Meeting of the Province ‘Mother of Providence’

From 27-29 December 2016, the province ‘Mother of Providence’ in Lajeado (Brazil) conducted a meeting with representatives from each community. These were three intensive days of prayer, sharing, reflection and of a common reflexion on the life and mission of the province for the year 2017.

The theme of the Latin American Conference of religious (CLAR) formed the basis for the mystique of the meeting: "Let us set-out quickly, towards life". And related to that, we met Maria and Elizabeth, the Virgin and the Infertile, who brought forth life after they encountered God. In this sense, we are invited to take God’s intentions into our personal and community life and to place ourselves in service of threatened life.

After prayer and reflection on this topic we came up with several considerations:

• Discipleship of Jesus invites us to give priority to the Gospel, to be a Church on the move – being poor for the poor, to care for our common house, for the inspirational power of the charisma, for compassion in our formation, for the vitality of the young generations and to live the Jubilee year of our Congregation.
• Religious life is invited to enter in dialogue with the spirit of this age, to offer the Gospel, to keep the eyes open and to praise the deeds of God along the generations.
• Regards reality that is characterized by poverty, unemployment and migration, we must live prophetically, weave fraternal relations and contribute towards change.
• The encounter with people changes life, makes us fertile, creates new relationships in our communities and in the mission. Just as Mary put her intuition into action and went to Elisabeth, we too are invited to open ourselves to the other, to change our views and ourselves, in order to perceive the new.
• The time of God is not chronological. The Kingdom of God is among us. When Zacharias was told the good news that Elizabeth would give birth to a child, he was mute and took nine months to speak again. Sometimes, we need to allow time for maturity. If we want to understand something in a hurry, we should give time and space so that God's Kingdom among us can break open.