TEMPORARY PROFESSED SISTERS IN LATIN AMERICA

2021-09-19

MEETING FOR THE TEMPORARY PROFESSED SISTERS IN LATIN AMERICA.

HELD ON 16TH -18TH JULY 2021

With great joy, enthusiasm and gratitude, we wish to share with all our sisters of the congregation, what it meant for us, temporary professed sisters, to participate in the junior’s Meeting held via zoom from July 16 to 18 of this year. Our theme was “Personal and community discernment” given by Sr. Aurora Torres our General Sup. God is great that the pandemic was not a reason to prevent us from doing it!

The sisters of temporary vows who live in Latin America are: five from Uganda / Kenya / Congo region (Magdalene Nyambura, Mary Nalukindu, Chantal Simisi, Josephine Nassuuna y Restetuta Nakachwa and two from Madagascar (Saholy Rahariniriana and Juliette Razanamahasoa). We were accompanied by the Sisters on the formation of Latin American formation team (Sofia Gorozpe, Celia Muzquiz, Marthe Rasoamalala and María S. López), as well as Sr. Raquel de Villa from Mexico.

The simple, humble, loving attitude of our Sr. Aurora Torres, led us to meet God who lives in each one of us. We felt that she welcomed us as we are, and spoke a language clear for all of us, being of different nationalities; a language of love, and so we witnessed a spirit of serenity, empathy, joy, peace and tranquillity.

We appreciated her methodology both in preparation and during the meeting. We were accompanied by an extract from the first chapter of the book "El Discernimiento" by Benjamín González Buelta, SJ. which helped us to deepen what discernment is and reread our experiences in that light. This helped us to prepare our hearts.

In an atmosphere of respect and love, we shared our experiences in total freedom, and at the same time with total readiness to receive the life of the other with much love without any feeling of judgment. We walked together in this journey of understanding, and most importantly opening ourselves to the Spirit of God. We deepened the attitude of active listening, through which practice we discovered that listening is the key that opens the door to the sacred land of oneself and that of others; behind each one's life there’s a face of Dios.

The inner sacred self being different from the ego, we realized the importance of learning to live in harmony with oneself and to accept everything as grace. Being in contact with oneself helps to identify one's own thoughts and feelings in order to name them, to know where they come from and their final end (where do they lead me?). Also, we understood that it is important to discern each moment; not only when making big decisions, but also every moment of our life to be able to distinguish what is the best way to serve God, thus seeking and choosing what gives life to oneself and others.

Deepening the 14 rules of discernment helped us to see the importance of making them our own in our daily life, since they accompany the entire process of growth of a human person. We deepened the importance of being attentive to the process of integration, liberation and salvation, shedding off those movements that hinder and enslave and do not let us find the will of God.

It helped us to deepen that the bad spirit also has wonderful tactics, it has a habitual practice of proposing apparent pleasures to the person by making him imagine sensual pleasures and satisfactions, for example, it can give joy, security, confidence, etc. but all these last only for a short time. And it is interesting how the good Spirit acts in such situations, uses the opposite procedure, causing pricks of conscience and feelings of remorse by means of rational judgment. (cf. EE 314).

Coming out of oneself and putting the other at the center of one’s life is the key to an authentic life. The purpose of discernment is not to accommodate lives in comfortable places, but rather to move the person to love and serve others, as Benjamin G. B says: "Discernment is not a self-absorbed self-analysis, a selfish introspection, but a true coming out of ourselves towards the mystery of God, who helps us to live the mission to which he has called us for the good of our brothers and sisters."

Opting for life, according to Carlos Cabarrús P., has various manifestations, such as good self-esteem which is reflected in different attitudes for example balanced work, the capacity to rest, availability for dialogue and forgiveness, openness to find what is positive in all things and in all people. We therefore, deepened the importance of doing the Daily Examination to see how one goes through the day, about discovering the presence of God in what one has lived.

We felt that it was a great opportunity to deepen the practice of discernment from our own experience and now we are left with the task of continuing to exercise ourselves until it becomes a permanent attitude in our lives. With great joy that we express our gratitude to the Congregation and to our dear sisters of the formation team and more to our dear Sr. Aurora who left everything and gave us everything without calculation and reservation with love. May Almighty God bless you all.