PRESENTATION

“Console, console my people, says your God” (Is 40:1)

During this fifth Continental Meeting we were filled with gratitude and joy at witnessing how much we have advanced in this field, how many realizations and hopes and difficulties too our provinces have experienced in the domain of J&P.

We appreciated the fact that most of our IMC communities prepared to participate actively in this assembly. Some of them even evaluated their experience as “presence of consolation” in those places where we are called to concretize our charism.

Day after day, moments of illumination urged us to reflect together and projected us into the future looking for paths of continuity. We were incited to find new and concrete answers to some of the situations of ‘desolation’ that we witness in this historical moment that becomes ever more complex and where giving up is easier and easier nowadays.

The meeting was enriched not only by the presence of those who collaborated in it through timely reflections and testimonies, but also by all those things that were shared by each one in a spontaneous way, by group work and by many a side conversation.

With a sigh of gratitude, we noticed how our two institutes in the continent have begun traveling paths that show that J&P is an integral part of our charism and not only an “alternative track” for pastoral activities, that it is part of our way of being, living and doing, alone and with the people who share the areas of life of each one of us and of the life of our community.

May this path that we have begun to travel be a way that we wish to continue following.
The spirituality of consolation is an inheritance from our Founder. It owes its origin to the Bible. It assumes the tracts of God Father and Mother who is at the service of those who occupy the last places, the ones that are excluded from society, those whose word means nothing…

The name we bear should stimulate us into being what we should be. It is also an invitation from our Father, which he addresses to each one of us who keep on walking with those who dream about another, achievable world.

The commitment to concretize “Options and Lines of Action”, which derive from the “analysis of reality”, demanded a tiring search in order to find ways to concretize the vital engagements of our provinces. We can say the same about the challenges to religious life “today”, our way of being IMC, MC and LMC (Consolata Missionary priests, brothers, sisters and lay missionaries)…

We entrust our hopes and desires to the Virgin Mary Consolata, she who unconditionally welcomed the Word-Consolation of all humanity, she who is source and inspiration of true consolation for the countries we live in. May Jesus Christ be our strength and our courage in the moments of difficulty, of solitude and of risk in the defense of the rights of each child of God.

Fr. Aquileo Fiorentini, IMC and Sr. Angeles M