On a Visit to the Province of Austria-Bosnia-Germany-Slovenia, Hungary a Tour of Odzak

Nº 15

Dear Sisters,

On a visit to the province of Austria-Bosnia-Germany-Slovenia, Hungary a tour of Odzak and its surroundings enabled us to discover a vast region devastated by fratricidal violence and hatred. Houses burnt, ruined and abandoned, forests destroyed – a real ecological disaster – mixed in with newer dwelling places, restored rapidly, fields which had just been cultivated and spring flowers. Everything spoke to us of the relatively recent sufferings of the populations, but also of their fragile hopes of a future which perhaps was still possible. On top of these pictures, many others fan out, those which we see each day on our television screens or which the internet furnishes abundantly: wars, assassination attempts, threats, kidnappings, discriminations, earth quakes, floods… Pictures which, for the most part, are those of our provinces, of countries where, in solidarity with those weighed down by bitterness and despair, we live the beatitude of the afflicted (cf. Mt 5:5).

The merciless reality of events and situations today, what we see, what we hear here and there, what we share in daily life, are a source of discouragement and disappointment, loss of trust, even of confusion. And that causes suffering. The tragedy of so many human persons touches us deeply, but we feel destitute, powerless. Like the disciples of Emmaus on the day following the Resurrection, we do not understand the events that we are living. Nevertheless, all of us hope and dream of a better world, that which God wishes for us (cf. Lk 24: 13-35). We believe it! Today, God still sees the misery of his people, hears their cry and knows their anguish (cf. Ex 3: 7).

To view the world and its realities from a feminine perspective, as we wrote in our chapter document,[1] is to discern the acting presence of God who consoles his people (Is 49: 13) as a mother consoles her child (Is 66: 13). Easter, the great mystery of God’s love for us in his Son, of his presence with us always through his Son (cf. Mt 28:20); Easter shows us the road to follow. To love the world as God so loved it (Jn 3: 16), is to open our heart to human suffering, as Gospel women, disciples of Christ[2], so that still today, in us and through us God may become compassion, defence of life, goodness and tenderness[3]; it is to contemplate the Face of Christ disfigured by us and transfigured by God, in order to discover his Work in the groanings of our world and in the seeds of life buried in it.

Disciples, we are never this once and for all. We ceaselessly become disciples by the power of the Spirit who teaches us all things and brings to our minds all that the Master has told us (cf. Jn 14: 26), in order that we may think and feel like Him. In living his choices and his mission, through what we are and what we do, we join so many persons who believe it is possible to build a world of peace, love and justice.

Disciples, we are not disciples alone. In surrendering ourselves freely to the Father, following Christ, our lives given create a new community, the community of disciples, where it is possible to live beyond every race, language and nation. We wrote: dare to live as sisters to be a prophetic sign in a divided world[4], in a world where individualism and violence are ceaselessly gaining ground. To be witnesses together of the reconciliation of peoples, as our Constitutions invite us,[5] is to live pardon within us, among us and around us, wherever woundedness due to racism, the colonial past, war and other serious reasons, are still real obstacles to our universal communion.[6] It is the hope of the Kingdom in a world that seems to have lost its dreams for the future; it is a project of life, an itinerary, a paschal experience which expresses through an agreeable word and a fraternal gesture[7] the Peace of the Risen Christ.

At the Last General Chapter, in 2002, we often spoke of the urgency and need for a restructuring of our provinces. In our sharings and exchanges, we then felt the need to live “as a body, a dynamic of planning and restructuring, to seek and to dare new forms of presence and of mission, to share our resources more and to assume, if necessary, the risk of moving our personal and geographical frontiers.”[8] The General Chapter, however, did not judge it necessary to vote on restructuring as one of the priorities of the Institute for the coming years. Nevertheless, at the General Council, we retained it and we started on it with the help of Sister Micheline Tremblay, a Canadian sister of the Holy Cross, who accompanies several religious congregations working on the same task.

In several provinces, the future is becoming uncertain, fragile, sometimes even a worry. It is true that it does not depend completely on us, because it is a gift to be received. Nevertheless, we are invited to be prepared to welcome it. So how can we be capable of receiving a future which is more modest, different, but truer and more normal with regard to what we are, while continuing to be present to the world, to live there Mission, our raison d’être? The essential choices are imperative with their risks and their joys. We are asked to live in confidence the changes which we are called on to make, because God continues to form projects for us. He gives us a future and a hope. (cf. Jer 29: 11).

The last numbers of the Link informed you of the decisions we took in the General Council, concerning Switzerland on the one hand, and Guadeloupe-Guyana on the other, two entities of the Institute directly confronted with this reality. At the request of the sisters, in the General Council we reviewed their situation, and after several months of reflection, exchanges and discernment together, these two provinces became regions, from 31st October 2003.

Given the decrease in their number and the increase in their average age, the sisters in Switzerland felt more and more the difficulty of maintaining all their structures. In the General Council, after consultation with the sisters of the region, we named a regional team – Sister Madeleine Kayser, Sister Suzanna Kim and Sister Odette Podvin – who have charge of the government of the region for two years. Within the team, each one, in close collaboration with the other two, assumes very specific responsibilities, and together they animate and accompany the region, starting from its projects and its engagements. With the help of Sister Françoise Pécresse, general secretary, in the region they also drew up the structures of animation and government which respond better to this present moment of their history and their needs, structures which we have also approved.

