Hoping to avoid in violation of copiright or the like, are a couple of articles recently on the way out. Enjoy
Saturday, January 10, the initiators of the Neocatechumenal Way - Kiko Argüello, Carmen Hernández and Father Mario Pezzi - will present to Pope Benedict XVI at the Basilica of St. Peter the fruits that the Way has over 40 years of presence in Diocese of Rome.
At a hearing on the eve of the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus, the Pope will be presented the first Community Neocatecumenale of the city, Canadian Martyrs, consisting of 49 persons, with about 100 children.
Francisco (Kiko) Argüello and Carmen Hernández, together with a priest Seville, arrived in Rome invited by Don Dino Torreggiani, which is being the cause of beatification and which is focused on the pastoral care of the marginalized, gypsies and migrants.
Don Dino, recalls a statement received by ZENIT, "he had seen in the experience of Kiko and Carmen Madrid in response to the need to evangelize the remote. After speaking with a few pastors and have been rejected, Kiko moved in, as in Spain, in a hut among the poorest in the Borghetto Latino. "
meeting with a group of young people who animated the Mass in the parish of Canadian Martyrs led to begin catechesis in the parish, where he was born Nov. 2, 1968 the first Community Neocatecumenale of Italy.
"So, while in Italy and worldwide demonstrations and occupations of the student movement succeeded each other incessantly and Marxism seemed an absolute truth demonstrated by history, not a small seed, which announced the revolutionary violence but love the enemy, was planted in silence and, providentially, just in Rome, "added the text.
From Rome - the diocese in which the Neocatechumenal is more prevalent in the world - the Way was extended throughout Italy, where there are currently 5000 community, for a total of about 200,000, not counting the children, generally very numerous. From Rome
games are also a lot of teams pitches in a few years led the Way in 120 countries on five continents, forming twenty thousand more than 5,500 parishes in the Community with the support of Pope Paul VI, John Paul II and now Benedict XVI.
Paul VI called the Way is an example of the "fruits of the council" aimed "authenticity, wholeness, consistency, sincerity of the Christian life", a "great merit". For his part, John Paul II spoke of him as an "itinerary of Catholic formation valid for the society and times."
Benedict XVI met Way when he was a professor at Tubingen by some students and, positively, has help us put this experience in Germany, driving the process that has recently led to final approval of the Statutes.
Even when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger had to delve into the theological content of Catechesis Kerygmatic, as well as the various steps of the Neocatechumenate, and in 2003 he announced the final approval of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.
In June 2008, states have received final approval and the Way was recognized as "a form of diocesan implementation of Christian initiation and of ongoing education in faith" (Statute of the Neocatechumenal, Article 1).
On January 10, in particular, will be presented to the Pope of Rome Community 14 (each consisting of 30-60 people) who have completed the path neocatecumenale and that, in accordance with their parish priests and with the Cardinal Vicar, are ready to go as in communitates missionem "in the most difficult and secularized in the suburbs of Rome, in aid of parish priests. It 's the first time in Church history that go on mission not individuals or even families, but entire communities that have made a long journey of faith together.
will also contain 14 "Missio ad gentes", requests by several bishops to usher in the New Evangelization in secular areas of large cities (Cologne, Budapest, Vienna, Stockholm, New York) or in marginalized areas (including Aboriginal Australians, the West Indies ...).
Seven will go to Europe, two in America, three in Oceania and three in India. Each "Mission" is composed of a priest, 4 families with numerous children and two sisters in family support, for a total of 40-50 people.
Similarly, will be presented to 212 new families with their children (about 1,000) will be sent worldwide at the request of the bishops (in addition to another 500 families with 2500 children already on a mission for years), 700 traveling from Rome and Madrid which opened Neocatechumenal in 120 nations and 18,000 siblings of the 500 community of Rome, present in 103 parishes, with their pastors and priests.
The ceremony is expected to be attended by over 25,000 people.
Here is an excerpt of an interview with Kiko on the necessity and urgency of evangelization. Buy the numbers by which it is taken Paulus!
