“INTO DEEP SEA! WE CAST THE NETS”

Today, February 22, we remember that 170 years ago Maria Antonia Paris and her companions went out to sea, trusting in God and with the desire to fulfill his will. On the light of this remembrance, we communicate with enthusiasm, that on March 26 of this year we will begin the path of reflection and renewal announced last year. It calls us to be “a renewed Congregational Body, like consecrated women in the process of conversion, who walk with others, who live and work for an inclusive and intercultural fraternity for mission.”

The motto of this Congregational itinerary is: “INTO DEEP SEA! WE CAST THE NETS.”

Each of us, like the apostles, listens to the voice of the Master and plunges into the sea to live the same dream of our founders: Duc in Altum! (Lk 5:1-11). We too, following on the word of the Master, we cast the nets trusting in him.

The world, history, has not stopped on its way to new horizons. The Church, within that world so shaken by the COVID 19 pandemic, has embarked on a path of renewal in the key of synodality. We want to embrace this invitation that is born of the Church and of our charism from the awareness of our own need for personal, community, and congregational renewal.

After several meetings and discernment carried out among the sisters of the governments of Major and General Entities which took place between April and July 2021, we saw the need to promote an itinerary of renewal in the key of synodality, which from the commitments of the XVII General Chapter, will guide us to the next General Chapter as a goal and starting point. The objective we enunciate at the beginning of this letter came from these meetings.

Jolanta Kafka, Superior General, informed in her letter of July 11, 2021, about the experience lived in the meetings with the Provincial Governments and expressed the desire to open this same experience to the entire Congregation: “we will all set ourselves on the path of conversion, a missionary conversion, with renewed enthusiasm.”

Later, in September of the same year, the team was formed composed of a sister from each entity, who participated in the process, to design this path: Anastasia Wio, Anna Daszkowska, Cecilia Medina, Maria Teresa Garitagoitia, Ondina Cortés, Thushari Wettasinghe and Priscilla Latela, being the liaison to the General Government.

The itinerary involves stages that will touch our personal, community and missionary life. Each stage will include various materials to help us “navigate into deep sea” from our concrete reality. This itinerary wants to be a light that accompanies, illuminates the processes and different activities already underway in each entity. It wants to encourage coordinated paths, not in a parallel or overlapping way. We will make it known to you with more details shortly.

As our Superior General, Jolanda Kafka, expresses in the motivational video, we want all of us to embrace this process, to be protagonist of it, and cultivate the necessary attitudes to live it with enthusiasm. Therefore, we invite you for the launching of this path that is scheduled for March 26, in the light of Mary’s Yes in the Annunciation. Please book in your agenda this date, we hope to have everyone’s participation. Later we will inform about the time of the meeting and the program.