After a greeting and a prayer to the Holy Spirit, Maria Dolores Sanzberro (Contemplative sister) presented Lourdes Fernandez Loeches ss.cc. who has come from Spain to help us during the next three days in our reflections on the theme: “ Choose life in the present reality of our Communities”

Lourdes Fernandez began by making an appeal for the group to really live the opportunities that are on offer, as was recommended in the first reading of
today’s Eucharisitic liturgy; and to be aware of what the paralytic and the people who took him to Jesus had to do.(Gospel) She took Margeret’s letter, sent in 2007, and used by the Council of the Vicariat in January 2008 and spent quite some time on it so that we remember to what extent we are involved in this process of change and what has been our involvement in it up till now.

Through the information received and the work done up till now, Lourdes had become aware of some resistances, hesitations, fears. She invited us to let go of them and encouraged us to put fear aside and be available and well disposed to get down to work now and leave the future in the hands of the Lord; to get rid of any barrier between the “my” and the “our” and to feel that we are in the Church for the world. “ We must join together now ,“ each one with her own personal gift in order to grasp the will of God for today. We must look to the common good.

The important thing is how we are, where we are and who is leading our life. We must be aware of this so that the communion that embraces the whole human family and indeed all created reality may be made possible. To choose life is to open ourselves to a new consciousness and a new vision of the world. It urges us to a change of mentality (is it true or is it just a dream ?), to live and go on giving life to the very end like truly fruitful women, not just as the Vicariat, but as the whole body.

We are being called in many directions and we must not let get lost in the midst of them. We must name our fears in order to become truly authentic and live what Pierre Bienvenu Noailles dreamed for us: to be bonds of communion in the mystical heart of the Holy Family.

Let us all go forward together feeling that we are on the way.

After this input there was time for personal reflection and after 15 minutes we came back to the hall to be given the guidelines for work to be done.
We learned that we would have an hour of personal reflection followed by work in linguistic groups. To do what? To look, to enlighten each other and to commit ourselves so that we look at everything we have seen and heard as a type of “spiritual reading” and
become aware of our real situation and thus be able to look at what we will be in 5 year’s time.

If we have to die, let us die with joy.
Let us live and die