Challenges is a television program that chronicles human and sporting feats accomplished with will and determination. For the bold path taken, an episode could be dedicated to the Comboni Sisters European Province Assembly: the process of transformation and renewal that led to a single European province is a real challenge.
“Enlarging the space of the tent” title of the assembly that defines this historic moment.
Manu and I were invited as representatives of the European LMC. Immediately we were struck by the title, widening the tent is the title we gave last November to a path of accompaniment to a laywoman who had expressed her desire to leave for a long mission and had 5 couples of CLM from Verona involved in the path.
Great harmony right away!
In the new tent, open on the 4 cardinal points, we were comfortable, we felt welcomed and it was an opportunity to stay with many sisters: with some there is a long-standing friendship but with all of them we felt in tune.
We not only listened to the proposed topics with interest but felt touched as a couple and as a CLM group on the way.
We were struck by the attitude and involvement of all participants from the youngest to the most experienced, as if everyone was a key player in this change.
Presentations, remarks, and discussions were animated by a common tension of a community that looks to the future with courage and is not held back by worries about stability and hard-won securities.
“Dare the new together” the initial invitation seemed to us to be taken up and fully put into practice.
The dynamics proposed to gather input from the assembly made the proceedings stimulating and enjoyable and involved everyone present, even those who were connected online.
It was a rich and stimulating journey in terms of content where the presence of all branches of the Comboni Family recalled again the theme, so dear to us, of Unity so alive even in the Assembly.
The methodology of “Conversation in the Spirit” in small groups was very effective in bringing out a phrase-objective-bead, embodied in the assembly journey lived so far but fruit of the Spirit’s action on more than one person.
Everyone present was able to speak, confirming this style of doing things together, and bring back what had emerged in the group discernment.
In the journey made in the intense three-day Assembly some points resonated deeply in the hearts of both of us (mine and Pol’s):
- adopting an openness to the new: a tent open on four sides;
- the beauty of being together as a gift of the Spirit;
- the attitude of caring for sick sisters seen as wealth to be cherished;
- not changing the mindset but moving to a mindset of change, “ which then becomes a way of life;
- respect and careful consideration for the special and solitary choices of some sisters, in order to be able to grasp their prophetic significance.
Thank you for this beautiful engaging experience and for the journey made together as the Comboni Family; thank you for the friendly faces met again from so many different countries, thank you for the new encounters, thank you to Comboni who inspires our steps and teaches us to dare new steps!
Our wish is good journey and let us widen our tent!
Manupol
