Migrants and emigrants for the sake of the gospel

"Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you." Genesis 12:1

"For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." Mark 8:35

In one of the municipalities most affected and deserted by emigration, such as Ribeira de Pena in the district of Vila Real (Portugal), we the Ad Gentes Institute missionaries, held a Missionary Week under the motto Migrants & Emigrants for the sake of the gospel. Since the discoveries, the country that "gave new worlds to the world" has also contributed to their population. There are Portuguese in every country of the world. Someone once said that the Portuguese have a very small cradle but a very large cemetery.

"Expanding the faith and the empire"
When we began to be a destination for immigrants of other countries, because despite being poor, we belong to a rich club, the European Community, we thought that the bloodletting of our country was over, but here we are faced with the current financial crisis and are called, and even invited by our government, once again to emigrate.

Soon after gaining the same geographical identity as over 900 years ago, which we still have today, with our backs to Europe, we set out to sea. For Camões, the legitimate interpreter of the soul of the Portuguese people, the ultimate reason that led us to venture out and leave our land, to go out to sea in search of new lands and new people, was always to "expand the faith and the empire".

In fact, our caravels, among noblemen and bourgeois merchants, also carried missionaries. One of the greatest missionaries of all times, St. Francis Xavier, traveled in our caravels toward India and later to the gates of China. We have therefore always been a country of emigrants and missionaries.

Migrants for the sake of the gospel
Like many other inland municipalities, Ribeira de Pena has fallen victim to migration, from the interior to the coast, from countryside to the city; the kind of migration that gave rise to the expression, "Portugal is Lisbon, the rest is just landscape".

Using migration as a metaphor for the New Evangelization, the first objective of the missionary week was to convey the idea or raise awareness that every Christian is a missionary, that is, a migrant who goes out for the sake of the gospel.

The week started with a sending off ceremony presided over by the bishop of Vila Real, Dom Amândio, who sent the missionaries, torch in hand, symbolizing the light of the gospel, to the various parishes in the municipality.

To end the week, the people from each of the parishes and villages in the municipality gathered at a different point, on the outskirts of Ribeira de Pena, and walked, praying the Missionary Rosary, to a strategic point where all the communities met. From that point, all the communities united, around 300 people, and began a Way of the Cross towards the Church of the Saviour where, to end the missionary week, adoration and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament was held.

Here -- faith is what saves us
In addition to the youth walk to the sanctuary of Our Lady of Guidance and the visit to the sick throughout the municipality, a different highlight of the week was the meeting in various cafes and bars in various communities. If Mohammed does not go to the mountain, the mountain goes to Mohammed -- If people do not go to Church, the Church goes to the people.

The topics of dialogues differed: in the more rural cafes, they focused more on the practice of religion; in the cafe Black & White, frequented more by young people, the dialogue centred on more fundamental and philosophical topics, the existence of God, the meaning of life, abortion, Christian religion versus Muslim religion... The experience was positive and bears repeating.

Emigrants for the sake of the gospel
In addition to migration from the countryside to the city, Ribeira de Pena has also been plagued by emigration abroad, with France being the most chosen destination. Today, the entire municipality has no more than 6,000 inhabitants. This has not stopped us from inviting the people to participate in the mission without borders, the Mission Ad Gentes, especially through prayer...

Using emigration as a metaphor of Evangelization Ad Gentes, the second objective of the missionary week was to renew Christ’s commission to "Go and make disciples of all nations", which is the motto of the diocese of Vila Real for this year.

Leaving for the unknown is difficult for both emigrants and missionaries, both feel the fear and leave in hope that everything will work out; the emigrant leaves to receive, the missionary leaves to give. It is also difficult to leave one’s country, family and friends. The motivations are different, the emigrant is driven by necessity, the missionary is driven by faith and love. While the emigrant goes to gain his life, the missionary goes to give his life.

Prayer of the Missionary Week
Lord Jesus Christ
You said to your disciples,
"Go and make disciples",
Send over us your Spirit
And renew in our hearts
Your missionary commission
To be messengers of the gospel
And prophets of hope and love
And this like Mary your mother,
A docile and obedient yes to your will,
By word and by example
Let us make disciples of all nations.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Carnival without Lent

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. Luke 9:23

It is commonly known that Carnival was born out of Lent. In the old days, Lent used to be very long, more than forty days of fasting, abstinence, penance, and sacrifice. Something like a period of mourning; there were purposely no parties or celebrations of effusion and joy, and no weddings were celebrated during Lent.

