“Secularity” is the dimension that distinguishes the spirit and the way in which we embody the gift of the Comboni charism. We live in the world, inserted into our own social, professional and ecclesial environment.
“The Lord has also chosen you to collaborate through prayer, the total gift of yourselves, and the work of apostolate, placing you in the same family founded by our father Bishop Daniel Comboni”. This expression by Father Egidio Ramponi – to whom we owe the founding idea of our Institute – addressed to the first four young women who gave themselves to the Lord on 22 August 1951 in what would become the Secular Institute of Comboni Missionaries, contain the essential nucleus of our vocation and belong to the Comboni Family.
Papal approval on 22 May 1983 was an important milestone for our Institute, a culmination of a history that had been evolving, but also a starting point for a journey that would lead to an improved focus on our identity up to today. The recent approval of the updated Constitutions, as the fruit of a long period of reflection, is a sign of this.
Our very name, Comboni Secular Missionaries, expresses the identity of our vocation, which finds its foundation in Comboni’s own experience of Christ, in his love for the least, and in “making common cause with them”. Sharing his passion for Christ and for humanity translates into the total gift of ourselves in response to the call, through the profession of the evangelical counsels.
A passion that is nourished in the personal encounter with the Lord, from which springs the desire to share with all people, and particularly with those furthest from Him, the Good News of the Gospel, so that all may know and encounter Him and have life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10).
“Secularity” is the dimension that distinguishes the spirit and the way in which we embody the gift of the Comboni charism; this unites us with the condition of all lay Christian people who live in the world, inserted into their own social, professional, and ecclesial environment.
It is a way of living that has its reference in the Incarnation of the Son of God and that entails full belonging to history, lived with the style of Jesus, the most human of men, son and brother of all, which leads us to share the same situations, including those of precariousness and uncertainty, as the majority of ordinary people, to take on the challenges, sufferings, and hopes of humanity.
As Comboni Secular Missionaries, we are inserted, each in our own environment, in our own situation, living from our own work. This is our way of transforming the world from within with the spirit of the Gospel.
In harmony with the Gospel images of salt and yeast – simple elements of daily life that act from within – we emphasise being missionary leaven in every reality and human situation, rather than the visibility of organisation, works, or structures. This is the element that unites us all across the plurality of life situations, environments, activities, and ages, and manifests itself in a multiplicity of ways of living and expressing mission.
We cultivate an attitude of openness to frontier situations in our own country and in other countries, and are willing to go to the world’s various peripheries. A “going” that is first of all a going out from ourselves, from our narrow boundaries, to broaden our horizons to the whole world, especially to the poorest people, to the least…; an attitude that permeates our entire existence and that can also be realised in the choice of service in contexts or places different from those of ordinary life.
We are enlivened by the desire to keep alive everywhere that missionary openness, which makes starting from the least the criterion not only of an authentic Gospel life but also of a human one.
We feel called to live this “outgoing tension” personally, being witnesses to it also towards others in every possible way, in interpersonal relationships, in various daily situations, in Christian communities and in every context of life and commitment, also through specific initiatives, open to collaboration with every person of goodwill. (Photo: A Comboni Secular Missionary, Joana-Veloso (third from the left), with a group of young girls at the summer camp).