"All these things I have counted loss for Christ" (Phil 3:7). Come to mind these words of St. Paul listening to the pounding insistence on the urgency of the Christian Arguello. A priority before which everything takes a back seat. Natural, then, that the Neocatechumenal celebrate its forty years of history and the approval of its final states with a new phase of evangelization. On January 10, in fact, First Vespers of the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Benedict XVI will send a mission to de-Christianized areas two hundred and fifteen families missio ad gentes, ie small nuclei formed by three families and one priest, who will dedicate themselves to the implantation ecclesiae, near Cologne, Vienna, New York, India and Papua New Guinea. Finally, for the first time in the history of the Way, also went fourteen communities that have completed the walk - each typically consists of 30-40 people - and that will help other neighboring parishes with pastoral serious difficulties. But what is the Neocatechumenal? The same Kiko Argüello - which is defined by Carmen Hernández his "starter", but not its founder - he admits he did not know. "It's a work of the Holy Spirit - he says. - He was not born to our desire or something we have designed a coffee table ... We always left it was the Holy Spirit to guide us. The stages of initiation into the faith, the seminars Redemptoris Mater, the missio ad gentes ... all this does not even imagined when we started. " The Statutes define the Way as "itinerary of Catholic formation [...] public legal personality" which "consists of a set of spiritual gifts" (1 § 1-3). Not a movement or association, therefore, as a precise method of catechesis and a well-structured instrument for the rediscovery of baptism that the Church offers to its bishops. Kiko, consultor of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, invited at the last Synod on the Word, is already engaged in the organization of new projects, including a "Family Day" in Vienna. Needless to say, the Apostle of the Gentiles is a constant reference not only in the reflections of Kiko, but also in its icons, and especially in the songs he composed for the liturgy. "Saint Paul - Kiko continues - is a giant of faith, a model of an apostle for all of us."
Paul writes: "I felt I know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor 2:2). The cross is the center of the preaching of the Way: what role he played in his birth?
"fundamental. The Neocatechumenal is born in the slums of Palomeras Altas, one of the poorest neighborhoods of Madrid. I was then close to Sartre and came from an experience of existential crisis much stronger. I was struck by the novel The Plague by Camus and I met the Lord through the mystery of innocent suffering. I thought then that if God had come back to earth, I wanted to stay at the foot of the crucified Christ in the most miserable. Because in most oppressed sections of society, in people crippled by pain, in alcoholics, in whom the drug is a slave, is manifested in a somewhat mysterious presence of Christ crucified. The mystery of pain had been understood even by the Jews, which recommended the doctor: "When you go to a sufferer, you'll be standing in front of him, because there is divine Shekhinah", the presence of God Pain forces us to choose. Because the face of suffering, especially innocent people, you can not escape: either leave the faith and become a revolutionary, or recognize the mystery of God revealed in Christ crucified. Think of what it says Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra, a phrase that has destroyed the faith of so many young people: "If God can do something for the world and it does not, is a monster. And if you can not do anything, then not exist. " But what Nietzsche did not know is that Christ, who became sin, rejected and crucified, is God himself. It was also said that after Auschwitz one can no longer believe in God but remember that you have read the testimony of a chief of the Gestapo, an atheist, that at some point you became aware of the monstrosity that was consumed in the concentration camps. One day he saw pass a row of naked women and children were taken to the "showers", ie the gas chambers, and felt within him a very sharp pain. He wondered what he could do to help to calm and that his pain. And he felt in himself that he had to do was undress, get in line and go too to die with them in the gas chamber. Twenty years later, he wrote, still did not know from where that answer was coming ... but we Christians know it is love that has appeared on earth in the cross of Christ. Stripped of everything and go and die with the past is an act that is more than all the social institutions in the world. Because that's what Christ did. It is the testimony that, after Auschwitz, the love is there. If there is love in the world, you can die in gas chambers, because life and death have a meaning, because Christ is risen. "
What did you do then?
