Reflection on St Daniel Comboni on his feast day - October 10

     In 1996, I went to Ecuador as a lay missionary with a Catholic religious order called the Comboni Missionaries. That religious congregation is named after St Daniel Comboni. His feast day is today - October 10. He died back on October 10, 1881 at the age of 50.  Comboni really captured my imagination when I was out in the jungles as a missionary.  He has a very interesting story. He was born into a poor family of farmers in Italy in 1831.  He is the only one of 8 children of his parents who made it past adulthood.  He was ordained a priest in the year 1854, the same year the Immaculate Conception was declared as dogma in our Church.  He always dreamed of being a missionary to Africa.  Being an only child, that was very difficult for his parents to accept. He went on his first trip to Africa to the Sudan, when he and his companions journeyed for 4 months on camel from Egypt just to get to their mission site.  Many of his missionary companions died along the way, but Comboni's heart was touched by the poverty and hardship that the people there had to endure, which gave him the courage and tenacity to go forward.  Comboni eventually became the first bishop of the Sudan in Africa.  He died at the young age of 50 from all of the hardships he went through as a missionary, but his love for God lives on in all the priests, brothers, nuns, and consecrated lay people who are members of the Comboni missionaries throughout the world.  I remember some of the Comboni priests in Ecuador telling me how in 1964 all of the Comboni priests, brothers, and sisters were expelled from the south of Sudan when an anti-Christian government took power in the country. Thousands of missionaries returned to Rome, many of whom had been in the Sudan most of their adult lives serving the Lord.  It was quite a shock for them to return to Europe and to be pulled out their home in the mission field. Like all missionaries in our Catholic Church, the Comboni Missionaries willingly give up their lives for their love of their faith and in service to the calling they received from God. We give thanks for the ways they have enriched our lives, for the way they still speak to us today.  All of us have a calling we receive to God.  And we are all called to be missionaries wherever we are in life.  Thank you St Daniel Comboni for your life and your service to God and his people - your dream lives on.