Day 3 - 20th July
Day 3 - 20th July
The alarm clock goes off that wakes up our bodies, and music from the loudspeakers awakens the soul. A new day of work of the Symposium has begun and what better way than starting with the Word of God!
Yesterday the first missionaries shared their experience with us. Today the guidelines were given by a "grand-daughter" of one of these “grandmothers”, fruit of all the self-giving of these first generations. María José, a disciple from Venezuela and a 23 year old medical student, showed the same charism, capacity for dreaming, growing and hoping.
“This is a moment to give thanks to God for the privilege of being able to feel and touch what the Verbum Dei Missionary Family is in the world.”
“On this journey of constructing Family we oftentimes don’t know where to go or how, but God does, because he knows every step we make (Psalm 139).”
“This morning we also asked the Holy Trinity that our Verbum Dei Missionary Family could be for itself and for the world a living and genuine image of THEIR LOVE”.
“We are here, guided by the Spirit, trying to be a living sign of the love of the Father. We are here to know and enjoy the love of God that has to be our impulse, what lifts us up and makes us continue.”
"CHEER UP, FAMILY! IF WE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DO IT THESE LAST 46 YEARS, THEN WE CAN ALSO CONTINUE GROWING THESE NEXT 46 YEARS."
After a prolonged time of prayer and breakfast as a family, Antonio Botana, from the De la Salle Brothers, who has accompanied this process in his community and has enriched his experience through his contact and by supporting other processes in several charismatic families (a family joined around a same charism), analyzed the relationship between the Missionary Fraternity and the other members of the Family. This was followed by group work and a plenary session.
"WE NEED A CHANGE OF MENTALITY.”
“Who guarantees the charism: the Fraternity or the Family? Well, neither of them, the Holy Spirit is the one who guarantees the charism which is transmitted through them.”
“We are not the ones who consecrate ourselves to God; it is God who consecrates each one in his/her own state of life and reality.”“Rescue the centrality of the Kingdom of God.”
“Frequently the charismatic family has started with the institution of consecrated life as the sole planet that orbits the sun and then the rest of the family is added as a satellite that goes around it. But with time we have found that this image is not good enough, nowadays it is better to speak about several planets that orbit within the same system.”
“DON’T COPY WHAT OTHERS DO, ALLOW YOURSELVES TO ASK QUESTIONS AND EXPERIMENT, TIME AND EXPERIENCE WILL GIVE THE ANSWERS YOU’RE SEARCHING FOR. THERE’S NO NEED TO HURRY.”
At night we finished giving thanks to God with the Eucharist, which was organized by the community of Peru and Ecuador. We finished with a journey through all Latin America, singing to the Virgin, who has accompanied the different countries of this continent.