Accompanied by Sister Françoise Massy and Sister Sue Phillips, general councillors, the sisters of Guyana and Guadeloupe, with a lot of courage and faith, made a journey that led us to different options from those concerning Switzerland. Their particular situation at the heart of the continent and their present reality give us a glimpse of a very precarious future, with possibilities and means diminishing more and more. After having prayed a lot, reflected and dialogued with them, in the General Council we took the decision to withdraw definitively from Guyana-Guadeloupe between January and June 2005. We named Sister Paulette François and Sister Winnie Nacua as a regional team to accompany the process until the definitive withdrawal. This serious decision affects us all who form but one Institute and one same Body and are together responsible for its choices, orientations and mission. Doubtlessly it will also affect the local Churches and the populations who, during the long years of our presence and our mission in Guyana and Guadeloupe, and also in Surinam, witnessed our searching, our journeys and deep transformations, offering us their welcome and support so that our charism may continue to bear fruit in these places where it was sown. Like for the disciples of Emmaus, the events are beyond us. Faced with this option, the peace and confidence of our sisters in Guyana and Guadeloupe show us that the Lord Himself joined them and journeyed with them (Lk 24: 15) at the heart of their suffering and at this particular moment of their history, a history rich in a past and a present generous in its response to the calls of the Churches and societies. Can we also come close to them by our prayer of gratitude which renders to God the mission of Guyana-Guadeloupe which He confided to us?

In the General Council we felt the need to take another step in this process of restructuring. So from 19-21 February, we had a first experience, inviting the provincials of Austria-Bosnia-Germany-Hungary-Slovenia, Belgium-Faeroe Islands-Holland, France and Italy to meet with us and the representative of the region of Switzerland, to place landmarks for collaboration, with a view to the future. Another meeting is foreseen for the month of October. This will bring together again the provincials of Austria-Bosnia-Germany-Hungary-Slovenia, Poland and Ukraine, and the delegate of Russia, with the General Council, to study the presence of the Institute in Central and Eastern Europe. Other meetings with the provincials of other continents will certainly follow according to the needs. The realities which we are living at present create new needs which urge us to intensify the collaboration among us. Nevertheless, these partial meetings of provincials[9] in no way replace the continental meetings which remain the place where questions and situations touching the life and mission of a continent are reflected on.

Aged provinces and younger provinces are confronted more and more with situations which have no answers. At the general level, we are also confronted with the same realities. If on the one hand age, the decrease in our numbers, the lack of sisters to ensure responsibilities and respond to needs, the closing of communities, the difficulties in sending outside the province of origin etc. preoccupy us, the future of the Institute of tomorrow challenges us. How can the new generations be prepared to forge the Institute of tomorrow? How can we together, sisters of different cultures, generations and provinces, increasingly actualise our charism and bring our contribution to the needs of our time, in a way that is certainly new?

These questionings inhabit us and we desire to listen to them together with all the provincials, the delegates of Russia and of the Generalate House, the representative of Switzerland and the novice directresses[10], key persons in the life and future of their provinces/regions and of the Institute. The changes and crises we are living with many in the Church and the world, give us chances for renewal, for new beginnings. Our present difficulties and limitations, our poverty and vulnerability are a favourable time, a Kairos, which urges us to the essential in order to receive in faith, for today and for tomorrow, the gift of our charism that God continues to give, through us, to the world. The responsibility of each and every one of us is great.

To set out in the following of Christ, as women passionately in love with Him[11], with Mary Magdalen (cf. Jn 20: 11), is to let anxiety give place to a deep confidence in God who makes us his disciples in the following of Jesus, to continue his mission, His great project of life. It is also to welcome the Spirit of truth (cf. Jn 16: 13) who opens us fully to conversion, transformation, newness, letting God do his Work in us and through us. Are our communities, our commitments, our formation, our choices, places where, together and personally, our identity as disciples is fashioned, confirmed and affirmed?

This year, as we celebrate the centenary of the Paschal Mystery of Mary of the Passion, she tells us how much she was present to the anguishes of her time… A woman of her time, it is in this time and through these events of her life that she was worked on by grace, letting herself be transformed by the gift of the Peace that the Risen Christ gives us. She wrote: I prayed on these words, ‘Lamb of God who take away the sins of the world, grant us peace’; for the past few months they are especially dear to me. At the same time I prayed this Lamb to give me peace and to give it to the world… I offered myself, also with Him, to obtain peace for the world.[12] With her, can each of us say: Me, I am of the Gospel?[13]

With my deep and sisterly affection,

Christiane Mégarbané fmm

Superior General

1

[1] Cf. Chapter Document 2002, In the world of today 2

[2] cf. Chapter Document 2002

[3] cf. Chapter Document 2002,

[4] cf. Chapter Document 2002, In the world of today 4

[5] cf. Const. 7

[6] cf. Chapter Document 2002, Sent on universal mission, Lines of Action 1

[7] cf. Eucharistic prayer for gatherings

[8] cf. sharing of a work group at the general chapter of 2002

[9] Complementary Code 55

[10] Meeting of provincials and novice directresses, 14-26 June 2004

[11] cf. Chapter Document 2002, Disciples

[12] Spiritual Notes 58, April 1883

[13] cf. to Fr. Raphael, 1st July 1890