Monday, 14 October 2019 09:08

Youth Eucharistic Camp – First edition

The Church as God’s family in the Democratic Republic of Congo will be living next year the third National Eucharistic Congress that will take place on June 2020 at Lubumbashi, the economic capital. Impelled by the desire to contribute the particularity of our spirituality to this great event for which preparations are already being undertaken, the formation team of the Inter-African Emmaus scholastic supported by the Provincial organised for the first time a eucharistic camp from 25 to 29 August 2019 at the parish of Blessed Anuarite. About two dozen girls and boys coming from our different parishes took part in this occasion focused on the theme “Eucharist, sacrament of Unity – as youth we are a family”.

In the course of the four days, talks were given to assist the young people to live this experience fully. From the outset, a brief teaching was provided on Christ’s Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament in order to nourish their faith to understand that in the Eucharist Jesus is there as God. This was followed on the first day by a talk on the theme: “The Eucharist makes the Church and the Church lives from the Eucharist”. On the second day, the theme dealt with was: “The Eucharist and reconciliation”. The third day’s theme was: “Starting from the Eucharist to build up Unity”. The conferences were concluded by the young people taking part in discussing points about division among them today, in their families and their groups of apostolate.

The camp was not only taken up in listening to talks but also consisted each day in morning Mass, the prayer of adoration, sharing meals together, time for recreation and ideas.

It is worth highlighting the joy in which for the first time our young people took part in this eucharistic camp. They themselves indicated that this was a time of discovering how great is the richness of the eucharistic mystery and the sense of fraternity and unity that flows from it. For our part, this activity had a threefold impact. Firstly, it associated the youth in living our mission and our charism as expressed in our Rule of Life. As our holy founder who used to say: “We adore and we lead others to adore”. Then it marked our pastoral action in parishes as pastors who closely accompany young people as recommended by the Fathers at the last Synod on youth. Finally, our camp was one of the preparatory activities of the Third National Eucharistic Congress, because thanks to the camp the young people learned about the coming Congress.

This camp was a success thanks to the collaboration of our confreres who devoted their time to listen attentively to the young people whom they accompanied. We are indebted to them. We hope that the account of this activity may remind our readers of our mission to be zealous apostles of the Eucharist in the footsteps of Father Eymard our holy Founder.

By Father Augustin Mfwankama, sss