Fr. Alex Roman sx
Sierra Leone is a country that still lives with its ancient traditions. All people have a very deep appreciation of their traditions. The commercial revolution and the communications are changing this country and people. Improvement is necessary in all aspects of society. The Catholic Church in Kabala helps a lot with education. What is also necessary is a center where you can study the local languages more rigorously to be able to enter the Sierra Leone culture. Since the Catholic Church has a historical culture and a tradition to transmit, this is what needs to enter into dialogue with the local culture. All people have something to transmit, when they give value to the things of the place.
My reflection is focused on the "Maximum Illud "[1] The second point about necessity. We all need or lack something. We need to understand the other, but the other needs also to understand me. For example, people feel happier when they speak their own language and the missionary can understand them. For this you need patience and humility. The mission needs the people of the place to continue their task of first announcement. The mission also needs new missionaries who come from the local Christian community. The people in general accept the new when it is integrated into local life and practices. Sometimes resistance to the new comes about when it threatens local traditions. I think that the missionary testimony that puts into practice the gospel has a unique impact on people. The points I want to reflect about are three: capacity, the need and the source.
In the first point about the "capacity" I want to say that in each "place as in each person there is an innate force that must be educated and taken advantage of". This is what can be called layers. what I see in these places and people, capacities that must be discovered, for example dance and music and agricultural productivity, and create a mentality that not all good comes from outside. Yes, the first evangelization was done by foreigners, but it should not always be like that. An example of this is the first Christian communities. As the apostle St. Paul talks about this and says that he himself worked to earn a living; In another part he says that the communities that are already more organized collected money to help the apostle on the journey and the new Christian communities, that is, both the missionary and the local community have a capacity that must be supported. Many times we reduce the mission to foreign aid: this is good in the beginning, but then we need to evaluate what has already been done with the help we have received and ask ourselves about the present and to which kind of future of mission we are walking towards. The Catholic mission will always move forward if it has the capacity to listen to the Holy Spirit in the present and see how it has acted in our past history.
The second point is about necessity. We all need or lack something. The need to understand the other, the need that they also understand me. For example, people feel happier when they speak their own language and the missionary understands them, and for this you need patience and humility. The mission needs the people of the place to continue their Mission of the first announcement. The mission also needs new missionaries who come from the local Christian community. The people in general accept the new when it is integrated with local good practices, sometimes the resistance to the new is when it threatens the local traditions. I think that the missionary testimony that puts into practice the gospel has a unique impact on people.
The third point, the source, provided that behind a system or an organism there is a source that holds positive elements and ideas that are crouched (hidden?) sometimes causing a silent damage, or reinforcing outdated ideas. Always behind this, there is a source that sustains all this development. For a hundred years it had already been considered what would be the solution for the future of the new Catholic missions, but when something does not interest us, there is a problem or is not given attention or becomes less important, it becomes something common as a "landscape" " It seems that we care about the landscape, we talk about the subject, its beauty, meaning, functions, spiritual, social and economic importance. The landscape is a set, as it is said of the landscape of the farm, where natural, economic and cultural elements are combined. Well it is time to discover that in the landscape there is the whole structure of our historical cultural and religious process.
[1] (http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xv/en/apost_letters/documents/hf_ben-xv_apl_19191130_maximum-illud.html)
Sierra Leone is a country that still lives with its ancient traditions. All people have a very deep appreciation of their traditions. The commercial revolution and the communications are changing this country and people. Improvement is necessary in all aspects of society. The Catholic Church in Kabala helps a lot with education. What is also necessary is a center where you can study the local languages more rigorously to be able to enter the Sierra Leone culture. Since the Catholic Church has a historical culture and a tradition to transmit, this is what needs to enter into dialogue with the local culture. All people have something to transmit, when they give value to the things of the place.
My reflection is focused on the "Maximum Illud "[1] The second point about necessity. We all need or lack something. We need to understand the other, but the other needs also to understand me. For example, people feel happier when they speak their own language and the missionary can understand them. For this you need patience and humility. The mission needs the people of the place to continue their task of first announcement. The mission also needs new missionaries who come from the local Christian community. The people in general accept the new when it is integrated into local life and practices. Sometimes resistance to the new comes about when it threatens local traditions. I think that the missionary testimony that puts into practice the gospel has a unique impact on people. The points I want to reflect about are three: capacity, the need and the source.
In the first point about the "capacity" I want to say that in each "place as in each person there is an innate force that must be educated and taken advantage of". This is what can be called layers. what I see in these places and people, capacities that must be discovered, for example dance and music and agricultural productivity, and create a mentality that not all good comes from outside. Yes, the first evangelization was done by foreigners, but it should not always be like that. An example of this is the first Christian communities. As the apostle St. Paul talks about this and says that he himself worked to earn a living; In another part he says that the communities that are already more organized collected money to help the apostle on the journey and the new Christian communities, that is, both the missionary and the local community have a capacity that must be supported. Many times we reduce the mission to foreign aid: this is good in the beginning, but then we need to evaluate what has already been done with the help we have received and ask ourselves about the present and to which kind of future of mission we are walking towards. The Catholic mission will always move forward if it has the capacity to listen to the Holy Spirit in the present and see how it has acted in our past history.
The second point is about necessity. We all need or lack something. The need to understand the other, the need that they also understand me. For example, people feel happier when they speak their own language and the missionary understands them, and for this you need patience and humility. The mission needs the people of the place to continue their Mission of the first announcement. The mission also needs new missionaries who come from the local Christian community. The people in general accept the new when it is integrated with local good practices, sometimes the resistance to the new is when it threatens the local traditions. I think that the missionary testimony that puts into practice the gospel has a unique impact on people.
The third point, the source, provided that behind a system or an organism there is a source that holds positive elements and ideas that are crouched (hidden?) sometimes causing a silent damage, or reinforcing outdated ideas. Always behind this, there is a source that sustains all this development. For a hundred years it had already been considered what would be the solution for the future of the new Catholic missions, but when something does not interest us, there is a problem or is not given attention or becomes less important, it becomes something common as a "landscape" " It seems that we care about the landscape, we talk about the subject, its beauty, meaning, functions, spiritual, social and economic importance. The landscape is a set, as it is said of the landscape of the farm, where natural, economic and cultural elements are combined. Well it is time to discover that in the landscape there is the whole structure of our historical cultural and religious process.
[1] (http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xv/en/apost_letters/documents/hf_ben-xv_apl_19191130_maximum-illud.html)