The common mission of CLC is the mission that Christ himself gives us as part a lay association within the Church. This mission is CLC's response, as an apostolic body, to the most urgent needs and deepest aspirations of today's world.
As a response to these perceived needs, our national communities are already developing a variety of apostolic activities. This gift of mission which we ask for in this Assembly should be a prophetic word for us that enlightens us and makes us revise or confirm these apostolic activities. These activities in turn ought to be a prophetic sign for the world in which we live.
We hope that the mission we receive will concretise itself in four or five apostolic priorities.
We know that the overall process will continue to
bear fruit well beyond this Assembly . Moreover we are very aware
that this gift only becomes a prophetic word and sign when it
is translated into concrete action in the national communities.
It is there, most importantly, that we receive confirmation of
our mission.
Our Way of Working
We begin by examining the steps that we will take
in this Assembly in Itaici in order to realise this our desire
to be a letter of Christ written by the Spirit sent into today's
world.
Today and in the days ahead we will return to the
three questions mentioned this morning. In each workshop and in
each of the groups we will begin sharing the fruit of our reflections
from our communities of origin. Today, the second day of the Assembly,
we will respond to the first question. On Day 6 of the Assembly
we will take the second question and on Day 9 we will respond
to the third question.
How should we respond as a world community?
What steps are necessary in order to implement the mission we received?
We are invited to respond to these questions keeping in mind what we have contemplated in the life of Jesus as the one sent by the Father. The Father also gives us His Spirit in this Assembly. As a World Assembly we are called to allow ourselves to be moved by this Spirit. We ask during these days for the grace to be carried in safety and tenderness in the "hands" of the Father. If we contemplate Jesus the Son of Mary and allow ourselves to be moved by the Spirit, we will, in our working groups, discover the mission with which the Father entrusts us for today.
We have put together four workshops to better capture the riches and poverties of the world in which we live. The contribution of each workshop will be complemented by the contributions of the others. The same can be said of the different fields of interest, each group and, of course, each one of ourselves- the contribution of every one person is complemented by the contribution of every other person. The facilitators of each workshop and the co-ordinators of each group will help us in this discernment. Because our contributions are complementary, it is important to really listen to each other. By so doing we can pick up what is central in the sharing and discover the action of the God's Spirit in what is said.
Today (Day 2) we will concentrate on what we have seen to be the most urgent needs and lacks , the gravest problems. We will do so from the particular focus of each of the workshops. Knowing that God speaks to us through these needs and problems of our world, we seek to know what they are. We begin by sharing the fruit of our reflection carried out in our national communities. We will then complement this sharing with the reflections of the other groups in the same workshop. After prioritizing the fruit of our work (Day 3 of the Assembly), we want to arrive at a formulation that expresses the needs that we see in our world from the perspective of the workshop in which we participated.
The fruit of the four workshops will then be given (Day 4 of the Assembly)to a Commission made up of eight people - the facilitators from each of the workshops and the ExCo. They are mandated by us to put together the principle needs that the world CLC, through us, sees to be most central in today's world. They will have to pray about and work on this for more than a day.
While they do this work, we, the delegates, prepare ourselves to respond to these needs, asking ourselves what the Lord Jesus wants from us and how He wants us to share His mission. To enrich us in this preparation, José María Riera, World President of CLC, will remind us of the Ignatian criteria for mission. Later (Days 4 and 5) we will discuss this together with Fr. General and with Fr. Joseph Tetlow, Jesús MonteroTirado and Bernard Lestienne -those with responsibility for the three Secretariates of the Society of Jesus. Even before knowing the result of the Commission's work we can discuss the needs that have emerged from the groups and the workshops.
The following day (Day 6 of the Assembly) the Commission will give us a list of what has been seen by CLC to be the principle needs of our world. We will ask the Spirit of God to move our hearts and to inspire us as to how we should respond to these needs. We will work to prioritize these responses and will do so will do so from different points of view.
Firstly we will return to the same workshops that we were in before according to the choice made by each delegate. Then we will meet in each of our national delegations and finally we will meet in groups of neighbouring countries that have a more cultural and geographical connection. The fruit of this work will be the priortized responses to the needs of the world that have been inspired by the Spirit.
(Day 7 of the Assembly) This fruit will be then given to the same Commission as before. We will mandate them this time to integrate the responses that World CLC can make to these perceived needs. The work of the Commission will be briefer and they will give us their findings the following morning.
(Day 8 of the Assembly) United in prayer with the World Community and taking the words of St. Ignatius "we ask the most Holy Trinity in its infinite goodness to shower us with graces so that we feel its will and fulfil it completely". As we receive this mission with which God entrusts us, we desire the experience of that inner peace that is a sign for us of the Spirit's presence with us.
After praying, each national delegation comes together, once again, to ask themselves if they accept the proposal, and, in accepting it, does that inner peace remain. Whatever comes from this meeting will be presented to a Plenary of the Assembly and received by the ExCo.
This part of the apostolic discernment finishes when the ExCo returns to the Assembly what it has discerned as the mission that God entrusts to this apostolic body of world CLC.
The following day (Day 9 of the Assembly) we will
celebrate the Eucharist to give thanks for the mission that the
Father gives us. Immediately afterwards, both in national and
regional meetings, we will begin to look for ways to implement
the mission we have received.