On Wednesday, February 8, we met after dinner with our order's General Secretary for Missions,
friar Jarosław Wysoczański. He talked with us about our Franciscan missions around the world and about his own experiences overseas.
In 2006 our order’s first
International Missionary Conference was held in India in order to define our
missionary strategy. A mission is authentic when it is born about of a real
encounter with Jesus. Those who have met
Christ cannot keep him to themselves, they must announce him. Christian
communities and groups need fresh apostolic impetus, lived out as a daily
commitment. Nevertheless this evangelization must be done with complete respect for
each individual and for the various cultures into which the Christian message enters.
At the end of the evening,
friar Jarosław talked about
what it means to be courageous witnesses for God. He shared with us his
experience in Pariacoto, Peru where two of our friars were killed by guerillas
of the „sendero luminoso” in 1991. The
witness of Christian martyrs illuminates our contemporaries, who are often distracted and
disoriented. It pointes them to the One in whom they can place their trust in order to give sense to
their lives. The martyr dies with the certainty that he is loved by God and
knowing that he has chosen the better part, having left everything behind for
the love of Christ.
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