Rome, Italy. It was not by chance that it was the day of St. Teresa, I am sure. The lady traveler joined the small group of two (we were not one and a half, as in the case of the reform of the Carmel) that began the journey of the new Claretian mission in the Russian Federation. José María Vegas and Mariano José Sedano were accompanied by our provincial of Castilla, Vicente Sanz.
Everything was still to be done. The only thing we had clear was that, first of all, we had to convert ourselves to Russia, to be born again in a new culture. Nothing less.
For this, the pioneering presence of our Claretian brothers in Poland was going to be fundamental. The two years spent with them in the heart of Siberia, in Krasnoyarsk, opened for us the doors of language, culture and understanding of the ecclesial presence in this land, which we already felt as our own.
Since 1998 we have been living in St. Petersburg, involved from the first day in the formation of future pastors, religious and pastoral agents of this church that is on pilgrimage in these lands without borders. To the academic and catechetical teaching and the formative tasks of our candidates, have been added, from very early on, such Claretian accents as the care of consecrated life, family ministry, work with Caritas and the dialogue and practice of ecumenism. Since 2001 the missionary prow of the community has set its course north. Since then, we have been the pastors of the parish of St. Michael the Archangel in Murmansk, one of the northernmost parishes of the Catholic Church.
Logically, others have been joining us and sharing this great project. The first of them was Juan Sarmiento (today in his province of origin in San José del Sur) who began the pastoral work in Murmansk and gave it a Claretian imprint that has not been lost due to the presence of Alejandro Carbajo, a canonist reconverted to the active and frontier pastoral, which José María and I share from St. Petersburg with periodic visits. Rafael Lozano, Juan Lozano, Josef Biberacher, Arkadiusz Bialek, Thomas Ksiazkiewicz have also been part of this project for some time. And our presence has undoubtedly contributed to the fact that today a son of this land, Denis Malov, is concluding his Claretian formation in Paris.
Twenty-five years have already passed. Like Teresa of Jesus, we can only sing of God’s mercies with us, of his endearing affection, of his invisible but tangible presence in the ways of mission and fraternal relationships. Mary’s heart has been forming in us a heart sensitive to the pains and wounds of this people, especially punished by history. Certainly, 25 years is nothing, when we feel that the mission is so immense and incomprehensible, when the needs and urgencies continue to cry out and we feel so little.
We invite you to give thanks with us, dear Brothers of all latitudes, and to ask the Lord for vocations from Russia for our family and for vocations from the whole Congregation for Russia. The adventure – I assure you – is exciting. We are realizing the dream of Claret who thought of us “from one pole to the other”. The Mission is eternal and knows no boundaries.
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