Daniel Comboni
Comboni Missionaries
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Happy Easter of Resurrection!
Rome, 16 April 2017
“On this Easter 2017 we think of you, dear confreres, who will celebrate it with the people among whom you have been sent, who will experience it while announcing that another world is possible, a world where life triumphs and where we all have life in abundance. We think especially of our confreres who live in areas where there is war, famine, natural disasters, where it is not always easy to see that life rises again. May this Easter celebration find us ready to announce the victory of Life over death, find us ready to make common cause with those who are discarded and rejected, find us ready to let ourselves be overcome by the Life of God so that we may share it with the neglected of history. Wishing you a Happy Easter of Resurrection!” [The General Council].
Death with Life contended: combat strangely ended. Life’s own Champion, slain, yet lives to reign.
(Easter Sequence)
Dear confreres,
May the celebration of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus grant you peace and joy to proclaim his Gospel to the ends of the earth.
For 150 years, our Institute of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus has proclaimed the victory of Life over death. This Life, sold at a cheap price, betrayed, condemned, nailed to a cross and locked in the dark of a tomb, found the power to rise again and give himself to every person who lets himself be engulfed by the unconditional love of God.
Like then, even now life is betrayed and sold. We live in a world where radicalism is likely to take over, where there is no place for the impoverished and the crucified of history, where walls are built and bridges torn down. A world where the economy of selfishness and death creates scraps of humanity and the search of welfare but just for personal benefit and where we become increasingly unable to open up to the gift that becomes a blessing and is fragmented so that it may be shared.
On this Easter 2017 we think of you, dear confreres, who will celebrate it with the people among whom you have been sent, who will experience it while announcing that another world is possible, a world where life triumphs and where we all have life in abundance. We think especially of our confreres who live in areas where there is war, famine, natural disasters, where it is not always easy to see that life rises again. Let us recall to all of us the words of the last General Chapter: “Our presence is meaningful when we are close to marginalized groups or in frontier situations” (CA 2015, n. 45.2).
May this Easter celebration find us ready to announce the victory of Life over death, find us ready to make common cause with those who are discarded and rejected, find us ready to let ourselves be overcome by the Life of God so that we may share it with the neglected of history.
Wishing you a Happy Easter of Resurrection!
The General Council