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Year IX - Number 368

23 April 2015

Marist News 368

Marist Brothers - General House - Rome

Second European Assembly of the Marist Mission L'Hermitage, France: 13 - 16 April 2015

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he Preparatory Commission for the II AIMM suggested that, after the meeting in Nairobi, each region would organize during 2015, a regional meeting as an opportunity to communicate the proposals and ideas that arise from an experience on African soil. Some of the regions have already organized it and have fixed a date. The Marists of Europe met in L’Hermitage from 13 to 16 April. Fifty-five representatives of European provinces have worked on the theme of Nairobi. The complete chronicle of the meeting is available on the website www.champagnat.org. In this newsletter we present the words of Brother Oscar Martin Vicario, Provincial of Compostela and President of the European Marist Conference (CME) delivered at the close of the meeting.

Dear Marists of Europe, From this house, in January 1830, Fr. Champagnat wrote to Bro. Bartolomé and the brothers in his community. It is a well-known letter. It sounds very attractive to our ears when we reread it 185 years later. It seems these words of Marcellin are attached to the walls and they are addressed to us, today, the Marists of Europe.

• Marists of Europe, "I know you have a great number of children. How important is your job and how great it is!"

• Marists of Europe, "tell your children that and Jesus and Mary love them very much. That the Blessed Virgin wants them all. Mary loves them because she is the Mother of all children," and of all young people entrusted to us.

• Marists of Europe, "tell them that I love them very much, as well. How much I would like to have the joy of teaching them and to be able to devote myself to them in a more direct way with the tenderness these children deserve!"

These sentences of Champagnat are inviting us to trust and gratefulness for

General Administration The seven members of the evaluation team of FMSI met for the second time at the General House from April 17-19. It is coordinated by Brothers Michael De Waas and Chris Wills.

Br Javier Espinosa, director of the Secretariat of the Laity, took part in several meetings in Brazil these last two weeks.

He will visit Lebanon from April 24-29.

The International Commission for Mission will meet in the General House from April 24-29, under the coordination of the Brothers Josep Soteras, João Carlos do Prado and Miguel Angel Espinosa.

Br Mario Meuti and Angela Petenzi, of the FMSI office in Rome, are visiting Nigeria from April 21-30.

Br Hipólito Pérez, deputy director of the Secretariat Brothers Today, is taking part in the encounter of brothers aged under 57 in Bolivia, Cono Sur Province.

From April 24-28, Br Joe McKee, Vicar General, is taking part in the meeting of the District Council of Asia in Bangkok.

The annual meeting of the Board of Directors of “Bedford Fund” is being celebrated in Canada today and tomorrow. Br Victor Preciado, general counsel, is taking part in this meeting.

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our history in Marist Europe, a nearly 200 year’s history. They are inviting us to dare in hope, as well.

• Champagnat speaks of the importance of education and evangelization, and he is inviting us to be brave . . . to be prophets.

• He is inviting us to hand on to others the love of Jesus and Mary, in a deep, authentic way . . . to be mystics.

• And he is proposing to do so out of love for children and the love that exists amongst ourselves, with family spirit ... communion.

So my message at the end is a word of gratitude to you all for this living Assembly that we have been celebrating. Thank you for your passion in your educational, social and evangelizing work which you are doing day by day in Marist Europe.

Now it is the time for witness and action. It is the time to answer the calls of the Montagnes whose faces and names we have remembered during the Assembly. Young people, we have said, are asking us to live authentic meaningful lives, to be close to them ... and our response has to be generous and fast.

• With the prophecy of a courageous Evangelizing action, that thinks first of the needy.

• With the day by day mysticism of our teachers and our schools: they should find in us and in our schools places of spirituality, as they thirsting for spirituality.

• We do this with the communion that we recreated around the common table that we rediscovered yesterday, and around the many tables of our schools, our centres and our communities.

Therefore, besides gratitude, I want my message to be a message of courage and of passion. Because the European children still need us today. Because, as we have experienced here, richness and communion can grow in diversity; because we share the dream of Champagnat to reincarnate it in Europe today.

How important and symbolic it is, that this dream is reborn right here.

• In the Hermitage, a house of God’s presence. In this house we can hear, once again, the voice of this man who was living God continuously; he could pray equally in the woods of the Hermitage and in the streets of Paris ...

• In the Hermitage, a house of apostolic passion. From this house, many generations of educators set out into mission; from here Father Champagnat sent many brothers to their mission; from here our first Brothers were going in twos to give catechesis to the poorer children ...

• In the Hermitage, a house of communion. In this house, together with the house La Valla, many brothers have lived a deep experience of brotherhood ... and as the buildings have been renovated, they show to all of us the face of an enlarged tent; a multiplied and reinvented tent which can be the house of all Marists, Brothers and Lay people.

On behalf of the Board of CEM and of the Provincials; Brendan, Maurice, Ambrosio, Antonio and myself, I thank you all for your participation. Thanks also to the Preparatory Commission for their excellent work. Thanks to all who have provided services of translation, decoration, animation and the secretariat. Thanks to the Community of this house for their warm Marist welcome. Let us now have the courage to daring in hope so that the new dawn we are waiting for will arise, on our way to the bicentenary; let a new beginning of Marist life happen in Europe.

District of Asia: Conference of community leaders

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hirteen brothers from ten different nationalities gathered in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for the conference of community leaders of

the Marist District of Asia (MDA).

The Brothers came from six countries in Asia where we have twelve commu-

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nities which are engaged in ministries of formation, teaching, social inclusion and support for rural students attending local high schools as well as the

Marist News

23 April 2015

establishment of educational facilities such as a community college and a new high school.

