Fr. Jude Eugene Burgers, Comboni missionary from South Africa: “I took off my sandals”

I grew up in a large family on the Cape Flats near Cape Town, South Africa. On a typical day, there were nine of us and our parents. We often had relatives living with us, including cousins, aunts, and those seeking temporary shelter. As the second oldest, there was a lot of fetching and carrying to do. Running out every day for bread and milk was my job. Our parents, both full-time workers, made sure that there was a Christian atmosphere in our home. What we had was ours to share and no one was excluded. It was in our home that I learnt what it meant to be a Christian.

Caring for younger siblings, caring for the needs of others, always forgiving and asking for forgiveness, laughing and crying, all shaped my Christian sensibilities and made me who I am. Love was a living word in our home. My second home was the parish.

Next year, 2026, our parish will celebrate its centenary. In the parish I was an altar server and I really enjoyed being close to the altar and learning the ways of God and the Church. I joined the intermediate group of the Legion of Mary. Our task was to visit the homes of those who had baptized their children the previous year. At each visit, we would pray a decade of the Holy Rosary, encourage the family, and then look out for them at Sunday Mass.

But the work I loved most in the Legion of Mary was our custom of praying a Rosary novena in the homes of those who had suffered a death in the family. To be in solidarity with those who were grieving and to encourage those who were trying to make sense of their loss, simply by being present and praying the Holy Rosary.

Families waited expectantly for us and their joy to see us was palpable. Together we experienced Christ in their midst. My call to the missionary life came while I was involved in the work of the Legion of Mary. A part of me wanted to continue the Christian ministry of encouragement and solidarity on a full-time basis in apartheid South Africa. I had good examples to follow, including my parents who were active in the Church.

The priests who worked in the parish were committed missionaries. The Dominican convent in the parish was a testimony to missionaries who had left their home countries to live and serve the Gospel in foreign lands. I could not join the missionaries immediately because it was pointed out to me that, as an Afrikaans speaker, my services as a diocesan priest would be needed in those areas of the archdiocese where only Afrikaans was spoken.

It was only after eleven years of working in the archdiocese that I was able to enter the Institute of the Verona Fathers. After the novitiate, I was sent to Malawi/Zambia. I was warmly welcomed by the people. My invitation was to take off my sandals, like Moses at the burning bush, and enter this new land with sensitivity and awareness. God was present among the people and working in ways I had not seen.

The process was more challenging than I had expected. I was working among rural people whose lives were in tune with the cycles of nature. Waiting for rain, praying for rain, dancing in the rain became dominant forces of prayer and encounter with God. As a city boy, this was completely new to me! In Lusaka, Zambia, the church is built on the model of the Small Christian Community (SCC).

The SCCs meet weekly for prayer and to support families in crisis. At the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Zambia, the SCCs were a vital link of support to bring the ministry of the church to those affected. It was a beautiful experience to see Christ amid his suffering people. After twenty-five years in the priesthood, I was selected for the Religious Formation Ministry Programme in Dublin, Ireland.

I had worked in formation for ten years in three different houses of formation. This experiential programme helped me to synthesise my experience in formation ministry. Formation is a very necessary area of mission. Christ taught his disciples. He took them aside privately and taught them.

After his resurrection he continued to teach them. The ministry of formation is Christ forming his disciples to be with him and teaching them to face and meet the challenges of his Church today. I thank God for my experience in formation and I cannot overemphasise the importance of this area of mission. As God has blessed me, I was allowed to do three units of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). Each unit lasted for three months. I did this at St Vincent’s University Teaching Hospital in Dublin, Ireland.

The programme equips you to accompany people who are temporarily uprooted from their normal routines and forced to enter a space where they are told what to wear, where to eat, where to sleep and where they do not have the freedom to move as they please. This applies broadly to patients in a hospital, inmates in a prison and displaced people in various situations. I have applied my learning mainly to patients.

The deep learning I have gained here is invaluable. I apply this learning constantly, for we are all, so to speak, temporarily displaced until we rest fully in God. Just before arriving in the UK, I had done a course in Ignatian Spirituality in Rome. This course sharpened my senses to see God in all things and to consciously align myself with Christ who offers himself for the salvation of the world. I am so blessed to be Christ’s missionary in this part of the Church.

A few months ago, I joined the Comboni Missionaries who work in the United Kingdom and Ireland. My pastoral activity will be missionary animation.

Comboni Missionaries