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NEWSLETTER № 3 11th April 2009
Dear Confreres The 11th April is Holy Saturday, a day empty of any liturgical celebration apart from the Liturgy of the Hours. Instead it is a day of silence, reflection and joyful expectation of the celebration of Easter and our spiritual rebirth. Is there room on such a solemn day for us to think about the founding of our Congregation? I think it is quite appropriate as it links well with the motivation given by the Rector Major for this year’s strenna: “The seed became a tree, and then a wood, and now grows into an immense forest …” That the seed became a tree is part of the Easter mystery: “Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain, Wheat that in the dark earth many days hath lain; Love lives again, that with the dead has been: love is come again like wheat that springeth green.” The recent brutal murder of Fr Lionel John Sham can only be understood in this light.
Yimina eNkhosini evukile Malahle
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ARCHBISHOP BUTI TLHAGALE WEEPS OVER HIS HOMETOWN OF MOHLAKENG
“Mohlakeng, my own home town, my own place of birth, your own sons have killed a priest and left him in the veldt to be devoured by dogs.”
Father Lionel Sham “suffered an outrage unworthy of a human being. What is worse is that he was murdered in cold blood by people he knew. The human dogs he used to feed turned on him. There was no forced entry into his house. This was virtually their home too. They killed a defenceless man who hugged them each time they met … betrayed with a kiss of Judas.”
AN EVER INCREASING FEAR OF VIOLENCE
“There is an increasing number of priests and religious who are being targeted by robbers. They are gagged, stabbed and beaten up. Some have been killed like Fr Declan Collins in Ennerdale, Fr Thabo Mokomela in Vosloourus, Fr Daniel Mahula in Klerksdorp, Fr Allard Mako in Nelspruit. … In South Africa we live in fear. South Africa is breeding a generation of criminals, animals, who have no regard for the worth of human life … This culture of impunity must be reversed.”
EDUCATING TO THE WORTH OF HUMAN LIFE
Many of those involved in these acts of violence are young adults and teenagers. We are in a society that proclaims the ‘right’ of a mother to terminate the life her unborn child and provides free access for young teenage mothers without notifying their parents to hospital ‘TOP clinics’ for the Termination Of Pregnancy.
God’s gift of sexuality is trivialised as a source of pleasure which is part an unrestrained freedom of expression. Life and the gift of sharing in the generation of life are no longer respected. As Salesians we must ‘let ourselves be guided by God’s love for life’ and continue to give ‘special attention to the family, the cradle of life and love’, where the young ‘first learn to become human’.
A 150th ANNIVERSARY & ‘CAGLIERO 11’ MEDITATION ON LAUDS FOR HOLY SATURDAY
WHEN ALL WAS SIN AND SHAME
Truth is reported as another papal gaffe and civil state authorities condemn it as a backward step. Murder and violence are just part of life in Southern Africa; abortion is legalised. There is a culture of death. The teaching of Jesus and his Church on sexuality is too hard a saying, who could believe it? Divorce is not too difficult, cohabitation is almost the norm and same sex ‘marriages’ are sanctioned and protected by law. The lives of so many teenagers are distracted by the needs of a consumer society and being ruined by drugs and satanism.
O loving wisdom of our God! When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came
FEAR OF VIOLENCE AND DEATH
I’m afraid of pain, being incapacitated, and of death itself. I need have no shame about my fears. Pope John Paul II in his letter to the elderly confirmed that this is the normal condition of life: “We elderly people find it hard to resign ourselves to the prospect of making this passage. In our human condition touched by sin, death presents a certain dark side, which cannot but bring sadness and fear. How could it be otherwise?” says John Paul II. “It is not possible to experience [death] as something ‘natural’. This would contradict our deepest instincts.” He also speaks of some of these fears: of extinction, of the unknown, of our spiritual frailty. We address these fears at funerals, during retreats and in our own times of prayer. If someone expresses his awareness of the shortness of his days he is brushed off with unrealistic affirmations of robust life to 100.
Hide me from the band of the wicked, from the throng who do evil.
They shoot at the innocent from ambush, shooting suddenly and recklessly.
They scheme their evil course; they conspire to lay secret snares.
They say: “Who will see us? Who can search out our crimes?
My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent;
Like a weaver I have rolled up my life; he cuts me off from the loom.
UNLESS THE GRAIN OF WHEAT FALLING INTO THE GROUND DIES …
“If anyone serves me, let them follow me. (Jn 12:26)”
And in the garden secretly, and on the cross on high,
Should teach his brethren, and inspire to suffer and to die.
Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us; he has struck us down, but he will bandage our wounds; after a day or two he will bring us back to life, on the third day he will raise us and we shall live in his presence
THE COVENANT OF NEW LIFE AND GLORY
“Therefore God raised him to the heights
and gave him the name which is above all other names”
Grant that your faithful people,
who were buried with Jesus in baptism,
may by his resurrection,
obtain eternal life
Staying with Don Bosco called for faith and trust in the unknowns of religious life of that time. The missionary expeditions have also brought death from Aloysius Versiglia & Callistus Caravario to Declan Collins in our own time. In the silence of Holy Saturday our hope is in the Third Day.
