Life of the Congregation

In the month of January you can find quite a few cheerful people around in the Generalate: foreign accents, familiar faces and some frank bursts of laughter along the stairs. It is the month devoted to the Congregation councils and meetings: work, long meetings, animated exchanges, and true and fraternal sharing both in prayer and reflection for the wellbeing of our religious Family.

Council of the Congregation
with Frs. Gaspar Fernández Pérez, Enrico Frigerio, Graziano Sala, Tobia Sosio, Laurent Bacho, Jean-Luc Morin, Gustavo Agín, Austin Hughes.

From January 27 to February 1, the Council of the Congregation was held in Rome: a rich experience of fellowship.

According to the new Rule of Life, adapted to Canon Law, the Council of the Congregation is no longer the decision-making body. It has become however an excellent opportunity to share concerns, hopes and projects: that means the life of each Region and each Vicariate.

From the agenda proposed by the Superior General, we first opened our hearts and listened to the experiences of the three Regions, and the eleven vicariates.

A concern already flagged up at the last General Chapter was the promotion of vocations: what do we do and what could we do? Not only in the ‘youngest’ vicariates but also in vicariates where for many years candidates for religious life have been scarce, even if not totally absent. Everywhere there are signs of hope appearing, perhaps because of the great influence of Pope Francis, but also because of a thirst for spiritual life that we perceive in those whose hunger is unsatisfied by our consumer society (and there are many, especially among young people).

The activities of these six days of the Council were naturally marked by the inauguration of the Year of the Consecrated Life, with the beautiful letter that the Pope sent to all religious. Each day, one of the councillors animated the morning prayer by extracts from this letter along with the psalms, hymns, quotes of St. Michael and passages of the Word of God. Given the richness and depth of our sharing, the time reserved for morning prayer seemed too short. Quam bonum et quam iucundum ...(ps 133.1) when meetings are enriched by celebrations and prayer.

Our reflections also focused on other issues such as shared mission with the laity, ongoing formation (thinking of the session next year, scheduled for the religious of over 40 years of age), the General Chapter already close, the need for ever greater communication within the Congregation (with the modern means of communication that technology offers us and with the instruments already at our disposal). We welcomed two items of good news : the canonisation of Blessed Mary of Jesus Crucified and the beatification of Father Louis Cestac. Both events will certainly help us live better our charism in communion with the whole Church.

My personal experience leads me to say that the time and resources involved in these meetings allow us to grow in brotherhood, co-responsibility and mutual help (spiritual and material). Sometimes we are tempted to undervalue the importance of these meetings, but they are however, moments that promote unity and help us to overcome the constant temptation of individualism and self-centredness in our lifestyle or our multiple activities.

Tobia Sosio scj

Commission of the on-going formation session in 2016
with Fr. Jacky Moura, Fr. Gustavo Agín, Br. Andrew Ferris, Fr. Gianlcua Limonta, Fr. Graziano Sala.

The Preparatory Commission of the ongoing formation session, which will take place in 2016, met in Rome from 22nd to 25th January 2015. Well aware that ongoing formation is a slow and gradual process of creating in us the new man in Christ, we tried to develop a well thought out route to visit the holy places, in order to bring about in each of us a review of our own life.

However, from this a question arose: why prepare this formation opportunity with such care? We believe that these days will be a “time of grace” for the religious participants, to the point of allowing them a new summing up of their life between experience and the Gospel, between vocation and the calling to be a Betharramite today.

In fact, as stated by Father Amedeo Cencini, a man of great experience in the spiritual field, “ongoing formation” is not what comes after the initial training but, as paradoxical as it may seem, it is what makes it possible; it is the primary idea or generator that guards it and gives it identity”.

Each participant will come to the Holy Land with a specific experiential baggage, with wounds to heal and joys to share and, above all, with the opportunity to go back to their own community with a renewed look at their future.

In the four weeks of the session that await us, we would like to probe thoroughly our humanity, our being believers, our being consecrated, in order to enable us to live the maturity of the Faith in the reality and uniqueness of everyday life. Finally, I like to think, as stated by Pope Francis in his letter for the Year of Consecrated Life (2015), that the session of 2016 will let us experience how “journeying together is always enriching and can open new paths to relations between peoples and cultures that appear in this period fraught with difficulties”

Gianluca Limonta scj