If only I were a man!

After leaving his family at the church for the Midnight Mass, a Canadian farmer returned home to escape from the approaching snowstorm. His wife's insistence that he attend the Mass with the family came to no avail. For him, the incarnation of God made no sense at all. As he dozed off in the warmth of the fireplace, he was startled awake by the sound of geese crashing against the door and windows.  Thrown off course by the storm from their migratory trajectory south, they were completely bewildered.

Moved with compassion, he went outside to open the gates of the large barn so the birds can seek shelter inside. But the birds did not come in. He started running, waving his arms, whistling, shouting and shooing to get them into the barn until the storm passed. However, the geese flew in circles not understanding what the open barn and the dramatic gestures of the desperate farmer meant (not even the breadcrumbs scattered towards the barn could convinced them to come in).

 Defeated in his attempt to save them, he sighed: "Ah, if only I were a goose! If only I could speak their language!" Hearing his own lament, he recalled the question he had asked his wife: "Why would God want to become a Man?" And, without meaning to, the answer suddenly struck him, "To save him!"... And that was Christmas.

"Religion" comes from the Latin word "religare", which means to relate, to establish a relationship. From the very beginning, man has always been religious and probably will always be. Knowing themselves to be precarious and needy, human beings have always sought favours from "gods". Thus, in all cultures, individuals have emerged who, considered to have a special sensitivity to relate to the divine, felt sent by God -- like the prophets in the Hebrew tradition.

These prophets never truly succeeded in establishing a bridge of communication between the divine and the human. This is because the Word of God, transmitted by them (men with their own personal characteristics living in a certain sociocultural context), ended up being influenced by many mediating variables (personality, prejudices, stereotypes, social standards), and the meaning of the original message was lost.

This continued to happen even after Christ. For example, when St. John mentioned the number of times the Risen Jesus appeared after his death, he did not consider the first apparition that was made to Mary Magdalene; similarly, St. Paul did not mention this apparition either and, on top of that, he made reference to another one that no evangelist mentions – the one made to Peter.

Throughout the history of humanity, God, despite his omnipotence, has found himself in the same situation of powerlessness as the farmer who could not communicate with the geese in order to save them; for this reason, in the fullness of time, He cried out, "Ah if only I were a man!" And God became Man and dwelt among us...

Christ, being both God and Man, is the true bridge that unites humanity and divinity, he is the meeting point, the full communication, without bias or influence. In his word, in his behaviour, in his works and in his life as a man, God has told us everything we need to know about himself and about what it means to be a human person.  Merry Christmas!

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Purpose of the Itinerant Mission

"Unus Christianus, nullus Christianus," said St. Augustine. The natural habitat of a Christian is the community. We cannot be a Christian alone, and we cannot live and persevere in the faith without a community as our point of reference. In order to grow in faith, it is not enough to personally confront God and his Word; it is also necessary to confront the community and, at the same time, become a part of it, by being an integral and active member of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church.

In most parishes because they are large, cold and unwelcoming, people do not know or relate with each other, and as a result, they are becoming less and less a reference point for growing in faith.

For this reason, many have left the Church to join smaller Protestant churches, or even sects, subjecting themselves to paying tithes in order to obtain a more personalized and less massified treatment. Still others, to cope with the feeling of "depersonalization" resulting from massification, have taken refuge in certain ecclesial movements that have emerged, in order to experience the faith in a more personal and customized way.

All these movements have as their point of reference the small Christian community of which some even see themselves as their inventors. They forget that the Church of the first centuries, before Emperor Constantine, was a church made up of small communities that met in people's homes.

The model and inspiration for the Itinerant Mission is St. Paul: a tireless evangelist, he spread the seed of the gospel by forming small Christian communities – in Corinth, in Thessalonica, in Ephesus, etc. This model was followed by us missionaries in Africa with the Small Christian Communities and in Latin America with the “Base Communities”.

This, then, is the objective of the Itinerant Mission: to help parishes, surrounded by paganism, to spread the faith to the limits of their borders. How? Through street activities, in shopping centres, in cultural centres, or two by two and from door to door with the aim of forming a small Christian community in this or that neighbourhood!

This "small Christian community" meets weekly or fortnightly, taking turn in different members’ homes. Starting with the Word of God, the members share their lives in a context of prayer and, almost, of a support/therapeutic group. On Sundays, all the small Christian communities in a parish gather in the Church to celebrate the Lord's Day. This celebration is a true celebration of life and from life because this parish is now a "Community of communities", as the Second Vatican Council envisioned 50 years ago.

Ready to help, here is an appeal: is there a parish priest who, being the Good Shepherd, wants to go out in search of the lost sheep living somewhere within the geographical space of his parish?

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC