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The dream of Daniel Comboni goes beyond the Institutes he founded. He gathered a vast number of people around himself, like a family working for the cause of “Nigrizia”: his parents and relatives, friends and townsfolk, priests and enclosed nuns, lay people in Europe and Africa, Bishops and Cardinals, politicians and society in general…

 It is impressive to see how Comboni managed to convey to his parents a wonderful vision of his vocation, making them part of his ministry as a priest and missionary. He did the same with relatives, especially some close cousins.

Comboni also kept up his links with his home town, Limone, and told his parish priest all about his missionary activities. Whenever he could, he paid a visit, if only in passing.

As we study the work and the letters of Daniel Comboni, we discover his courage and determination even in creating a vast “Comboni movement”, stirring up and involving many people in the great problem of “Nigrizia”. He was well aware of the need to draw everyone into missionary cooperation in and beyond his home country, not just the clergy and religious Institutes, but lay people of all levels of society: including the politicians, the rich and the powerful, and non-Catholics too. He kept in touch with a far-flung network of benefactors of the mission through a magazine which he founded: “Annals”

These brief remarks are enough to show that Daniel Comboni was a very good missionary animator and coordinator, creating around himself a large “family” for the good of the African people: international, inter-class and inter-confessional. 

The Comboni Family today 

The immediate sons and daughters of Comboni, reflecting his attitudes and actions, have always held that his charism is not exclusively his or theirs, but is a gift the Holy Spirit gave to the Founder for the good of the Church and of the world.

So anyone who has been touched in any way by the spirituality and the figure of Comboni - parents and relatives of missionaries, benefactors, past pupils of former members of the Institutes, collaborators, subscribers and readers of the magazines, those who pray and offer their sufferings for the missions - is involved, in his or her own way, in Comboni missionary activities along with members of the Institutes. Each has an important role in missionary animation, vocation promotion, evangelisation; and each is a member of the great Comboni Family.

And Daniel Comboni looks down on all with fatherly love, and urges us on - as he would have done in life - to an even greater commitment to the missionary activity of the Church.

Missionary Cooperation

Know more about the Comboni Missionaries

Today, more than ever, Mission is the foremost and greatest service a Christian can offer to the men and women of our age. 

John Paul II reminds us: “The missionary mandate is still valid and real, and engages Christians in witnessing joyfully to the Good News to those nearby and those far off, making available their energies, their means, even their lives”.

At the same time, living the missionary dimension gives an extraordinary chance to grow towards full Christian maturity. Mission is receiving, as well as giving. 

Prayer and sacrifice 

Every Christian community must follow the logic of the freely-given gift. First of all by spiritual cooperation: prayer, sacrifice, the example of Christian living.

Daniel Comboni wrote: “The omnipotence of prayer is our strength… prayer and faith; praying not with words but with the fire of love. This is how the faith has been planted in all the world’s missions”. And he declares that more than 200 religious houses are praying for him and for Central Africa, so that in the diadem worn by the Immaculate Virgin a “black pearl” may shine. Prayer must always accompany the activities of missionaries.

And sacrifice has to be joined to prayer. “The sacrifice of men and women missionaries,” says the Pope in his Letter on the missions, “has to find support and solidarity in that of the faithful”. Suffering becomes missionary in this way: every sick person can make the Gospel ideal and the salvation of all nations the burning light of his or her suffering.

Prayer, sacrifice, support: the third leg of solidarity is material support, given as a sign of love of justice and of one’s brothers and sisters. 

Here I am, I am ready!

 At the heart of missionary cooperation are vocations: the harvest is great, and needs labourers. People “young at heart” are needed, able to feel enthusiasm  for life world-wide, able to leave home and go out to other peoples, other cultures, other brothers and sisters, in response to the call of Jesus.

A missionary vocation blossoms in a climate of enthusiasm and generosity such as that of Comboni, who exclaimed one day: “If I had a hundred lives, I would give them all for Africa!” Today, as yesterday, missionary vocations show the real measure of giving to others for sake of the Kingdom.

And the Gospel, the missions, are entrusted in a special way to the Youth…!

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