During this Lenten period, Christians were exhorted to do exercises of introspection that would lead to greater self-awareness, that is, to be aware of their life and responsible for their daily behaviour in an attitude of self-criticism with a view to a metanoia, that is, a change of mind and life, a conversion.

The days of Carnival, which preceded the Lenten season of penance and discipline, were the opposite of Lent. While during Lent you do not eat meat, during Carnival you eat meat galore. Carnival day, i.e. Shrove Tuesday, precedes Ash Wednesday which marks the beginning of Lent. In the Italian and French tradition, it is called “Mardi Gras”, or “Fat Tuesday”, because it is the day on which meat was abused as a way of saying goodbye to this food until Easter.

If Lent is a time of melancholy, dolence and introspection, Carnival is a time of joy, extroversion, and revelry; if Lent is a time of discipline, Carnival is a time of unruliness; at Carnival take no offense is play time; "It's Carnival, anything goes”.

Breaking one day many of the rules, fasts and diets, a monk said to his scandalized and dumbfounded disciple, for a bow of arrows to work well, it cannot always be tense. Our people wisely say, "you only live once”.
 
The evil of our time is that Carnival no longer precedes Lent. We are back to the "bread and circuses" of the Romans as the only modus vivendi. There is Carnival, yes, and it is becoming more and more refined, but there is no Lent; Carnival stayed while Lent disappeared even in the Church where it still exists today. but in a light or decaffeinated mode.

The Devil fleeing from the Cross
The world has become accustomed to tobacco without nicotine, coffee without caffeine, Coca-Cola Light without calories, beer without alcohol; this paradigm of roses without thorns has easily extrapolated to other realities and areas of individual and social life, so that today we also have Christmas of the consumerist Santa Claus, without the birth of Jesus; Easter of the chocolate bunnies and eggs, without the death and resurrection of Jesus; Halloween, that means, All Hallows’ Eve, without the Feast of All Saints.

Extrapolating even further, we have sex without love of the one-night stand, living together without commitment, with the belief that it is possible to live without inconvenience, and hassles, suffering, discomfort, sacrifice, work, a definitive effort without a cross.

In a world where reality and the truth of things are contradicted, where we want both the sun on the threshing floor and the rain on the meadow, where we want our cake and eat it too, the words of Jesus inviting us to embrace the cross, sound counterculture and against the current.

We know from exorcisms that the devil flees from the cross; we are just like the devil when we flee from the cross because we shun that part of life. Life is not possible without suffering, sacrifice and effort. Although human maturity, as Freud says, implies abandoning the pleasure principle to embrace the reality principle, the world stubbornly settles on the pleasure principle.

Unlike the rest of the world, we Christians are called not to "run away in fear. As the Spaniards say, we are called "to take the bull by its horns", in embracing the cross and the suffering that life throws at us to a greater good and a better future.

Embracing the cross without being masochistic
The cross is the desert that the Jews crossed to reach the promised land; and despite the temptation to reject that cross, inspired by hunger and a return to the meat pans of Egyptian slavery, the Jews understood that freedom had a price, and they were willing to pay for it by moving forward and embracing the cross.

This story has become a paradigm for abandoning all repetitive, obsessive, and addictive vices and behaviours. Egypt is the substance or behaviour to which we are addicted, and which deprives us of our freedom; the promised land is the full freedom and regaining control of our life; at the center is the desert, that is, the cost of purging, purification; the temptation to go back to addiction is caused by the withdrawal syndrome. Without pain and sacrifice, we cannot give up drugs or alcohol, or start a diet, and be faithful to the end.

Everything good in life costs and has a price, either money, effort, or both. The joy of victory is not felt without the ardor and sacrifice of battle, and the more difficult the battle, the more intense is the joy of victory and its celebration. But there is no joy of victory without the ardor of battle.

The cross is always the means to the desired end. The student's cross is to force himself to study instead of going from party to party; the cross of those who want to lose weight is their diet; the athlete’s cross is the strict diet, the way of life and the training in which he invests hours to gain seconds to his own record.

Gymnasium and gymnastics of the Cross
Christians do not go looking for the cross, they only need to accept it when they come across it. In this sense, at first glance, the Lenten practices of fasting, abstinence and sacrifice may seem artificial and masochistic, but if we think about it, they serve to strengthen our willpower, spirit, freedom, and independence from the things of the world. In the same way as what we do in a gym, meaningless exercises, running and swimming without a goal, is aimed to strengthen the body, boosting health.

Conclusion – Carnival can be a liberating catharsis when followed by Lent. Without it, life becomes bread and circuses; that is, living for oneself on the margins of values, ideals, and commitments.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC