Your Eminence, the Virgin Mary sends you a gift, a Church of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary. You must begin immediately
The lesson of Rhetoric-Catechetics was progressing, it was almost time to end, when the questions from the first year students of the first year of the Theological School “St. Athanasius of Athos” of the Orthodox University of Cogo began.How should we approach the world? -How to help the priest of our parish? -Our priest has a large province. He is in charge of many villages, many churches, some of them are built and others are mud huts? -We don’t have a priest. But we have a nice church with our catechist; we gather and sing. Now and then a priest comes to us. We wait for someone to come at Easter. Everybody was talking about the difficulties they had in their towns and villages; the conversation was heated. But Haralambos from Bandundu sat pensive and sad, looking at his fellow students. He could not bear it; two tears ran down his cheeks and a sigh and a complaint sprang from him.
We don’t have a Church, nor is there one near us. The tears fell on the desk . Silence reigned for a while. I tried to break the silence to get away from the awkwardness into which we all fell.
The miracle
I didn’t have time to finish and the phone rang. I saw that it was a long distance; is it urgent, I wondered; I apologized to the students and picked it up. -Bonjour… Comment ça va ? -Who, who? Then I heard the familiar voice of a brother from the office of the Foreign Missionary Brotherhood of Thessaloniki. –
Your Eminence, the Virgin Mary sends you a gift, a Church of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary. You must begin immediately .
I lost them. I looked at Charalambos and at the phone. I got my words mixed up. -“I’ll check,” I said. I’m in class, that’s what we’re talking about. The Virgin Mary answered Haralambos’ tears. I immediately asked for the person in charge of the mission in the Bandundu area, Mr. Theodore Fumouaza, Dean of the Pedagogical University of Kinshasa and Vice Rector of our Orthodox University, where Charalambos comes from. -Theodore, Our Lady sends you a Church of her, of her Annunciation, do you have a plot of land? -Yes, two hectares, ours, enough space for a church, a school, a clinic. We have three students in our theological school. Ready for action. Then let’s move on. A new missionary center Our Lady opens in Bandundu, Congo. Our Lady heard Haralambos’ complaint and answered his tears.
