Consecrated for the Mission

Fr. Jorge with blind kids in Shashemane, Ethiopia

Who I am, Where I came from, Where I am going
I want to conclude this reflection on consecrated life with my own testimony as a priest belonging to a Missionary Religious Order. I am originally from Loriga, a village in the municipality of Seia, nestled in the Serra da Estrela mountain range in Portugal. For the past 30 years I have been living in various countries at the service of the Mission: Ethiopia, Spain, England, Canada, United States and now Portugal.

Since I knew at the age of six that I wanted to be what I am today, it is very difficult for me to understand and help young adults in their vocational discernment; for this same reason, it is also hard for me to comprehend why so many priests have given up the missionary religious orders to become diocesan priests. They have ceased to be fishers of men, like Jesus wanted his disciples to be, to become instead, shepherds of a flock that despite their efforts is getting increasingly smaller.

It is true, however, that the reason which led me to choose this life is not the same reason that keeps me in it now. My vocation emerged one day when a missionary came to my school and spoke of his adventures in Africa with so much enthusiasm that it soon awakened in my young heart the eagerness to one day become as adventurous as him. Later, of course, I discovered that the taste for adventure was only the bait that God had used to catch for Himself my boyish heart. Like a fish, I was caught by God so He could transform me later on, just like the apostles, into a fisher of men.

Childhood dreams are compelling; after elementary school, at the age of ten, I felt so strongly in my resolve to become a missionary that I stood up to my parish priest when he wanted to send me to a diocesan seminary. At that time, it was not the priesthood that appealed to me the most, nor is it even now, but rather the life of a missionary. After failed attempts to enter the Missionaries of the Divine Word in Tortosendo and the Comboni Fathers of Viseu, I joined the Consolata Missionaries, in Vila Nova of Poiares at the suggestion of the very same parish priest who, faced with my persistence, finally gave in.

“To leave life in pieces scattered throughout the world”
Belonging to the same Catholic Church, the Religious Orders exist somewhat outside the structure of the Church divided into dioceses and parishes. Of these religious orders some are contemplative following the rule of St. Benedict of “Ora et Labora” which consists of a life completely dedicated to prayer and to contemplation on the mysteries of God.

Today this way of living is much discredited by the craze of modern times, where human life seems to be justified by works and by the ‘busyness’ of a person. Faced with this frenzy of activity, the contemplative life reminds us well that what is most important in life is the being rather than the doing. Since we are predestined for heaven where we will be spending the whole of eternity praising God, why not do it already in the few years we have left before eternity?

Other religious orders are active and so the members dedicate themselves according to their charisms to many different activities in the fields of education, physical and mental health, the promotion of human dignity etc. My charism, I say it with the conviction of my founder the Blessed Joseph Allamano, is the most perfect charism of the Church, the Mission. It is in fact the very reason by which and for which the Church exists: to take the Gospel to every creature, to take Christ to all the peoples and/or to bring all peoples to the knowledge of Him.

There are those who live their lives always in the same place, surrounded by the same people, and always doing the same thing. There are priests in Portugal who have been at the service of the same community for more than 50 years. As for myself, I knew very early on that my life would not be lived in this way. In fact, since I was 10 years old when I joined the Order, I have never been in one place for more than 3 to 4 years.

I compare my life to a puzzle with pieces scattered in distant places, among people of different ethnicities, languages, groups and nations. When I come to the end of my life and all the pieces have been gathered and put together, I hope that as a whole, they will form an image that is pleasing to God. A missionary is a person without limit and without border, a pilgrim ever seeking the way where no sunrise finds him where the sunset left him, quoting Kalil Gibran from his book, “The Prophet”.

To be consecrated means to be set apart, reserved for an extraordinary service which requires, from the part of the candidate, to put aside what sets and forms the lives of most people. The vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are common to all the consecrated. They do not possess material goods in order to dedicate themselves exclusively to the cultivation of spiritual goods; they love universally with a love that does not exclude anyone, therefore their embrace is open; they do not seek power, or possessions, or fame so they can submit themselves to the designs that God has for them, obeying Him through the superiors and the signs of times.

The ones who have been consecrated for the Mission still echo within them today those words of the Master “to go to all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature”. Just like a cellphone tower, a missionary receives the signal, in this case the signal of faith, magnifies it and broadcasts it within its range to the next tower so in this same manner faith is transmitted from generation to generation, from people to people, from nation to nation.

Missionary yesterday, today and tomorrow
If I had known at six years old what I know today, thirty years since my ordination, I would still have chosen the missionary life. I can identify so well with the intuition that I had at six and the choice that I made at ten that it could not have been only of human origin; it was a true calling from God. I could never identify myself with the flightless birds but rather with the eagles soaring without limits of frontiers and languages, without prejudices against other peoples and without disproportionate and paralyzing attachments to my family, my country, my parents and my culture.

I recall one day while I was on vacation and on the eve of returning to Ethiopia, my father tried to convince me not to return, saying that the years I’ve already spent in Ethiopia were enough and that here in Portugal I could also find mission work and etc. My mother overheard and shouted at him saying, “Be quiet, man, for God can punish you”, and my father immediately quieted down. God, who already has my mother with Him, must be very pleased with her because she was not a mother hen; she was a mother who knew how to suppress her maternal instincts, something that many parents nowadays do not seem to manage.

How many vocations to the religious life and to the priesthood have been lost because of parents who cling so tightly to their children, depriving them of the “freedom to be children of God” and many of these parents are even practicing Catholics! I’ve always wondered to myself with what face will they appear before God, when they did everything to destroy the vocation to the consecrated life of their sons and daughters.

The mission is at its beginning
I will never be unemployed; it was Pope John Paul II who said that the mission is at its beginning. The larger continents are still under-evangelized so there will be no shortage of work. Furthermore, many countries that were once Christian have abandoned the faith and now live in a sort of modern paganism, worshiping or paying homage to a variety of gods. They no longer baptize their children nor send them to Sunday school; for this reason, a possible encounter with the Gospel for them can be seen to be as much of a first evangelization as that of a person in the Far East who hears about Christ for the first time.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC