“With Jesus” walk 2016-17

This is: The 2016-2017 Way Booklet

This is The 2016-2017 Calendar of Stages

The next three years of our journey will see us reflecting on the prophetic word Tarcisio received in April 1978: “With Jesus, on Jesus, build.” It was considered by the Church to be authentically inspired by God, so much so that it was included in the Foreword to the Community Statute.

In this first year we will pause to reflect and compare on the first part of the phrase, “With Jesus,” in 2017-2018 on the second, “About Jesus,” and in 2018-2019 on the final imperative, “Build.”

One word that immediately struck us and made us think, at the beginning of the discernment journey we took, was this: “There came a man sent by God: his name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him “.

Along with others that clarified its spiritual meaning for us, we felt that through it the Lord was communicating to us his increasingly urgent need to make us men and women “of God,” who belong to him fully, without reservation, so that he can send us, credibly, to bear witness to the light. It is as if he conveyed to us his urgency to see our vocation flourish, because he strongly needs to use us for the benefit of a world sinking more and more into the darkness of distance from the shining light of God.

If the horizon toward which we moved seemed clear – that is, to help the Community give itself for evangelization – on the other hand, we also received a precise exhortation to invite the whole Community to “get serious,” to take their life choices in hand again and – after examining them candidly – decide again to live their vocation, without any more timidity, restraint or expectation, but rather with their whole heart.

Again, not least among the indications we received, we heard repeated to us from the Lord a very insistent invitation to “be with him,” to go “closer to him,” so that we can receive from him all the necessary grace, all the indispensable love, to accomplish what he asks of us. For example, we received this prophetic exhortation, “It is necessary for the Community to return to bending its knees before God, to adoration, to living in his presence”; then this other one: by means of an image, “Jesus is sitting and we are sitting close to him, but he invites us, ‘Come closer to me.'”

First of all, we will take care to “return to the source.” In this first year, in fact, helped by six Gospel passages, we want to return to be “with Jesus.” A deliberately simple reading of the texts, immediate, without great exegetical leaps, so that then, what the Lord does or proposes in those passages becomes immediately the object of decision on our part, to incarnate it.

We feel strongly how much God desires us to move from good intentions to deeds. We will not lack His help to do so if we do not lack our decision to obey Him.

Happy journey to all, dear brothers and sisters!

General managers