of the gospel texts tells us why…
I was in prison and you came to me
I am preparing for my visit to the prison. The sheets of the Word of God for next Sunday. The list of prisoners. Currently there are 20. Objects requested by others. Messages from families; super important to stay in touch, to continue to live with the family, often also to reconcile. In the end, I enter a lot into the lives of families. I discover people through relationships with their loved ones, wives, children, parents, friends. Saturday 2 p.m. I am ready. I go to the chapel. I ask the Lord: Send me. I’m going in your name. I leave the house, I walk towards the prison. It is a way of prayer, I say the rosary. It’s Saturday, so I’m still meditating on the glorious mysteries, life is reborn, joy after pain… I’m also talking to the angels to prepare the way ahead of me. I walk through the…
150 years of the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa
The Rector of the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa, José Maria Cantal Rivas, asked us to join in the Basilica’s 150-year jubilee in 2022. “We would like to show the impact and influence of the basilica throughout the world and to update the links between it and different places.We “White Sisters”, the MSOLA have contributed the letter which we share with you below: Dear friends, We are happy to join in the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa! Although we are known as “White Sisters”, the founder, Cardinal Lavigerie gave us the name which expresses both dedication and devotion to Our Lady of Africa: Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa. When the founder no longer believed in the possibility of life for the young congregation, Mother Marie-Salomé and her sisters went to pray at Notre-Dame so that the congregation…
5th Sunday of Lent, Year C – 2022
Our days are filled with messages sent and received on many platforms – computers, cell phones, tablets – these tools are available at our fingertips, literally. The more traditional media – books, magazines, periodicals – are still in use to contact people. But have you ever received a message written on… sand? This is surely not the usual mode of communication nowadays! Amazingly, we see this in today’s gospel (John 8:1-11) – we see Jesus writing in the sand. What did he write? What was the message he wanted to make known? No one can say… Did the Pharisees read it? Did they realize that the words were meant for them? Impossible to assert… Did the woman make out the characters traced by Jesus’ finger? Did this give her courage, hope to be spared the stoning prescribed by the Jewish Law? This, too, is unknown. It is after the…