“The Spirit has spoken, the Spirit speaks, the Spirit will speak”: with the “greeting” of the Superior General, sister Maria Rosa, and the celebration of the Eucharist, the second session of Charism Month began. A total of 10 weeks, five in Sancey last year, in direct contact with our sources.
In the awareness that ‘revisiting one’s origins,’ – began sister Maria Rosa – ‘is not simply an archaeological walk through documents or historical places. It is to place oneself fruitfully in contact, and in radical harmony and continuity of spirit, with the original experience of our foundress’.
Sisters from the different geographical and cultural contexts of the congregation participate in the Month. In turn, they are called to be “resources” for the communities in their territories of origin.
Because “the knowledge and formulation of one’s own charism are the tasks of each institute and can only be fulfilled with the collaboration of all, as depositaries and bearers of the congregational charism. Every Sister of Charity, daughter of Saint Jeanne Antide, must therefore feel her own responsibility for this “congregational charism“, Sister Maria Rosa emphasised. This is why it is necessary for all the sisters to have direct access to the sources, so that they can come into immediate contact with the foundress, her writings, the origins of the Institute, to discover values that have not yet been sufficiently considered or emphasised, or have even been lost. And from the sources, to draw new strength for life and original lines for the mission”.
The Eucharistic celebration in the liturgical memory of Blessed Nemesia Valle was presided over by Father Valerio, cm. Each of the participants of the Month, through a symbolic gesture, declared their responsibility: “Each one must respond, must give an account of this divine gift from the past and entrusted to her; she must give an account of it before those who will enter the congregation after her and who have the right to receive from our hands the authentic charism, possibly intact; in turn, the young sisters will have the task of clarifying and developing this charism in situations that will be different from ours.
