Triple Border Region of Brazil, Colombia, Peru
Amazon River
Mission Month
“One in Christ, united in mission” (Pope Leo XIV)
“Mary of Nazareth…Teach us to read Life – reading God, reading ourselves –
as your eyes, your hands, your sorrows, your hope gradually discovered it.”
(Bishop Pedro Casaldáliga, CMF)
Dear parish community of St. Ignatius, friends:
This August 2026 marked ten years since I was sent by you, St. Ignatius Parish, to the mission in the Amazon together with the Itinerant Team. As I continue learning to “read Life,” like Mary, images come to mind that speak to me about what mission has come to mean for me.
Three months after I arrived here, I wanted to write to my family to tell them what I was doing. It was difficult for me to explain because when I went to the communities, I understood nothing: neither Portuguese nor the languages they spoke. They told me that I spoke “enrolado” (all tangled up), and I thought they did too.
While the women were gathered around the fire cooking, they would laugh. I would wonder: “What are they laughing at? Are they laughing at me or with me? Should I laugh with them too?” In the end, the letter to my family was summed up in a single phrase: “I AM HERE”.
Guyana: after crossing the river…
A few years later, in Guyana, I was on my way to a community for a youth formation gathering together with a Jesuit priest and two young men who were in formation and had come for a missionary experience. To get there, we traveled by car, but on some stretches the car had to cross the river by driving over rocks.
Everything was going fairly well until one tire got stuck on a rock in the middle of the river, and the car tilted to one side. I was nervous, and because of that, I felt like laughing. But one of the companions in formation, gripping the seat and somewhat desperate, shouted: “I wasn’t trained for this!”
His words still echo within me today, especially during this Mission Month. Little by little, I have come to understand that they do not refer only to that moment or to mission in the Amazon. Deep down, they speak about life itself, because I was not, we were not, trained to move through uncertainty; to face illness or the death of a loved one; to care for those who depend on us; to deal with a child’s problems; to live with differences, misunderstandings, and the tensions of everyday life; to face a separation; to lose a job; to go through depression; to live with loneliness and old age; to accept our limits and fragility. In short, to sustain hope when everything seems to lose meaning and to discover God in the midst of what we do not understand. Perhaps that is why mission also has to do with learning to INHABIT all of that, from the “jungle” where we are and with the people with whom we share life.
In the mission in the Amazon, it also happens that sometimes the realities of daily life overwhelm me and I feel that I was not trained to respond to these challenges. Yet over the years I have discovered that mission, and especially this itinerant mission, begins exactly where I began ten years ago: not in the certainty of someone who has the situation under control, but in the willingness of someone who makes herself present and inhabits moments of joy, sharing life with the people, being there to listen, learn, and share LIFE. But also to accompany them – to accompany one another – and to inhabit moments of tension, sadness, rupture, pain, and illness even without having answers for many things.
As a bishop once told me, “Marita, the more uncertain we are, the better.” The people, God who is already present in them before we arrive, will show us the way. Or as Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, used to say: “Never before was the Lord so close as He is now, because never before were we so uncertain.”
That is why, when I do not know what to do, when I feel that I was not trained for a particular situation, it helps me to return to that simple truth I discovered when I arrived in the Amazon: TO BE THERE, to remain.
During this Mission Month, my prayer is no longer only “Remain with us, Lord,” but that we may remain with you, like Mary, also amid the uncertainties of life in mission. And as Fr. Claudio Perani, SJ, founder of the Itinerant Team, used to say: “Do not worry about the results. The Spirit will show us the way. Take courage. Begin wherever you can.”
From my heart, a huge THANK YOU for your prayers, support, affection, and companionship.
I send you a big hug. We remain united in prayer and mission,
Marita Bosch (boschmarita@hotmail.com)
