INTUITIONS

I was thinking to write about my experience lived during my first formation (juniorate, postulancy, novitiate and new generations) that the Ecuadorian religious conference offers (CER in Spanish) to the consecrated life, but my intuition took me somewhere else.

 

“Right there, that small woman, that is me. In the silence intimacy, where stillness embraces me, I recreated myself. The absence of noise was my nest. I spin across myself, I was born again and again and dying so many times. I do not know if I come or go, but I continue, I walk the way, so private and sacred as the soul, because I am on the inside and I try on the outside.” Natalia L.

This interiority drove me to think about the great challenge that we have as consecrated life. It is winter and though the sun may rise sometimes, the reality reminds us that it is time to embrace our fragility, our exhaustion, our unfaithfulness, our mistakes, our worries, our silent pain, our deception, our fear…”Now we cannot choose, only the love that brought us here is the only one that can help us to stay in this beautiful planet…”

We forgot to take care of our roots, our source. We have forgotten to think about the love of God, present in Jesus during his messianic time. This love that revolutionizes those who believe in him.

A novice told me “I am thirsty for God, I would love to experiment an ecstasy, to feel myself loved by him and to be good news to others…I yearn for finding myself with Jesus from the scriptures and feel in love with life and its project!”

We get distracted by worrying about quantity and time and this prevented us from recognizing the presence of God’s spirit that invites us to face this reality from a devout-shared rereading and from the mystery of the smallest, the simplest and the most fragile.

I firmly believe that these difficult times are inviting us to rediscover the validity of our own foundation charisma, which is hidden in imperceptible concrete moments, otherwise let’s remember: How many pages from the Gospel have been given to each congregation? How many young persons have decided to give their lives until this day in a congregation? It is in this moment in which it is being refunded the congregational charisma. We are in a key time, but there is also chance to put it in risk and finally waste it, preventing the new spirituality to run free, and to get blind by discovering the signals of the Spirit.

This crucial moment of consecrated life is taking place in a moment of history in which we are being pushed to enforce our spirituality, as Maria Jose Torres says: “…these are opportunities to follow our Lord with the greatest nakedness and freedom”

From this attempt to be and serve with freedom and love given by Him, I thank forever to my congregation Dominican Missionary Sisters of the Rosary and the sisters who accompany me in this service to the Ecuadorian religious conference as an option to the most fragile and as a challenge for taking care and accompany formative processes.

Magaly Chicaiza

Quito-Ecuador.

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