Dominican Republic. On July 3 the encounter that had started on June 29 was ended for the Claretians with less than 10 years in the priesthood. They gathered with the Major Superior, Fr. Héctor Cuadrado, in the “Fusimaña” house, in Puerto Plata.
Our objective was to revise our life together and, in the light of the missionary spirit of Claret, to look for the viable and hopeful ways that will help us live with greater depth and authenticity the Claretian life in Antilles.
From a dynamic and fraternal spirit each one of us shared, among other things, the experiences and images of God, the living out of a fraternal life, the crises that may assault the priest at this stage of life and have an incidence in our faith and hope. We should try not to do what pleases us, but to enjoy happily what we should do. In every trial we learn to purify our life. We must thank God and our Blessed Mother for this rich fraternal sharing.
We express our most sincere gratitude to the coordinator of the Encounter, Fr. Juan Carlos Martos, General Secretary of Vocations. He came from Rome and awakened in all of us the longing to give more dignity to our missionary identity and to put more liveliness into the missionary life of each one.
May these missionary experiences be expressions of respect and forgiveness, of listening and tolerance, of non-complicity and humility, which is not the same as self-abasement. We have found that all this is good to form communities that better express an extreme selfless love-giving.
