“What the Spirit says to the Churches.”

Here is the text of the Presentation of the Way:

Dear brothers and sisters!

With this year’s journey, we are listening to the Holy Spirit to enter into a process of change and purification.

We will make this journey through the letters the Spirit dictates to St. John for the Churches of Ephesus, Pergamum, Sardis and Laodicea collected in the book of Revelation. These four churches will mirror us with their strengths and weaknesses, with their achievements and frailties, with the battles they will have to face in order not to lose their faith. They will teach us the struggle of going against the tide and the effort of perseverance for the custody of holy things. They will tell us how to struggle and how not to lose the power of Love, because only those who know how to resist also know how to hope, build and preserve a full life, a beautiful life, a happy life.

“Blessed are those who read and blessed are those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep the things that are written in it: for the time is at hand“(Revelation 1:3).

Therefore, rather than stages to be read, this journey, will be an experience to be lived. If we know how to listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying, we will also be able to take steps of re-surrection, re-construction and re-conciliation, that is, re-birth, both personal and communal.

To help this renewal process, we wanted to read these ancient churches in light of our Four Covenant Promises. Promises that not only allies but also all friends of the Community can take as a reference for a richer and more fruitful Christian life.

The Church of Ephesus is a persevering community that struggles for the integrity of doctrine but, over time, has lost fraternal tenderness. It will make us reflect on how to practice and guard our promise of love building.

Instead, the Church in Pergamum is a secularizing reality that experiences divisions and contentions within itself. These quarrels are a consequence of the watering down of the Gospel and will lead us to reason about the value and necessity of permanent forgiveness as an indispensable tool for growing unity in truth.

The Church of Sardis is a community engaged in many beautiful works, but all self-reflexive and self-referential, soulless. This complacent and outward-looking Church will push us to go to the substance of our promise of service.

Finally, the Church of Laodicea, which is lukewarm, static and personality-less, opens us up to the truth about ourselves: it tells me who I am as a Christian and what is in my heart, so that I can set out on the path of poverty in full consciousness.

Today as then, the Church, the bride of Christ, sets out to follow the Amen, the Bridegroom who speaks to her and invites her to clothe herself with all grace.

In the Church and for the Church we in the Magnificat also want to respond promptly to the cry of the Spirit who repeats to us, Come!

Therefore, we hope to be a community faithful to the Bridegroom and His Church, a living and fruitful community, an ever-open building site-the building site of Love!

“The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And whoever hears, repeat, “Come!”
He who thirsts, let him come; he who wants, let him take the water of life free of charge“.
(Revelation 22:17)

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