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November, which is universally dedicated to the departed in the Christian world, has special importance in the Philippines. It is a time when Filipinos keep vigil at the cemeteries where there exists a spirit of festivity. Although considered a Christian country, Filipino Christians find many roots in the traditional religion or primal religion of the indigenous peoples.
On All Souls’ Day, we wait eagerly on “nuestros muertitos” (our beloved departed): we prepare some delicacies for them, we sing to them and feast for them because they are our root and the guarantee of our heritage as peoples with a specific history and identity. It can be said that we share our life joyfully with our dead people, or rather, they live in us because they gave their lives for us.
The celebration that marks the beginning of the lunar year in South Korea starts early in the morning with the “ritual for the ancestors.” In such homage, one prays in silence for a few moments, entrusting to these departed souls all of one’s desires and hopes for the new year that is about to begin. Together with the boys, I too bowed, remembering my loved ones in paradise and praying for them.
In many African societies, the veneration of ancestors is one of the central and basic traditional and even contemporary forms of cult. So, any exposure of the main features of that type of veneration in black Africa, South of the Sahara – deeply rooted in the traditional African worldview – is so generalized and diverse that it must be made generic and brief.
Just as once the small imaginations of humanity created an elaborate divide between matter and spirit, time and eternity, holy and profane, now, it is
between ‘Church’ and secular. We live as if Christ has not already healed that breach, as if the Kingdom is not already ahead of us, independent of us, leaven-like and, as the mustard seed, beyond the confines of the Church.
In Sudan, the tension mounts every day. To the bellicose as well as inappropriate statements made by representatives of the South, the North reacts with methodical obstruction of the dialogue and of the preparatory work of the referendum. The closer we get to the referendum deadline in January, the greater the chance of a return to armed conflict.
Bishop Giuseppe Franzelli of Lira (Uganda), a Comboni Missionary, admits that it is hard to know where to start when working with children who have been forcibly turned into soldiers and assassins. The priority is helping child soldiers but also refugees sent to terribly crowded camps to restart their lives, and rebuilding people “from within.” He adds: “In the camps, there is a high rate of suicide not only among the elderly, who were desperate that they could no longer go back to their ancestral home, but also among the young.”
He was 42 and she was 36 when they met, fell in love and married. He was a war hero who had turned all his remarkable energies to the care of the sick and handicapped. She was a wartime member of the Secret Service who had dedicated her youth to the rescue of prisoners of war in Poland. His “Cheshire Homes” and her “Sue Ryder Charity Shops” had already dotted the map of Europe and spread to many countries of the world. Their mutual love blossomed from their cooperation in serving their fellow human beings and increased their power for goodness. This is the story of an extraordinary couple of true saints.
“The Seventy-Two returned with joy… ‘Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that
your names are written in heaven’ (Luke 10:17-20)
