Father Valentin Garcia, a Spanish Comboni missionary, shares: “Some ideas in this mature time of my life.”
Since I was a child, in the minor seminary of the Comboni Missionaries, we were visited by missionaries from Africa and Latin America who helped us breathe the missionary spirit.
I arrived in Peru, in Tarma, a year after my ordination, in 1975, and except for two periods of six years in Spain, the rest of my missionary life, 37 years, was spent in Peru and Chile.
It is not easy to talk about mission today, because the changing situations and rhythms of life in our societies force us to live it in a constant discernment and updating of our pastoral methods.
In this southern part of Peru, where the people have a great religious spirit, inherited from their ancestors who were evangelised en masse, we missionaries must adapt the evangelical message to their culture and their popular religiosity.
The missionary today is called to live the mission in a constant attitude of going out; to be there where the people live and to follow them to the places where they settle. Here in Arequipa, the Comboni Missionaries ceded the former parish of Espiritu Santo to the diocese years ago to go to another area where many people had come from the southern highlands of the country and lived in a precarious situation.
A basic attitude that we have in this area is to involve the laity more in pastoral management. They know better the methods to reach the distant and the impoverished. Thus, in this parish of El Buen Pastor we manage two nurseries for the children of families who do not have sufficient resources to give their children a good and healthy education.
Another fundamental attitude of the missionary is to take care of the elderly, who often live here in very deplorable situations of poverty, sometimes even abandoned by their children. In this parish, we are happy with how we carry out this pastoral work, in collaboration with a good group of committed lay people and with the precious collaboration of the Daughters of St. Camillus.
Missionary animation also occupies a prominent place in our pastoral work. Especially in October, with the celebration of World Mission Day, in collaboration with the delegation of the Pontifical Mission Societies of Arequipa, and with the feast of our founder, Saint Daniel Comboni, the great missionary of Africa.
There are two characteristics that I would firmly believe the missionary of today must have: the mission ad gentes and the mission ad vitam. These are two essential ways of living the missionary vocation, present in the Church since its origins.
We cannot reduce our mission to our local diocesan environment or just our own country. Jesus said it clearly to the Twelve on the day of the Ascension, “Go out into all the world”. The second aspect that I would like to emphasise is that we must be missionaries throughout our lives wherever we are. Even now, at an advanced age, I feel that I am living this dimension of my missionary vocation.
