The 2015 Easter Appeal of Canadian Jesuits International (CJI) is now available and may be downloaded in PDF format from here.
This Easter we invite you to work with Canadian Jesuits International to help turn the pain of those who suffer into joy.
It takes a lot of faith to believe the promise of the resurrection at Easter.
How is it possible to believe that your pain will turn into joy, when war and violence have killed those you most loved, or when you have been forced to leave your home, or when every day you do not have sufficient food for your family, or you can’t send your children to school, or you live as bonded labour in a tea estate plantation?
And yet it is here, in the weeping and mourning, that hope is born and a vision of a new future built. At Canadian Jesuits International we hear every day how pain turns into joy:
- In Syria where millions have been forcibly displaced by war and thousands killed, Jesuit Refugee Service teams of Christians and Muslims work together, in the midst of war, risking their lives to prepare thousands of meals a day and to offer educational services to children.
- In Zambia, small scale farmers who have suffered months of drought, and don’t have enough to feed their children, are participating in a training program on organic agriculture at Kasisi Agricultural Training Centre and making every effort possible to find ways to produce more food for their families.
- In India, tea estate workers who live as bonded labourers dare to learn about their rights as workers and to send their children to school, despite the opposition of employers.
From refugees we have learned that if we want to shape a vision of the future society for which we long, then go to the widows and mothers who have lost their children to war. Hope and joy are virtues grounded in suffering. They are graces rooted in the heart that serve as a guide to an unknown future.
This Easter we invite you to help CJI support those who weep and mourn. With your gift you will help them to build a different reality than that of poverty, war and injustice, and to make new seeds of hope grow. To donate now, please click on donation page.
