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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