Day 4 – Apostles creating newness
The General Chapter is a new beginning, an option for life which contains in itself a potentiality that we must develop, with a view to the transformation of the congregation and each of its members. On Wednesday we began the day with a sharing on what had touched each one the previous day, Tuesday: the presentation of the General Council report showing the reality of the congregation with its lights and its shadows. Then, we journeyed together into the life of an apostle: Carol, one of our sisters who lives her mission in her village in Spain. She is creating newness in herself and in those she is sent to. We heard the powerful voices of our younger sisters speaking to us. This awakened many feelings and gave us great joy. Our morning prayer was a thanksgiving for that intense time lived together and for all the new life…
Day 3 – Change and transformation are not the same
The Recollection As the theme of the Chapter is “The transforming love of the risen Lord calls us… to give birth to a new creation”, the continuation of the recollection the morning of the 3rd day, was dedicated to the meaning of transformation. Change and transformation are not the same. While change happens at a point in time, transformation happens over time. While change is a new beginning, transformation begins with an ending. Just when the caterpillar thought her life was over, she began to fly… While change is observable, transformation involves patterns, structures, worldviews and soul. While change is an exterior event, transformation is an interior journey. Transformation implies a shift in perspective, which means to look at the world through different windows. To start this process, we need courage to risk and harness creativity and imagination. (The picture will be bigger). Presentation of the report…
Day 2 – A Day of prayer, reflection and sharing
As athletes train hard before a big competition, the sisters prepared for the General Chapter with a day and a half of silence, prayer, reflection and listening to the Spirit speaking through reality through the others, the inner calls, to discover God’s call for us today. Brother Emili Turu, a Marist, led the reflection. He invited the sisters to be open to the reality of the world, the Church, the congregation and of religious life and to enter the contemplative space of the world realities which he presented in a slide-show. Despite the fact of the world being “upside down” with the difficulty of seeing God’s signs in it, he asked the sisters to search God’s presence in the meaningful images representing both good and bad current realities, and then to share with their neighbours what they saw. The periods of the whole life-cycle of cultures and…
1st session of the MSOLA Chapter
Our General Chapter is taking place from 30thApril to 20thMay. It is facilitated by Fr. Yago Abeledo M.Afr. and Sr. Selina Mbuli, Sister of Mercy. Our spiritual companion of the Chapter is Fr. David Sullivan, M.Afr. During this time delegates and representatives from the different continents will evaluate what the Institute has lived since the last Chapter in 2017, prepare the future of the Congregation, and elect the Superior General and her Council who will implement the decisions and orientations taken in the Chapter. Throughout Saturday, 29thApril, the capitulants and the team accompanying them arrived at Sacrofano, near Rome. What a joy to be able to greet and hug sisters who had not seen each other for a long time and meet others who we had only seen via Zoom. On Sunday, 30th April, the feast of Our Lady of Africa, the capitulants gathered in the…
Seeing the bigger picture
Sr. Angela Kapitingana, from the Nairobi community in Kenya, shares her experience of the last two General Chapters Looking back at my experiences of the past two chapters of 2011 and 2017, I realize how the Congregation has been attentive to the needs of the time, the calls of the Church and the reality of the Congregation. Our mission experience has been a guide in our communal discernment to find the best way to live our charism in a changing world. Actually, these realities are well expressed in the four apostolic orientations (Capitular Acts 2017, page 12) and the theme itself of the 2017 Chapter: “Bearers of Hope, listening to the voice of the Spirit moving forward together towards the peripheries”. As MSOLA we desired to live this in the present situation of the Church and the globalized world. The theme for the forthcoming chapter is…
Cast our nets wide
Sr. Bijundi Bashige, of the community of Kinshasa, in D.R. Congo, shares with us her exeprience of a General Chapter I will begin with this song by Robert Lebel that I love: Let’s take the road together, it’s God who leads us, Let’s walk the road together at the sign of the Spirit of God May S/he come and teach us to read what emerges for today Between the lines of the Gospel, the road where Jesus leads us (Prenons la route ensemble…) I had my first General Chapter experience in 1993. We were only two Africans. I trembled wondering how I was going to live this chapter and what I could bring. The first thing was to see that we had all prayed and reflected in all the provinces before coming to the chapter. Meeting our sisters from all walks of life was a great joy and opened my…
A Quest, a Test and an Adventure
“Life” said the well-known writer G.K. Chesterton, “is a QUEST, a TEST and an ADVENTURE!” Sr. Marie MacDonald shares her experience of taking part in 7 general chapters. This sentence could well be applied to that experience! Yes, it is a QUEST a searching together for the way forward – not necessarily a radical change of direction but of finding the next right step on our journey as a Congregation. A TEST because, although it is usually a wonderful and life-giving experience, it is also challenging and as capitulants we are all entrusted with a big responsibility. It is an experience of being in labour and of giving birth: to the Capitular Acts and to the General Council composed of those who will form the leadership team for the next 6 years. Then there is the experience of internationality and interculturality which can be a test not only because…
“Updating” our Consitutions
Sr. Suzy Hadermann, from Belgium share with us her experience of the Chapter of 1981. It was the Chapter which responded to the desire of the Church (expressed by the Second Vatican Council) to see that Congregations rewrite their Constitutions, “updating” them (“aggiornamento” in Italian). The 1981 Chapter was therefore devoted mainly to this task, which is very important since it was a question of saying again what we want to live, how we feel the Lord is calling us to participate in his Mission. Two aspects in particular touched me during this chapter: – Our Constitutions are the fruit of the participation of all the sisters of the Congregation – The Spirit accompanied us and worked with us throughout this process The participation of all the sisters: The work to rewrite our Constitutions began several years before the Chapter. We were all invited to re-own our charism…
A Chapter in turmoil
“Having participated in 8 chapters, oh so different, it is not easy to point out a chapter experience.” Sr. Marguerite-Marie Luc, from Villeurbanne, France, shares the first chapter in which she participated, that of 1969, chapter of aggiornamento, chapter which took place in 2 sessions. The first session lasted 11 weeks and the second, 4 months later, lasted 9 weeks. 1969, a period still in turmoil after the riots of 1968, a period of disputes where everything was called into question: Religious life, the Church, family life, authority, our societies themselves. We were not unscathed by this wind of protest. It should also be noted that the vast majority of the capitulants were between 30 and 40 years old! The spirit of openness given by the Superior General at the time was not really recognized at first. We began the chapter by rejecting everything that had been…