Passing the Torch
Passing the Torch
By Fr Leo Donnelly
Within the past year I celebrated my Golden Jubilee of ordination and also went into semi-retirement here in Peru, where I have spent almost all my missionary life. I remember a conversation which I had with my colleague Fr John McGrath some years back when he was Vicar General of the Society. "Leo, how long is mission?", he asked. I responded without thinking very much about it, "Fifty years, I reckon". Maybe that was as close as I ever came to being prophetic.
In February of this year we had a sending ceremony for the first group of Peruvian Lay Missionaries before they set out for the Philippines. As an old hand I was asked to share a bit of our Columban history with the four: Antonio, Marisol, Anna and Maria.
Marisol, in particular, was all smiles. She had a surprise for me: once I was finished speaking she laid a photograph of her baptism on the table. There were her parents, her godparents, and yours truly - the celebrant. That Saturday night of her Baptism, Marisol would have been one among a score or more of infants baptised. This took nothing from my tremendous thrill at realising the tiny part I had played in her Christian development. Furthermore, this would have taken place just about the time I’d had that conversation with John McGrath.
Marisol was delighted with herself and I was a bit overwhelmed and thrilled. I now had a personal as well as a Columban link to this first group of lay missionaries.
The leaves fall, and as they do the buds take shape.
We have been preparing to send out lay missionaries for quite some time. People from our parishes in Lima have been going to the Andean villages as missionaries for years. Maria and Ana had been going out on weekends from their own parish of Ermitaño to newly established parishes on the outskirts of Lima and beyond. They attended to the Christian and human formation of children, youth and adults. Marisol and Antonio had both worked constantly as ‘pastoral agents’ within their own large parishes of St Francis Xavier and The Holy Archangels. They have also had a year’s intensive preparation for mission.
We Columbans know that part of our particular calling is to reach out to others and share with them the gift of faith with which we have been blessed. We feel that our missionary task in any particular country is not complete until we have encouraged members of that culture to share in turn with a different culture. The torch has to be passed.
Pictured above after the Columbans Day Mass are:
(back l-r) Leo Donnelly, Antonio, Chris Baker and John O’Connell,
(front l-r) Marisol, Maria and Ana.