General Chapter 1996

General Chapter 1996

30th October 1996

PASSION FOR MISSION

Closing Address

Sr. Christiane Mégarbané, f.m.m.

Superior General

The last General Chapter of the Institute for this century is coming to a close. We have lived it "gathered from our diverse cultures in this 'upper room' with Mary", as Sister Maura said in her opening address on 2nd September 1996. Our gratitude goes out to "Him who by the power at work within us is able to do jar more abundantly than al! that we ask or think" (Eph 3.20).

Our welcoming of the final document showed us that beyond our differences the Spirit gathers and unites us. The search together for our missionary identity enab1ed us to re-own our charism, expressing it for the world of today and tomorrow. Together, we chose for the next six years, to emphasise:

* living justice as artisans of peace

* participating in the encounter of the Gospel with cultures

* collaborating in creating communion in view of the Reign of God.

These orientations, a privileged expression of our missionary specificity, should mobilise us, if we wish our identity to be visible and recognised where we are inserted. The choices we have just made will become life in us and through us in the local realities if, listening to the Spirit, we courageously allow ourselves to be questioned. The plans of the provinces, adjusted to the orientations of the Chapter, will help us to incarnate our deepest aspirations so that the ever new call of the Gospel may resound in the waiting world.

Nevertheless, these weeks lived together enabled us to discover our poverty. This is not the poverty of our resources .in personnel, because, even if we are decreasing in numbers, we have an inestimable richness: each one with all that she is, her great love for the lnstitute and her deep desire to live her mission to the very end. Our poverty is at another level and it calls us to humility and minority. At this Chapter we had the painful experience of our inconsistencies and contradictions. We became aware that we do not have sufficient knowledge of our Constitutions, and of the life and possibilities which they offer us. We noticed that certain structures which we wished to see changed give us enough space, if we do not interpret them too rigidly or too vaguely. The study we envisage continuing in this post-chapter period, will help us to deepen them, and to improve on them if this turns out to be necessary in order to live our charism better in response to the signs of the times.

At this Chapter, we were also struck. by our diversity, even by our differences. At certain times these were great and we had the impression that it was difficult for us to understand and to agree with one another. Has inculturation, an indispensable value inherent in our missionary identity, accentuated our differences instead of stimulating us to come out of ourselves in order to go towards the other, and together, in the riches of our plurality, to build this Body which is the Institute? We are aware of the frustrations, sometimes even of the sufferings, which this tension creates within us. What are we going to do with this experience of death? Will it be a new departure, a new life, a conversion to humility and minority, so that, after the example of Francis, we may enter this "long pilgrimage of recognition, discovery and revelation" to welcome each one in her difference, as a richness, a gift of God?

While discovering our limitations, we lived an ever greater openness to the whole Body of the Institute. This effective solidarity - communion - in which Sister Maura believed very strongly and, which she nurtured in us to the point of our being able to concretise it together, is the fruit of a long process. At this Chapter, we renewed our commitment to Universal Mission and our disponibility to sending and receiving. We, therefore, can continue to make possible the communion between Churches and the Mission of the Institute. The lines of action which we chose in this area will supp6rt our collaboration and, in this Body which is the Institute, each one will be able to participate in one project: to serve the great desire for communion which God has sown in the heart of the world.

Have we arrived at the point where, in spite of our poverty and our limitations, we can name the passion which makes us afire for mission: would it not be COMMUNION? "Even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they may also be one in us, so that the world may believe that ,thou has sent me .:. al1d hast loved them even as thou hast loved me" (Jn 17. 21,23).

Christ, sent by the Father, became one of us in order to "reduce the-distance" between God and us so that for ever we might be able to live of their Spirit, the Spirit of communion.

He invites us also to "reduce the distance", to conform ourselves to Him, the-Just One, to act like Him, so that "the love with which He was loved may be in us" (cf. Jn 17. 26). Then, in this great communion of love, the relationships among us, with those to whom we are sent and with creation which aspires to its completion will become more just and true, and the incarnation of the Gospel will continue in us and through us. We will share the love which we have received so that "they may have life in abundance" (Jn 10. 10).

"Communion, this word fills me", Mary of the Passion wrote in her Spiritual Notes (NS 356). "May my life be a Eucharistic communion" and thanksgiving to the Father "through Christ, with Him and in Him" in the unit y of their Spirit of Love. "Sent" in our turn, is this not to be

"Eucharistic Communion" and to live "in memory of Him"? Then Universal Mission, our adventure in communion, will bear life and hope.

At the dawn of the third millennium, in communion with the Church and the whole world, let us "proc1aim the year of the Lord's favour" (Lk 4. 19; 1s 61. 2). Reconciled with God, with ourselves, with one another, with those to whom we will go, with the universe, we will be able to remember and celebrate the wonders of the Lord. He has done great things in us, with us and through us (cf. Lk 1. 49).

Let us go, therefore, to meet this new century: God is waiting there for us.

S. Christiane Mégarbané, fmm

Sup.Gal

(translation)