austraLasia 1425

Passion for God, passion for humanity and immense compassion for those who suffer - RM to Sri Lankan confreres
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NEGOMBO: 3rd February 2006 -- Yesterday the Rector Major blessed a Tsunami Village called Bosco Pura, a complex of 204 apartments for 204 families begun shortly after the Tsunami and supported financially by the Italian Government through its Protezzione Civile arm. The project was overseen, however, by VIS the Salesian International Volunteer organisation based in Rome.
    Later in the day, the Rector Major celebrated Mass at the Shrine of Mary Help of Christians in Negombo, attended by confreres and many members of the Salesian Family.  New Cooperators and members of ADMA, the Association of Clients of Mary Help of Christians, both groups founded by Don Bosco himself, made their Promise.
    The Rector Major tied his homily to the realities he had been involved in during the day, namely the Tsunami response, and the Feast of the Presentation. "I have to say that I feel intensely proud", he said, "of your immense compassion and solicitude in bringing relief to those who had suffered the dramatic experience of nature's brute force and its enormous sequel of death and devastation".  He pointed out to his listeners that the Feast of the Presentation is a bridge between Christmas and Easter, drawing on the Eastern tradition of the feast as a moment of 'encounter'.  He told them that his prayer was for Mary to present each of them, their communities, to the Lord as she had presented Jesus in the Temple to old Simeon, that they be filled with passion for God and passion for humanity, to be a transfiguring presence of God in Sri Lanka, living totally consecrated to him and fully vowed on behalf of the young.
    The 'Eastern' reference was not simply a biblical reference.  Sri Lankan Christianity claims to have derived from near apostolic times through influence from the Eastern though admittedly Nestorian tradition.  There is nothing left of the 'Nestorian' element today but for a Cross found in the Anuradhapura Buddhist temple, and which is depicted in the ecclesiastical flag for the nation on the yellow and white colours of the Vatican flag.
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