Rome (Italy). At the conclusion of the first Plenary session of the General Council, Mother and the General Council of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians send a choral message to all the FMA to share the experience of elaborating the Program for the 2022-2027 six-year period.
“Our existences, fragile and vulnerable, are the object of thoughtful care by God who loves us and continues to call us to give ‘good wine’ to the thirsty world.” It is the conviction that animated the work, in which we perceived the strength and light of the Holy Spirit and the active presence of Mary, who directed energies in a creative way.
The scenario of the international crisis we are experiencing also calls us to understand and face global challenges “in the community search for the will of God, in fidelity to the spirit of the origins, for a passionate following of Christ and a new missionary dynamism.”
From a regenerated life to a generative life
The 150th anniversary of the foundation of the Institute, which opens up new horizons of life and hope, and the synodal reflection that involves the FMA as Church, have ensured that a style of synodality with a greater involvement of collaborators and with the request for a contribution from some experts, to facilitate the implementation of the Chapter priority choices and deliberation.
The consignment of GC XXIV: “With Mary be a ‘presence’ that generates life” remains the commitment to encourage to be concretized in every Community and Province.
Essentiality, involvement, participation, coordination, discernment, shared decisions were the guiding criteria in the process of elaborating the Program, still illuminated by the biblical passage of the wedding at Cana (Jn 2: 1-12), from which it was drawn to identify the horizon:
“Do whatever He tells you” (Jn 2:5). As at Cana and at Mornese we are a ‘presence’ that generates, promotes and takes care of life in contemporaneity.
In Mary’s being we find the “call to assume a new style of presence that springs from an ‘overview’, a typically feminine gift that sees, ponders in the heart, and allows self to be involved.”
The quality of the presence is a fundamental element of the Program, which updates the three Priority Choices and the Deliberation contained in the Acts of GC XXIV: to be in ongoing formation, to walk in synodality, to act networked in the perspective of integral ecology.
As a Church journeying
The Circular mentions various recurrences and significant events that will span the six-year period: the XVI Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on synodality, scheduled for October 2023; the Jubilee Year of 2025 on the theme Pilgrims of Hope; the 150th Anniversary of the First FMA Missionary Expedition (14 November 1877 – 2027).
The consignment of the Program to each FMA therefore makes concrete the desire to continue the journey of missionary synodality of the first Sisters of Mornese and of Consecrated Life of all times.
Mother and the Councilors entrust the new journey to Mary in the certainty of her attentive, active, and caring ‘presence’, encouraged by the words of Pope Francis in the meeting with the participants in GC XXIV at the Generalate, 22 October 2021, “Accompanied by Her, go forward with enthusiasm on the path that the Spirit suggests to you.”