MDA is looking to the third century of Marist life and there is a healthy interest in vocations. By August there will be about 39 young men in various stages of vocational discernment. 17 will be postulants, 6 novices and 2 temporary professed. These young men have the potential to double the commitment of brothers in this new District.

The meeting reflected on our need for a continuing international commitment from lay and brother Marists so that this work for a new beginning can be sustained into our third Marist centur

Superior Encourages New Marists Br Emili Visits 15 New Marists Ahead of Final Vows

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he Superior General travelled to Cochabamba, Bolivia, to encourage and lecture 15 Marists preparing for their perpetual vows.

ing the Marist Institute’s vision for the future and the terms it uses, like “new face brother,” which was introduced in the last General Chapter.

Br Emili labeled the group as “privileged protagonists” of the Institute’s future and said he wishes “they truly become what they are called to be, Little Brothers of Mary.”

“It was an excellent opportunity to listen to their worries and dreams as well as the difficulties in which they find themselves each day and how they battle to overcome them,” Br Emili Turú told the General House when he returned to Rome.

“It was a great joy to reflect and share thoughts alongside a group of young brothers full of energy, hope, enthusiasm and generosity for a week,” he added on April 15.

During his April 5-11 trip, Br Emili explained what will be expected of them when they make their final vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

He gave the group a workshop clarify-

includes prayer, work and sport as well as workshops relating to sexuality and affectivity.

“I hope they insert themselves into the stream of ecclesial renewal promoted by Pope Francis, who is inviting us to go out to the peripheries,” he stated.

The new brothers, all from Latin America except for an Italian, are taking part in a preparation course for their vows which began on Feb. 21 and will end on June 19.

They are being guided by three Marist Brothers leading a programme that

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The Superior expects the new brothers to “always promote prophetic dialogue in our community life and mission” and hopes “they take care of themselves, giving themselves space and time for a balanced life to really be accomplices of the Spirit.”

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Year IX - Number 368

On the path of the mission Peggy Vivas, Marist voluntary for the mission

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eggy Vivas, of the Norandina province, has recently settled in Curitiba, Brasil Centro-Sul, where she has started working as a voluntary Marist for the mission. We are including her testimony below.

It is a service organized by the Secretariat of Collaboration for Mission, International (Cmi) in order to work with Coordinators of Province Volunteers (CPVs). The CPVs of the Americas will meet in Buenos Aires next May to specify the function of this international work.

God always calls us and if we allow ourselves, He leads us towards unexpected paths, but full of happiness, which is Himself. On the Lord’s path, He has made me into a missionary Marist, in a Vicariate located in one of the extremes of my country; an experience of great richness to share my being a Marist with brothers, aside from learning to be part of an ecclesial community in communion with other laity and congregations. But the Lord keeps leading me. It is time to keep growing, to take other paths, to reach other lands. Since having had missionary experiences, sharing with others the commandment of Jesus in which he asks to “go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples” (Matthew 28:19), the desire to go to the mission ad gentes has been in my heart.

The Lord gives me a wonderful opportunity! During the Provincial Assembly of the Norandina Province on the Marist Mission Assembly, Br Libardo spoke about the calls of the Marist Institute during these last few years.

Among them is that of being “Prophets and Mystics” of today, the “inter” and the “Internationality.”

The words of Br Libardo encouraged me, they made me feel that this is the moment to create other disciples of Jesus in the style of Marcellin Champagnat in other lands, and then I communicated this desire of making

an experience of solidarity.

Then the preparations began; some paperwork; filled with files; the hope of knowing the new land of the mission, which is Curitiba in the province of Brasil Centro-Sul; the search of the required documents for the visa; the pilgrimage by the institutions of the Venezuelan government for the slow processing of the documents; reviewing my health; trying to learn some Portuguese… A test of patience. Also, talking by videoconference with the people who are sorting out my stay in Brazil, knowing a little bit about the place where I will stay, the personal tasks proposed to me, a “we are happy to receive you in our Providence”…

All of this has meant a set of feelings, positive and negative emotions, especially during these very difficult moments for my country. I have often asked myself if the moment to go on mission to other countries will arrive.

But I also have the hope that this is what the Lord wants of me; that this will be an experience of God, with new lessons to be learned in these new lands.

And during all the hustle, I thought I was putting aside the most important thing: preparing my spirit, placing myself in front of the Lord and reviewing the attitudes with which I was going to this new mission that should strengthen one more, taking the life of Fr Champagnat as an inspiration to

Redaction: Piazzale Marcellino Champagnat, 2, ROME E-mail: comunica@fms.it Site: www.champagnat.org

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encourage that path and mission. The Montagne Year illuminates. I am going to Brazil trying to be attentive to the faces where I will find the Montagnes that the Lord will place in my path, to bear witness to his love and try to make them His disciples.

The letter that Br Emili Turú wrote for the start of the Montagne Year has given my heart more love. I have seen my reflection in his words. I am third generation Marist, a sentry with the hope of helping to bring forth the dawn of the Marist laity, going to the peripheries, enriching my spirituality, ready to face a new beginning with a ‘tent’ and a pilgrim heart… Today I dismount my tent to face a new geographical and personal trip. Like Mary, my heart magnifies the Lord for all I have lived and what is presented to me. I'm still on the path of the mission, trusting in God. The Lord has me a missionary out of me…

MARIST NEWS N.º 368 – Year IX – 23 April 2015 Edit by: Marist Brothers' Institute - General House – Rome