JOSEPH

                            RISKING THE UNIVERSAL                                           BROTHERHOOD

     COUNTRIES WHERE THE FMS IS ON MISSION

                        (The pictures are borrowed from the Internet)

CHINA

 

Chinese Taikonauts

    Who said: «Sky's the limit»?

JAPAN

 

                                Vocations crisis among Shinto priests?

No problem! With robots everything is sorted out.

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

 

                    Not only are jeepneys the glory of the Philippines

but also amazing flying machines.

 

 CAMBODIA

 

                             Cambodia, you were doomed to annihilation

                             but here you are still standing!

 

 LATIN AMERICA

                                                   A museum in Rio de Janeiro

 Latin America, you are so much more than your museums, your beaches and your carnivals ... You are a land of prophets

 

AFRICA

                   Africa, you are a goddess in the image of God

 

 The article

 

        RISKING THE UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD

All music is our music,

all languages are our language;

our common home is Earth

and the whole world is our family.

 

by Eloy Roy

I am one of those men and women of the Foreign Missions Society who, sent out for a hundred years on the roads of the world, carry within themselves the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth…

We did not bring Jesus to the countries where we went, because he was already there much before we set foot there. For a hundred years, we have walked alongside him, cross on shoulder, resurrection in heart, sometimes in pain, more often in joy.

 

We have seen the venerable China, the eldest of nations, whose civilization dates back to five thousand years; we have seen her humiliated, ransacked, disembowelled and buried alive. Today, for better or for worse, she has risen at the head of the world.

 

Paralyzed by the nuclear monster, immortal Japan had fallen as low as she had ascended high in the skies. We have seen her rise from nothingness with the strength of the Titan and give back to the Sun of the Levant all the radiance of its former glory.

 

We arrived in the Philippines, marvellous islands, coveted, pirated, eaten away by foreign empires. We have seen the people of these islands draw from their guts and their faith the miracle of their survival and their march forward. Courageous, warm and joyful, these islands have been for us a real Promised Land where the abundance of the harvest has infinitely exceeded all that we were able to sow there with both hands from the first days when we met.

 

Having landed in Cambodia, where strange trees devour the ancient temples, we are moved witnesses of the miracle returning from hell. An awful genocide, still very fresh in the memories, had wiped out half of the entire population. Today, we have seen these people regain quietly a taste for life. Through a veil of sadness that cast a shadow over her looks, a pale smile once again lights her face.We find in it the inimitable smile engraved on the lips of the 219 huge stone figures of the magnificent Bayon of Angkor. We contemplate it and slowly work so that smile is never erased from this martyred people called to live again for beauty and for peace.

 

We have seen Latin America a thousand times raped, trampled, looted and martyred. Thousands of times we have seen her die and come back to life, signing her most beautiful poems with her blood. Despite and against a majority of bishops stuck in an age in which they felt invested by heaven to defend "law and order", a legion of witnesses to the gospel of Jesus have risen up. They were kidnapped, tortured and killed, giving birth to a new consciousness. That consciousness does not admit that one still proclaims in the world the Gospel of the prophet of Nazareth without burning with passion for freedom, justice and equality as well as for love, peace and worship, because any being endowed with reason as well as every honest believer knows that without freedom,  without justice and without an honest search for equality, love is a lie, peace an illusion, and worship a comedy that anaesthetizes and kills.

 

Unknown Africa, it is late that we reached you. For centuries, you have bled yourself « dry » in the interest of the West which has thus hoisted itself on your shoulders to reach the top of the world only to then leave you trailing alone far behind. But, you who was the cradle of humanity, you have shaken off the yoke and you are finding anew your own identity. Our eyes see it. By your own and unique genius, you represent, like all the First Nations and all the discriminated nations of  the Earth, an inexhaustible reservoir of new energies. You are one of the best hopes for a new world that we are calling for with all our might and which is already knocking at our doors.

 

 

Facing challenges and risks of Himalayan size, we, the little people of the Foreign Missions Society, have been, and are, less than a grain of sand. But at the level of real people, of the human groups and of populations in which we have implanted ourselves, we often have been a path towards a more human life. For many crushed people, we have been a new lease of life. For many rejected, we have been the fortune of a regained dignity. For many wounded, we have been consolation and hope. For many in need, we have been a bit of a boost that they needed to believe in themselves and to forge something ahead in life.

 

Looking at things from where humans are born, suffer and die, not all the missionaries were, nor are they, fanatics blinded by religion, nor sexual perverts, racists or puppets of colonial powers. Few of them will perhaps stand out for the eminence of their holiness or their heroism, but in the heart of those capable of balancing things, the vast majority of those men and women are seen and reminded as sincere friends, and above all, as true brothers and sisters in humanity. And so, that is quite simply what we wanted to be and what, by the grace of God, we want to continue to be.

 

Personally, I do not think at all that we should believe in God so that we can bring our stone to the construction of the great project of fraternity in the world. But, as far as we are concerned, it is first and foremost because of our faith that we committed ourselves in that adventure, since we believe with all our hearts that God lives in us and in every human being, and that for all of us, he is our Father and Mother. We believe that in the depths of all that we are, there exists a seething source of life which makes all of humanity an immense brotherhood. That universal brotherhood springs from the depths of the being of Jesus of Nazareth and flows freely from his Gospel.

 

It is that universal brotherhood that our Missionary Society, within her limitations, wanted to live to the fullest during her one hundred years of life.  And what she sincerely wishes now as a gift for her hundred years is that all humanity, whether they are believers or not, do as much as we did and do it even better. Because we, the "missionaries" (note that this word is increasingly misleading and worn; it should be replaced), we do not have exclusive rights in this journey towards the great brotherhood. That is why we gladly greet as our sisters and brothers the women and men around the world who, in a thousand ways, are already on this path, and the millions more who will continue to join.

 

Living the Fraternity with all humans in an openness, a freedom and a diversity beyond all differences, all prejudices, all wounds, and beyond real threats and fears, in addition to living it in symbiosis with the Earth and the entire Universe, is for us the most exalting experience to which humanity can be summoned. For our Foreign Mission Society, participating in a project of such magnitude is an incomparable privilege and an inexhaustible source of happiness.