(Page Two of Vol. 30-5)
September, 1989 Soundings, Volume 12,
Number 1
From Our President
Chapter provides opportunity
for participation in determining future direction for the congregation
By Roberta Marie Brown, CSJ
This early fall
issue for Soundings urges me once again to reflect with you on the importance
of the Chapter year which we have begun. It started on June 10 with the first
meeting of the delegates and has continued this past weekend with the Friday
evening and Saturday sessions at Aquinas,
What has become clear at these meetings and also at the summer Congregation gatherings for the Six-Year-Term Proposal is that many of our sisters are willing and ready to participate in the Chapter experience. This is a great sign of hope for me, our Council, and the Chapter delegates. It assures us that the task of ensuring our Congregation’s future in the Church and the world will be a shared one, and that:
-together we are learning ways to be about…reconciliation between our ideals and our daily realities, between fullness of the new creation and the limitation of a Church on pilgrimage, between communal mission and personal call.
- together we are learning ways to be bearers of reconciliation, witnesses to hope and joy, among the people with whom we share life in these days.
- together we are learning ways to embrace our own weakness and the brokenness of our world, and to cry out for the reconciliation and communion for which we yearn.
Constitution, Preface, p. 22
In my most recent letter to the houses, I mentioned that the Chapter’s primary responsibility is to protect the Congregation’s patrimony; i.e. its nature, purpose, charism, spirit, and tradition.
At this moment in our history, such protection will happen only if we respond generously to the invitations of the Spirit, to the needs of God’s people, and to the signs of the times.
We have had many opportunities over the years to learn how to respond: renewal experiences of every kind; educational updating in theology, spirituality, and our own personal disciplines; new community and ministerial offerings; repeated calls/challenges from our on-going working groups and programs: Commitment to the Poor, Women’s Group, RNR, On-Going Formation, Charism and Mission, Associates Membership, Lay Volunteers, Liturgical Commission, Health Care Office, Justice and Peace Office, etc., etc.
There is no end to what we have received as members of this Congregation. Now we have the responsibility to share the treasure – a thought well expressed in Mathew’s gospel: “Happy are your (our) eyes because they see, your (our) ears because they hear!...Many prophets and holy ones longed to see what you (we) see, and never saw it; to hear what you (we) hear and never heard it.”
Once again, I call each sister and local community to invest herself/itself in the spirit and activities of the Chapter year.
I invite you to be with the delegates in the election of our leaders, setting new direction for the Congregation, adapting norms and policies where appropriate, reviewing and consulting over concerns presented by the Congregation, and calling the Congregation to the implementation of the direction and policy approved by the Chapter.
One in hear and mind and effort, we will be empowered by the Spirit to continue the transformation of our Congregation, Church, and world.