WELCOME TO ITAICI

Welcome to the thirteenth general assembly of World CLC:

We joyfully proclaim that it is our desire that the theme for this meeting "CLC - letter of Christ, written by the Holy Spirit, sent to today’s world" (2Cor 3,3)become a deep and abiding truth:

We invite you all to deepen our identity as an apostolic body by clarifying our common mission.

It is with deep joy I address you today and I begin with the presentation of the past four years since the Hong Kong Assembly.

If I had to use two phrases to define those four years I would say:they were firstly a path of grace, and secondly a path of hope.

A path of grace because the gifts received from the Lord were many: We have felt again and again the grace of His presence (where two or more of you meet together in my name, there I am). We have seen how the Spirit continued to illuminate this journey in everything that we have been experiencing, living and doing as a World Community in the world.

It is further a path of hope in that we parted in HK with a clear sense of having lived and experienced the World Community, maybe with an intensity that up until that moment had not previously been lived and experienced. We left with the hope that CLC had much to contribute to this divided and oppressed world. CLC is indeed called to be a LETTER OF CHRIST, WRITTEN BY THE HOLY SPIRIT, SENT TO TODAY’S WORLD.

Four years later, we meet again and as we begin we recall briefly how we have lived as World Community in the meantime. Now I’m only going to give you an overview. I’ll leave it to the other members of EXCO to give you a more detailed picture of the particular events of the last four years.

In our last Assembly in HK, the conclusions of the workshops translated themselves into various recommendations and orientations, that were at once both general and particular. From these it clearly emerged that, in spite of the will, the generosity and the lived faith of our CLC members, "neither the way of making the Exercises, nor the Plans of Formation were moving us towards a mission that is really incarnate". We felt that the Lord was asking much more of us. We felt that neither the way we were forming ourselves nor our structures were in accordance with the mission to which the Lord was urging us.

The grace of HK was that the preferential option for the poor, a simple lifestyle,and walking with Christ poor and humble, should be at the heart of how we incarnate ourselves in the world.

With these premises, the ExCo began to priorize three lines of action:

Formation for Mission,

The Life of the World Community,

Adaptation of Structures for Mission.

 

Formation for Mission:

It was clear in the orientations given to the ExCo in Hong Kong, that the long journey travelled by the communities since 1967 led us in Guadalajara to review and update our GPs. It was also clear that we should now deepen for ourselves our apostolic charism and so adapt the Plans for Formation of the National Communities. In practice this means finding a "common language" and a common approach to our identity. This allows us to have firstly a common mission, though not a single one, and secondly a single frame of reference that can be expressed in all of the rich diversity of our World Community.

This has led us, on the one hand, to the writing of the document Our CLC Charism, which we will soon be presenting in its revised version. On the other hand it has led us to work on the formulation of a long-range Plan of Formation. This should improve, systematize and give depth to the more usual partial formation that is received by the laity in general and CLC members in particular. Thankfully, this program has already become a reality in Latin America (The Magis Program). The possibility of applying it to other regions is now being studied (Maria Clara will speak to you about it later).

The Life of the World Community:

The ExCo has given a very positive evaluation to the International Formation Encounters (IFEs) .It has decided to continue with them as a means of suggesting "ways of working" that would help to identify current "mission fields", to discover appropriate responses and furthermore would have a clear multiplying effect. Along with these IFEs there were also 12 meetings between the Jesuits and lay members of CLC, some of them with more than 100 participants. These meetings went to the core of our spirituality and have concrete consequences for the life of the community - a community that wants to be "Community for Mission".

The richness of what we have experienced together, the graces received, have exceeded our highest expectations.

Finally, each time has seen a greater coordination between the existing realities of the Euroteam, Service Teams and the ExCo. We understand now these structures as means of making concrete what the World Community is living and experiencing.

Structures:

The challenges presented to us regarding the mission push us to update our structures. In Guadalajara we felt the need for this, but it was in HK that this need was most evident. The workgroup that emerged from this has worked hard and have made many proposals. This Assembly will decide how to proceed with some of these and, depending on this, the incoming ExCo will be able to take it much further.

These possibilities and conclusions will have a positive effect on a Secretariat that is already overwhelmed with work. This quantity of work has already harmed the health of our dear, tenacious, generous and hardworking Roswitha.

Since you now have the details of all the themes and following your recomendations we conclude that we have created new instruments that allow us to penetrate more deeply "Our Charism",. They reinforce our common identity and help us to search and find what God wants from us today: in the ample diversity and complexity of our World Community.

Deo Gratias