By Fr Jorge Decelis MCCJ
For us Comboni missionaries, the missionary animation of the local Church is an essential part of our missionary charism. Already Saint Daniel Comboni (1831-1881), the first Bishop of Central Africa, who was a great missionary in African lands and a promoter of missionary work in Europe, left us as a valuable legacy the task of missionary animation.
We carry out the work of missionary animation in many ways, one of them being the ‘St. Daniel Comboni Virtual Missionary Sanctuary’ which was created in 2021 by the Comboni province of Peru to carry out missionary animation in times of the Covid-19 pandemic through digital platforms. Thanks to God and the responsible commitment of many people, this health emergency has been overcome, but this missionary intuition is still valid to present the urgency of the mission in the digital world.
The core of this initiative is to encourage the Church to continue in her commitment to fulfilling the mandate of Jesus Christ: “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to all creation” (Mk 16, 15). And we do this through activities typical of a religious shrine such as liturgical celebrations, but also activities of formation and experience of a Christian and missionary spirituality.
These activities – promoting missionary magazines and publications, organizing missionary days for young people and adults, forming and accompanying groups of lay people in their Christian life and in their missionary ministry – are carried out through Facebook and in person. They are aimed at a wide variety of audiences in the ecclesial and civil spheres: lay people in general, pastoral workers, university students, Comboni Lay Missionaries, members of groups organized in parishes, groups of Comboni friends and collaborators and groups in other environments, other religious institutes, etc.
All the communities of the Comboni missionaries in Peru actively participate in this “missionary shrine” which is the means to offer what is proper to our Comboni vocation: missionary animation and spirituality. The coordination of the Center for Missionary Animation and Spirituality (CAEM) and the Facebook page through which the various events are transmitted, are only the means to share, with other people, the richness of the missionary spirituality of our Comboni communities. Each Comboni community participates according to a role proposed by the CAEM, and of course, each community decides which confrere will preside over each of the activities.
These are some of the activities that are carried out and transmitted:
- Sunday Mass at 7 pm.
- Every Thursday, from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament with a vocational motivation.
- On the first Friday of the month, Holy Hour from 6:30 pm to 7:30 pm, with a motivation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
- Activities, with a talk and the Mass, in extraordinary events.
- Every third Wednesday of the month, a “missionary talk” is broadcasted from 7:30 pm to 9 pm, with religious, diocesan priests and lay people as speakers.
- Publication of missionary videos.
- Publication of the commentary on Sunday Mass.
- Organization of formation courses for missionary animators.
- Transmission of other significant events: Religious professions, diaconal and priestly ordinations, priestly and perpetual profession jubilees (Brothers), parish or provincial jubilees, etc.
- Transmission of events of the universal Church.
All these broadcasts are recorded on the Facebook page so they can be seen later by more people. For the successful realization of this project, the involvement of all of us Comboni Missionaries, friends and benefactors is necessary.
