INTERNATIONAL

La parole de Dieu qui nous convertit

En entrant dans ce temps du Carême la liturgie nous invite à quitter la routine quotidienne pour vivre plus pleinement notre vie chrétienne, chemin de notre conversion ! Dans cette marche vers Pâques, vers le mystère par lequel nous sommes devenus une nouvelle création, la parole de Dieu nous est proposée comme lumière pour nos pas et lampe pour notre chemin.
Comme missionnaires, l’écoute quotidienne de la Parole de Dieu nous apporte le pouvoir d’une double conversion : la nôtre et celle de ceux à qui nous portons la Parole de Vie Éternelle. Et la seconde dépend en partie de la première. C’est seulement quand la Parole de Dieu enrichit nos propres vies que notre mission atteint sa vraie fécondité.
Mgr de Brésillac, notre Fondateur, était profondément convaincu de la puissance transformante de la Parole de Dieu dans le processus d’une conversion profonde. Au début de la retraite prêchée aux missionnaires en 1849, il invitait les retraitants à devenir une création nouvelle, des prêtres nouveaux, de nouveaux missionnaires, en fixant continuellement leurs yeux sur le saint Évangile et en permettant qu’au moins une Parole de Jésus trouve place dans leurs cœurs. Dans sa propre prédication, lui-même ne cherchait qu’à être l’écho de la Parole de Dieu.
Que l’invitation de Mgr de Brésillac trouve un écho favorable dans le cœur de chacun de ses fils afin que grandisse le goût pour la Parole de Dieu et la saveur de la lectio divina, car c’est là que la Parole de Dieu enrichit notre vie pour un apostolat fructueux.
Rémi Fatchéoun Kouassi, SMA

Lenten Season: the journey towards Easter!

Wednesday March 9th is Ash Wednesday. The Church’s Ordinary Time ceases and the challenging Lenten Season begins. For forty days the liturgy invites us to leave the ordinary everyday routine of our lives in order to live more fully our evolving Christian life, which is the journey of our own conversion! Now is the favourable time, the time of Salvation (or more explicitly, it is the time when we ought to work for our Salvation cf. Ph 2:12) as we will hear Saint Paul reminding us (2 Cor 6:2).
On this journey towards Easter, towards the Mystery by which we have become a new creation, reconciled with God, each day the word of God is proposed to us as a light for our steps and a lamp for our path. The Church’s selection of liturgical texts fits well into the objective of this time of year: to guide Christians towards a deeper conversion.
Indeed, our conversion, which will take place each day in the living out of our Christian life, occurs through listening to the Lord’s voice and to the Word of God, which offers us Salvation and the possibility of a deeper conversion each time we listen to it.
As missionaries, this daily hearing of God’s Word takes on the power of a twofold conversion: our own and that of those to whom we bear the Word of Eternal Life. The latter partially depends on the first. In other words, it is only when the Word of God enriches our own lives that our mission gains its true fecundity. The proclamation of the Incarnate Word first passes through the incarnation of the Word of Life into our lives. The vitality of this living proclamation, which guarantees the credibility and the pertinence of the proclaimed Word, is deeply rooted in the conversion process which is the leitmotif of the Christian and missionary life.
Bishop de Brésillac, missionary, and our Founder, was deeply convinced of the transforming power of God’s Word in the process of a deep conversion.
At the beginning of the retreat preached to missionaries in 1849, while avoiding speaking about mortal sin or the threat of hell, he invited the retreatants to become a new creation, new priests, new missionaries (who pass through the experience of conversion), by continuously fixing their eyes on the holy Gospel and by allowing at least one Word of Jesus to find a place in their hearts. In his preaching he, himself, sought only to be the echo of God’s Word.
May the invitation of Bishop de Brésillac find a favorable echo in the heart of each us in order to increase, at the beginning of this Lenten Season, the taste for God’s Word and the savour for lectio divina, because it is there that God’s Word enriches our lives for a fruitful apostolate.
Rémi Fatchéoun Kouassi, SMA