JEAN BAPTISTE SENGAYIRE THE MESSENGER
My presence is a sign that the Lord Jesus Christ has visited us and chosen me for His ministries of the great consolation.
Some people ask me often questions like this: « Did you have apparitions? Why did you choose the cross? Where did you get the idea of initiating a movement « Mission of the Glorious Cross of St. Francis of Assisi»? How is it possible to start a family of men and women religious while you are married and head of family?
Brethren, may the testimony that I am going to share with you touch your hearts and enlighten each of you and especially those who are in doubt and confusion.
I have always felt not worthy to carry out the Glorious Cross Ministries that Christ entrusted to me. Departing from the genesis, I could not even explain audibly and credibly the call that Jesus addressed to me and what I was really experiencing.
But by God’s mercy, He who is love, endowed me with a spirit of endurance and perseverance that reminds me day after day the universal call: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Luke 9,23).
“What is essential for me is in my own membership to the Church, as a place where I experience in Christ and through the Spirit, the consolation of the father”.
There is no one who can console us, except the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Consolation is the grace of believing in a love that is always great, greater than challenges of human life, stronger and greater than death. Consolation does not remove challenges, it does not censor the pain, the fatigue, the temptation to rebellion, but it reveals that it is all embedded in a greater love.
The history of the Church, which is reflected in the history of any small community, is a chain of faith in a greater love, a faith that is transmitted from challenge to challenge, suffering to suffering, through testimony and sacrifice.
The Church is always and despite everything a sign of consolation in the world; but a consolation aiming at putting on a way of conversion to the Father, and this is what the world refuses; and this is what the world denigrates.
Faced with the indifferent or hostile world, our mission is neither of defense nor of conquest, but a ministry of consolation which helps the other to rise up and set in motion, a ministry of consolation of the suffering confessed or unconscious, which indicates to the other a direction of life in conformity with the loving will of the Father.
All starts from Jesus, everything always starts from the supreme consolation that is the resurrection of Jesus from death. From the resurrection as an ever present event, the Church moves from challenge to challenge wiping away the tears of all people in a journey of consolation based on faith in the risen Christ, present here and now, crucified at the bottom of any suffering, of every ordeal. Such an experience allows us to face, with humility and confidence, our own challenges and those of others.
The Bible ends with the vision of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven, while a voice describes it with these words: « And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying: Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people; and God himself with them shall be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away ». (Ap.21, 3-4)
This experience will not only be future, it has begun. It is the experience of the Church, our experience has already begun; our faith facing today’s world. An experience that passes through us as grace and as task, as a vocation and commitment so that the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, where each child finds consolation which gives him confidence and taste for life, expands in our region in particular and around the entire world in general. | 
