LENT MISSION IN COLOMBIA AND PERU

 

I missioned in Bucaramanga, Bogotá and Neiva Colombia, giving lent retreats of an average of one to three days per retreat. In Bucaramanga, I preached to the Charismatic renewal group called The Holy Angels. It is a courageous group which with great sacrifices and against all odds, has been able to build a lay community with a series of ministries involving different areas of charitable work. The evangelization field is faithfully lined up with the Church's Magisterium, and they have a blessing from the local Bishop. A lot of people come through that group. I preached for two days on themes such as: challenging self to discover the true relationship with Divine Liturgy. The real conception of lent, and the mystical significance beyond it.

The focusing on themes of this nature placed us in a very unique realm of reflection related to the upcoming Holy week, specifically on Christ's passion. It was a deep and encouraging retreat.

 

In Bogotá, I held two different retreats of three days each at the house of prayer of my mission "The Pilgrims of Love". This House of Prayer being the head for my mission worldwide, it gives me a ground of strength which is difficult to put in words. It is related to the Baby Jesus who is the patron of my mission, and whose spirituality is the guiding light of my spiritual journey in the Church.    The House is locally known as The Kingdom of Divine Infancy. We have so many Baby Jesus statues that have been given to me in different parts of the world where the Lord Jesus has appeared in so many different ways throughout the years.

 

The retreats were focused on looking deep inside the heart and the soul and radically taking decisions as to the true striving for holiness. Colombia is a Catholic country in its majority since 500 years already, so there are  people that have been in a few generations of Catholicism, and when coming strong into the faith, they really dive into the depths of a mystical ground and allow themselves to be pushed into a higher realm of spirituality where one is only looking for a true conversion and a true sanctification. Everytime I go back to mission in Colombia , I see more and more , laity in particular, who are growing strong in holiness and are bringing a powerful front of defense for the Church in that area of the world. In spite of all the crimes of so many years, in the midst of all these, the faithful remnant  has survived and now is bringing good numbers of vocations and holy people into the Church. There are so many mystical manifestations in so many parts of the country within the Catholic Church that they are uncountable.

 

In the city of Neiva I preached to a group of women called The followers of Jesus. They are brave and strong. They have been together already for over twenty years and have a large number of servants dedicated to evangelize the Catholics in that area of the country.

I gave them a two days retreat on The Sacrament of reconciliation, The spiritual sense of Eva and her silence until Jesus came. The presence of women in the Church, so numerous and faithful. This theme was of great appeal due to the mystery that this is in itself.

We had a very anointed weekend, and there were at the same time two missionaries that came from Vancouver Canada, bringing two different statues of the Baby Jesus of Prague, which were enthroned in two Churches in Neiva. The ceremony was beautiful and filled with graces and blessings from the Baby Jesus.

 

The weekend before Holy week,  I traveled to Peru and preached lent retreats in Lima in two different Churches. One of the Churches was called the House of Nazareth, or The Holy family. The parish priest was a Spanish priest who came to Peru many years ago and even though you could still hear his castellan accent, one could also notice that his heart has become very much that of a local. He has so much love for his parishioners, one could see that his whole life exists within them alone in fullness.

It was a joy to mission with a priest so faithful and so committed. It is sadly enough a very rare event in our Church today where the most common thing to see are priest that are far from being in love with parishioners, and instead involved with self and the world.

I enjoyed every minute of it. I preached on forgiveness,  New Age, Devotions, and on the Holy Cross's Mystic.

The last day I gave a retreat in a Church in a very poor area of the city; Saint Francis Church. It was Palm Sunday. The humility of those people would make anyone melt. The beauty in which they prepared the palms and waved them during the entire Mass, which lasted a good two hours at least. The joy in their faces and the peace that was emanating from all of them was so powerful that I felt as if I was being delivered from all kinds of sadness and being filled with the most immense joy. Praise the Lord Jesus for the humble and the simple. They are the reason for God waiting on the rest of humanity who are engaged in the most horrifying ways of life offending God and destroying their souls along the way. May the Lord have mercy on all of us and may He help us to demolish the edifice of pride and sin in which we have been built amongst this culture of death we came to be part of.

 

God bless the missions, if it weren't  because of the handful of missionaries that still travel the world proclaiming the Kingdom of God, we could have been in much more trouble than we could possibly imagine.