"I left my art studio in Plaza de España - had already made some exhibitions of religious art in France and the Netherlands - to go to put the foot of the poorest in the style of Charles de Foucauld: not to do works, but to stay in silent adoration of human suffering, in complete obscurity, as Christ in the thirty years in Nazareth. A social worker pointed out to me some pockets of poor Palomeras Altas, where there were houses kinkis miserable and so were called Gypsies in Spain. A family of gypsies had gone and sat in their cabin, with a Bible and a mattress on the floor. Over there I also met Carmen, who was in contact with all the liturgical renewal and reconciliation: the council has failed to restore the pressure the catechumenate as a way of Christian initiation, which would renew the richness and beauty of baptism. And little by little began to be formed that "tripod" that would become the foundation of the Way: God's Word, the Liturgy and the Christian community. Then when we came in Italy, has joined us father Mario. "
St Paul has accompanied the very beginning. Inside the cabin Palomeras Altas had painted on the wall these verses the Apostle: "Up to this we have become as the filth of the world" (cf. 1 Cor 4.11 to 13).
"The problems then there have been many ...! Since the conflict with the police of France, who wanted to overthrow all the cabins, because the law forbade the nomadic lifestyle and the building of temporary settlements. We wanted to defend them, but what could we do against machine guns and trucks? We called all our friends and even priests, the archbishop of Madrid, Mgr. Casimiro Morcillo. His secretary did not want us to talk to him, but the archbishop - hearing them speak out - stepped forward the call immediately and came to us. It was a miracle of God, has saved us. Then Msgr. Morcillo wanted to visit our cabin and took pity seeing that we slept on the floor. Since then he has always helped and defended ... even if we were not anybody. It was he who sent to Rome with a letter to Cardinal Dell'Acqua, which was the Vicar of His Holiness. And I can not forget Don Dino Torreggiani, the founder of the Servants of the Church which was opened for the beatification process, which has insisted that we become Rome and that he introduced us to many parishes: I spoke in English to propose a way of 'Christian initiation, and he translated into Italian. Many have told us no. Then, it was 1968, we established the Borghetto Latino with the poor in the slums, waiting for what we wanted from the Lord. While there were some young people invite us to a meeting with groups of social context in Nemi and I - with a long beard and the green jacket - in front of those 400 young people, almost all of the left I told them my life. So I approached a group of Canadian Martyrs Parish: Mass were beat with electric guitars and asked us what we thought. We said that the Church is reformed with electric guitars, but with the paschal mystery. There, the parish of Canadian Martyrs, was born the first catechesis in Rome ... Then there was Florence, the Lisbon ... Meanwhile, the Holy See had called us to see what we did in the parishes, as it should be. In 1973, Msgr. Hannibal Bugnini, then secretary of the Liturgical Commission and engaged in the preparation of the OIC (Ordo Initiationis Christianae Adultorum), met us and was very favorably impressed by what we did, because he found just the spirit of Vatican II. And I remember well our second audience with Pope Paul VI in 1977, put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Kiko, be humble and faithful to the Church and the Church will be faithful." Now that the Statutes of the Way were approved despite the difficulties, I see that this word is made. "
St. Paul puts the Gospel message before any other need. Writes to the Romans: "How can they believe they have not heard? and hear without a preacher? ".
"There is nothing greater than to proclaim the Gospel, the Word of salvation, the kerygma! St. Paul says that God chose to save the world through the foolishness of preaching (1 Cor 1.21), but if we look at the greek text of his letter we find the term "preaching", but the word kerygma. What is the kerygma? It is the announcement of good news and surprising, that an announcement is made every time it is proclaimed. "
announce this good news, then, can only be "a duty" (1 Cor 9:16).
"Yes, because every Christian is called to save the world through the announcement. Christianity is not a selfish or something that is given to enjoy in our little inner peace ... Christianity is a zeal! Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel! Everyone must preach that God loves us, so that he sent his Son for us, for me and for you. Saint Paul says in Second Corinthians: Caritas Christi urget nos (2 Corinthians 5:14). That is, the love of Christ impels us, it is urgent, puts us in a hurry, is a fire that we carry inside. "
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