Communion within the Whole Congregation

Posted on 18 December 2019
by admin

Day 4 – Christmas Novena

Introduction

Today, we hear God’s call to grow in Communion within the whole Congregation – to see and feel the presence of God become human in our members in all the continents.

We treasure our name, Missionary Sisters, Servants of the Holy Spirit, entrusted with the mission of widening the circle of our relationships. Our congregation today is comprised of 45 provinces/Regions and Generalate community, blessed with nearly 3000 members of 50 nationalities with a missionary presence in 50 countries. It is a privilege indeed, to be part of a great family of missionary disciples.

God breaks out in diversity…. challenges our culture toward a revolution of consciousness, towards a “participatory consciousness,” … “When I love with participatory consciousness, I see that what the other is, is some of my life-energy living there, and what I am is some of the other’s life-energy living in me. I can no longer divide the world into “we’s” and “they’s.” I have an awareness of one large life circulating through all. “The greatest story is that all of life is one.” (Beatrice Bruteau).

May this time of praying together bring about a participatory consciousness within us.

Opening prayer

God, we worship your many-faceted FACE.

You are everywhere, so that our human eyes can see you.

In Jesus, your Word made flesh, you have become accessible and visible,

in the nearest and in the farthest.

That is the way of your Incarnation.

We thank you for our Congregation’s many faces;

We thank you for every member who gives a face to you,

We thank you for the diverse expressions of your presence.

May we hear your call to grow in ‘participatory consciousness.

This we pray in the name of your own Son and our brother Jesus. Amen

Quote from Blessed Josepha: “God has gathered us together that we may be of one heart and mind.”

Story

Ubuntu –This is a word in South Africa – I am because we are!

“One day, a western anthropologist went to Africa to study the social behavior of an indigenous tribe. He proposed a game to the children and they willingly agreed to be part of it. He put a basket filled with fruits underneath a tree and told the children that whoever would reach the basket first would win the whole basket and could eat the fruits all by him or herself.

He lined them all up and raised his hand to give the start signal. Ready. Set. Go!

The children took each other’s hands and started running together. They all reached the basket at the same time. Then they sat down in a big circle and enjoyed the fruits together, laughing and smiling all the time.

The anthropologist could not believe what he saw and he asked them why they had waited for each other as one could have taken the whole basket all for him or herself.

The children shook their heads and replied, “Ubuntu, how can one of us be happy if all the others are sad?”

Ubuntu signifies that we are all bound together in ways that can be invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us,”

Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 12: 12-14, 27

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many…. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

We are a body today, not something that represents Christ, but something that IS Him. The Word became flesh and continues to dwell among us. If we are the body of Christ, then God’s presence in the world depends very much upon us. We have to become as Teresa of Avila so simply put it, God’s physical hands, feet, mouthpiece and heart in the world.

Jesus loves to approach his brothers and sisters through us, through our open hands that caress and console them, through our words pronounced to anoint the world with the Gospel and not ourselves. (Pope Francis)

Pause for reflection

Intercessions: God, you are the common ground on which we live, move and have our being. May we as a whole Congregation be in the process of becoming the body of Christ your Son. May we be enabled to see things from a wider perspective, move from our individual concerns to the Congregational ones.

Note: A candle is lit for each continent after the short pause and placed on the respective color on the Center piece.

We are invited to spend a moment of gratitude for and communion with our Sisters in Africa – 178 sisters in 11 countries

Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, may we be promoters of Africa’s hopes and aspirations. May the spirit of ‘Ubuntu’ (I am because we are) inspire our life in communities and widen the communion among peoples by the witness of their own lives. Recognizing our own vulnerabilities, may we be wounded healers in our societies affected by violence, ethnic conflicts, exclusion and marginalization.