have a dream for the Jubilee, and it is an African dream.
Dom Helder Camara, the beloved Brazilian archbishop of Recife-Olinda
loved to say Blessed are those who dare to dream, they alone will see
their dreams come true.
My dream, as it often happens, was born by chance, almost unawares. Sometime ago a news reporter asked me for suggestions on how to celebrate the Holy Year. Remembering the Popes invitation to celebrate it as a move toward the poor, I answered: My Jubilee will be an African Jubilee; it will be a going toward the poor of Sudan, a going on my knees before them.
Little by little the thought has been taking shape and the dream has acquired the clearer contours of an idea: Let the poor preach to us the meaning of this Jubilee, let them preach the Gospel to us. Lets go to listen to them and allow ourselves to be changed by them.
This does not mean an alternative pilgrimage to going to Rome. It does not mean a contradicting or provocative initiative. Anyway, it does not matter much to me if someone in Rome has transformed the Jubilee into a business enterprise: the Jubilee does not lose its value because someone with a greedy heart sees only the eonomic aspect of it. We cannot allow ourselves to be conditioned by them: we ourselves would be victims of their logic-for-profit.
The Sudan is not just a geographic destiny a land of war, hunger, disease and injustices, a place privileged by the presence of the Crucified Christ it is also a destiny into the heart of faith.
Our journey will not always be a simple going from one place to another. It will also be a going inside, a journey of conversion and penance, of faith and hope. It will be a commitment so that the people of Sudan too may see realized one of the truest aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition: the return to the land. The return to the land which in Sudan as in so many other scourged places of Africa, such as Sierra Leone, Burundi, the Congo, and Angola, - means first of all a return to peace, to a normal life, to a better future, so that millions of persons, refugees and dispersed may see again their homes after years of war and exodus.
For all of us it will be a finding ourselves anew around our common humanity, discovering each other as brothers and sisters.
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)