America, April 16, 2021
Dear brothers, with Easter joy we greet you and send you this message of our IV Assembly as Claretian Missionaries of America.
From April 12 to 16 we have gathered, as has become customary in these days of the pandemic through a digital platform, to foster fraternal encounter, dialogue, and discernment, and with the aim of strengthening our common journey and contribute to the life of the Congregation and the Church. The representatives of the nine Major Organisms of the Conference participated, accompanied by the Vicar General, Fr. Gonzalo Fernández Sanz, CMF, who invited us to look at and value people, the true richness of every community; to make our own the synodal, narrative and appreciative approach in congregational communion; and to dare to dream in harmony with the Spirit.
In the final session of each day, we celebrated the presence and the company of members of the Claretian family, who participated in the reports on the various pastoral initiatives of the Conference: Bible Diary, ReBiClar (Claretian Biblical Network of America), SOMICLA (Claretian Solidarity and Mission Team of the Claretians of the Americas and the Caribbean), CMF – United Nations, Claret Way America, Education. We are grateful for this presence that enriches and makes credible our shared charism in mission.
As Claretian Missionaries, we join the Church in Latin America and the Caribbean that has begun a path of preparation to celebrate the first Ecclesial Assembly, which seeks to remember what was celebrated in the V Conference of Aparecida, to look contemplatively at the reality with its challenges and to renew our missionary commitment so that our peoples may have a full life.
This IV Assembly of MICLA has been preceded by the continental conservatory in view of the celebration of the XXVI General Chapter; it has been a space to exercise the synodality and to value the missionary path carried out in the different Claretian communities of America. The encounter has allowed us to broaden our missionary horizons and together dream of the Congregation of the future, which seeks to deepen its roots and respond with audacity to the challenges of the mission today.
The Assembly has been an opportunity to endorse our transversal continental options: The Word and Solidarity and Mission with the poorest, which, animated in the teams of REBICLAR and SOMICLA, will energize the whole missionary task of the continent. In the same way, we have set our eyes and reaffirmed the path of service: to the Consecrated Life of the continent in the ITVCA (Institute of Consecrated Life of America); to the New Generations and their articulation in the Claretian Family; to the formation of the missionaries and the necessary coordination for the Interprovincial Novitiate of America that will begin its journey in January 2022; to the educational work that we carry out in different areas. All this demands to articulate and coordinate our human and material possibilities, favoring synergies and opening our provincial communities to the challenges that virtual communication proposes to us.
In these days we have prayed for the reality of the people of Haiti that our missionary brothers have to accompany.
We are grateful for the 170th anniversary of the arrival of our Founder in Cuba and for his missionary example committed to the people and their integral wellbeing. We believe that this is the time to witness his missionary passion and commitment to the poorest, following in the footsteps of our brother Pedro Casaldáliga, CMF, Pastor and Poet of the Patria Grande (The Great Nation), who recently departed.
We are also grateful for the service and availability of the confreres who have animated and those who will animate, from the Board of Directors, the missionary task of coordinating the interprovincial work of the Claretians in America.
MICLA – Board of Directors
