org. “We need the sandals of missionaries in order to get out of ourselves and spend our strengths in carrying out our mission!” In which of his addresses did Pope Francis say those words? To the youth last night on the rain-soaked Copacabana beach when these young people showed that rain and cold meant nothing where Jesus Christ was concerned? Or was it in the Favela? Or with the Argentinean youth when he challenged them to cause chaos? Neither the one nor the other, and not by Francis. But by someone who is serving very close to this Pope, “who looks happier than usual; in whom one, theologically speaking, can see the Holy Spirit”, as one of his former teachers said. It is a statement by Fr Alexandre Awi de Melo, and it comes form his sermon during the Conference 2014, on 5 February 2009.
“Here the Holy Father has found someone who really serves selflessly!” remarked Fr Duncan McVicar in a comment in schoenstatt.org.
Fr Alexandre Awi, assistant in the closing document of Aparecida and co-author of Message 2014, the closing message of Conference 2014, the message for the pilgrimage of grace 2014, on the way to 18 October 2014.
It is a pilgrimage not to a jamboree, a cosy togetherness, or elevated intoxication through eloquent talks, and by no means a presentation to a sympathetic public. It is rather a pilgrimage in humility and hope for renewal through the grace of 2014, perhaps with as much rain as in these days in Rio, and only with that in our luggage as was described by Fr Alexandre in his sermon:
“In order to carry out Schoenstatt’s mission in the coming hundred years, we need very few things, like the Apostles in the Gospel: The shepherd’s crook of our Father’s guiding presence, the mantle of the covenant of love with our Mother in the shrine, and the sandals of the radical missionary spirit of our heroes. However, all this is only possible if we do it as a Family, in community! That is why we are experiencing this historic moment, our conference drawn from various countries and various communities. No one can carry out the mission on his or her own!”
That is the spirit we need
Juan Barbosa sent the sermon to the new local Team 2014 in Cordoba as a motivation for their work. It is a wonderful sermon! wrote Tita Andras. That is the spirit we need for 2014. No wonder Pope Francis wanted him in his team.
Thank you, Pope Francis – we are now discovering much and many in a new way …
Once again Fr Alexandre, and once again a section from this sermon in which the basic lines of the Message 2014 appear tinged with Aparecida … and possibly why it sounds so like Pope Francis:
“I am convinced by a statement of Dom Helder Camara, the most important Bishop of the Brazilian Church: ‘If one dreams on his own, it is only a dream. If many dream together, it is the beginning of a new reality; indeed, then we can experience the surprise of the tangible realization of our dream …’
The preparation for 2014 is a wonderful opportunity God gives us, in order to take the risk of showing that Schoenstatt anticipates the new millennium in an exemplary way, and to realize this dream with all our strength: in our Father, through the strength of the covenant of love, with a distinctive missionary spirit, as a Family. 2014 should be the centenary celebration of our faithfulness as disciples, but above all our being sent out together into the thousand further years of working together as a Family of missionaries!”
Original: German. Translation: Mary Cole, Manchester, England
