To reread is to look at a document again, it is to return to its origin entering to the root of its intuitions, to listen and to see with depth its scope and utopias, it is to inhabit its content appropriating it, respecting the essential, to establish a dialogue between yesterday’s experience and today’s experience.
To turn our gaze to the Congregational Life Project «to care for and cultivate life» implies allowing ourselves to be led by the Spirit, to travel in his company along the itinerary marked by his Word and welcomed by the Capuchin Tertiary Sisters of the Holy Family, In the XXIII General Chapter of the year 2022, which gave rise to the final Document, «Together we go forward, we generate and care for life» and enter barefoot into the eight calls of God, with courage and commitment, to break into the novelty of the new stage of consolidation Time of «caring for and cultivating life».
The Congregational Life Project embraces in itself a charismatic experience lived by «Francis of Assisi, the mystic and pilgrim who lived with simplicity in a wonderful harmony with God, with others, with nature and with himself (cf. Pope Francis, Laudato si no 10,»); the witnessing life of the poverello invites us to create home communities where everyone, sisters, Lay Amigonians and those who share the mission, have a place and the ability to care for and cultivate life in all its dimensions, it is there, in the unfathomable depths of fraternity where the various gestures that enrich human and fraternal relationships sprout, where one learns to stir the earth so that the germ that opens to existence, has deep roots and grows with the endearing strength to generate life, a life ready to guard, safeguard and protect the universe and in it all beings called to protect.
Throughout history, the Holy Spirit has invited the Church to be a tireless seeker of new paths and to live God’s Project in the mission entrusted to her, the proclamation of the Kingdom; Many men and women, consecrated and lay, aware of their responsibility and belonging to the «flock of God» (I Peter 5, 2), have joined this inspiration to be immediate collaborators in the processes of evangelization of peoples, the Amigonian Laity and those who share the mission with the Capuchin Tertiary Sisters, They have committed themselves to live the Christian life based on the charism bequeathed by Father Luis Amigó y Ferrer and today, they are called to join the Congregational Life Project «to care for and cultivate life» by sharing their own richness, which will later become a transforming force.
Caring for and nurturing life requires unified, coherent and mature people, unafraid of adversity and their vulnerability, resilient men and women with the inner disposition to adapt without complaint to the challenges of the journey, sisters and lay people who care for their own lives and those of others with the tenderness and compassion of the Good Samaritan, determined to enter barefoot into the depths of their being to encounter their own truth, to give thanks for the gifts received and to question those gestures that do not allow them to draw from the broken vessel the most genuine that the Father has placed in the heart of the human being.
The Congregational Project, «to care for and cultivate life», is not only a right of the Capuchin Tertiary Sisters of the Holy Family, but a duty, whose main objective is to involve the Lay Amigonians and those who share the mission in the construction of the common home, in whose interior the beauty of the beings that God has created and human life beats with its joys and hopes, its searches, fragilities and failures, cultural and economic inequalities, wisdom, charismatic and formative aspirations? All this is a revelation of the Spirit and a gift for those who, feeling in their being its creative power, follow in the footsteps of Luis Amigó and Ferrer and in synodality, walking together, make of their daily life a permanent care and cultivation of human existence, both at the personal and community level, as well as at the social level.
This is a permanent task, a praiseworthy mission, which can only be achieved when, in the quiet silence of daily life, one enters the sacred sanctuary of one’s interiority and encounters the surprising presence of the living God who reveals himself and speaks to the heart.
He who takes care of his interiority, connects with his roots and is capable of dialoguing the most intimate secrets with the One who has made of him a unique and singular creation, placed in the heart of the common home to safeguard human life, is clothed with love, to welcome with an equal, kind, affectionate treatment and a compassionate-merciful attitude typical of Francis of Assisi and Luis Amigó, women and men immersed in the immense universe, talented, innovative, ignorant and foolish people; old people and children forgotten and discarded to ensure their own interests; sick, poor, marginalized and excluded, little visible to the eyes of the world; young people tired and without sense of life. The Sisters, the Lay Amigonians and those who share the mission, are the ones summoned to surround with the tender embrace of love that brings closer, breaks the cold schemes and widens the bonds of fraternity.
All this supposes the ecological conversion that implies the loving awareness of not being disconnected from other creatures, of forming with the other beings of the universe a precious universal communion. For the believer, the world is not contemplated from the outside but from within, recognizing the bonds with which the Father has united us to all beings (Pope Francis, Laudato si no. 220).
The Capuchin Tertiary Sisters, seekers on the way, the Lay Amigonians and those who share the mission, committed to the Church and the Congregation, are the first invited to let themselves be infected and affected by this congregational commitment, being witnesses of the authentic and coherent living of the calls that God makes to walk together, to advance, to generate, to care for and to cultivate life.
Sr. Ana Tulia López Bedoya, tc
Province of Our Lady of Divine Providence