We are in the fourth week of our General Chapter. Last April, our congregation started this important event. In previous posts, we explained all the details of the first week and the second week. Today, we would like to share with you what happened in the third week. We hope you enjoy it and, if you want to know more about the Chapter, here is the link to the General Chapter website!
We began the second part of the General Chapter with a reflection by Brother Emilli Turu (from the Marist family) on this year’s theme “Be clothed in compassion”. The reflection of the day was the way we look at reality in a world full of suffering. As Illya Prigogine, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, said, “small islands of cohesion in a sea of chaos have the capacity to raise the whole system to a higher order”, we as a hospitaller family are called to be “weavers of universal fraternity” from the culture of sharing; passionate witnesses of God wherever the Church needs us.
On Sunday, the congregation approved the Directory, concluding the first part of the General Chapter. After completing this first step, we began the new objective; the study of the six-year report of the General Government.
Enrico Sarti and Pier Francesco Pinelli, consultants of the congregation, accompanied us on this journey to continue working on the presentation of our sexennial report. Their contributions were based on our charism, from the prophetic voice of St. Benedict Menni, who keeps telling us “a good administration doubles the goods to do good to our neighbour” (Const. 1882, 24).
The diverse realities of our congregation were shown. The aim of the General Chapter is create a share vision for the future of our congregation. A vision that will be shared, inspiring, mobilising, utopian, charismatic and contextualised. In order to get this vision we need to establish processes taken on by all global and local, to be continued.
We began the discernment of our chapter document, accompanied by Fr. Juan Bytton, in a time of prayer with the method of spiritual conversation, from the perspective of Mercy in the Bible. Let us put ourselves in an attitude of listening to the Spirit!
We began a new stage of discernment, this time focusing on the nuclear lines and dynamisms of renewal in our congregation.