OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE SALESIAN MISSIONS ANIMATION OFFICE (FIN)
ISSUE NO. # 20
OCTOBER 2008
MARY THE MISSIONER
“Thy Kingdom Come”
We don’t build the kingdom of God,
the kingdom comes as a Gift.
In the seventy’s at the PICC, at a
children’s choir contest, Don Bosco Tondo
(DBT) choir was pitted against Ateneo,
Assumption, and other Catholic schools.
DBT won.
The judges ruled “This is a children’s
choir contest.
The other schools had cultured voices
similar to that of adults
While the DBT voices are nurtured as a
child.
Our Lady and the Mission
Four major interventions of our Lady
in the Mission
1. In the Annunciation, our Lady in her
nothingness acknowledges and welcomes
the GIFT.
In the Visitation itinerary, she brought
the GIFT to Elizabeth and John the
Baptizer to be leapt for joy in the womb.
GC 26 states that “Mary, the first to
welcome and carry the message of
salvation teaches us to create
evangelized
and
evangelizing
communities.”
4. She, standing near the cross of an
unrequited gift broken into smithereens
reveals Mary’s staying power. At the
Pentecost, she stayed with the apostles.
In the cross we find that the Greatest
Passion is Compassion – Divine Mercy.
Our Lady of Sorrows drives us to outgrow
our passions of anger, lust, pride, sloth,
avarice, envy, jealousy, greed and
gluttony with the GIFT of mercy and
compassion.
MISEREOR – “I have mercy” the
driving passion of the mission.
Nurturing acknowledges that the voice is
a GIFT and
Respects the timing of the giver (GIFTER)
And the aging of the recipient (GIFTED).
First and foremost Evangelization is
NURTURANCE
The Good News is a Gift.
2. The Finding of Jesus in the Temple
gifted Mary: the MISSION is DIVINE.
“My Father’s Business”
3. In the Wedding at Cana – Mary links
the Mission to human development.
“They have no wine” – a gift of wine to a
family. The MISSION is HUMAN.
Compassion (to suffer with) drives us, to
sail into the deep waters, to go into the
wild, to go to the gentiles, “to all
nations,”
Mary, the merciful, beckons us to
payback the gift of Christification: The
Christianity brought to us by the
Missionaries.
S I M P L E H I N T S: M A R Y THE M I S S I O N E R
1. What you receive as a gift, give as a gift.
2. Be transformed by the amazing grace not mutate to a monstrous Hydra Complex,
different from the founding parents.
3. Get down from your ivory tower, break down your comfort zones
and structures, step down from your pedestal.
4. Return to the Fathers, back to the founder. Then GO!
5. Go into the deep, into the wild, Ride the winds, to the frontiers! To Gentile lands.
6. Compassion is the Innate Power, the Driving Power, and the Staying Power of the Missioners.
7. Have mercy on the poor. Set parameter to your greed. Have compassion.
8. In your anger, remember compassion.
9. Remember the SECOND COMING.
MISSIONARY SONG
Set sail into the deep waters
Be not afraid
Christ goes before you
Have no fear
Courage young missioners
Seek gentile lands
Cross over seas and oceans
Seek frontier land
Don Bosco’s there before you
Stand brave and tall.