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 of the last 6 years of the General Council.
The 2017 Chapter was a call to “be bearers of hope” and therefore to open new doors towards the peripheries. Among the most significant events of the last 6 years have been the spiritual and material preparations for the 150th anniversary of our foundation and the 175th anniversary of the birth of Mother Marie Salomé (our 1st Superior General). This has rekindled the zeal to better appropriate our charism and strengthen our missionary spirit.
There have been many initiatives to respond to some of the calls addressed to us as a congregation and much creativity in the implementation of the apostolic orientations of the congregation. Our charism is needed in today’s world and Church, and the Spirit continues to call us to live it in new places and circumstances, while inviting us to widen our tent.
Each sister, community and the congregation have begun an ecological conversion and have made efforts to engage in caring for our common home, the Earth, thus living out one of our apostolic orientations.
Meister Eckhart wrote: “There is a journey you must take. It is a journey without a destination. There is no map. It is your soul that will guide you. And you cannot take anything with you.” The Chapter is a journey without a map, where everything is a constant movement forward.
Homily
In the homily Fr. David Sullivan mentioned that after the speech made by St. Stephen there was a persecution of the Christians, and many believers had to flee for their lives. For the early church this must have been a disaster. But history tells us that this persecution led the Christians to move out of Jerusalem and to settle in other parts of the Mediterranean world. In and through the tragic event of the persecution and with this experience of vulnerability God was able to do great things, as the Gospel spread throughout the world.
