Dominicas de la Presentación - Capítulo General 2019

La Turena, Bucaramanga (Colombia), 07/23/2019, Sr. María Leonor Charria Angulo.- To generate a space for reflection and critical analysis on the defies and challenges that arise from some of TODAY's borders: The cry of the poor and excluded, the cry of the earth and the reality of women ... among other cries.

We had with us in the panel:

• Sr. Nícida Amparo Díaz Leal, Venezuelan, Dominican Sister of the Presentation. She talked about: "Listen to the clamor of the impoverished ... affective and effective commitment".
• Eva Boyle Bianchi, Peruvian, who speak about "The woman. Current situation. His presence and contribution in society and the Church”
• Alirio Cáceres Aguirre, Colombian. He told us about "Integral ecology and commitment to the environment".

TO ARRIVE, TO HAVE, TO CROSS BORDERS

Pope Francis places special emphasis on the way out: "a Church on the way out ... a Consecrated Life on the way out ... an exit from ourselves (out of self-referentiality) that makes interpersonal encounter possible. Going out, before physical movement, is inner movement. It is letting ourselves be touched and moved by the Spirit and feeling inflamed by the charity of Christ that compels us (2 Cor 5:14) and puts us in relationship with the brothers. The encounter with Christ relaunches the encounter with others and takes us to the poorest and most needy.

We can ask ourselves: With what spirit, with what spirit, we move towards and at the borders? What style of life and what attitudes should be ours as consecrated, as Dominicans of the Presentation? Our presence cannot be neutral, irrelevant, passive, observers of an event ... Going, crossing and inhabiting the borders requires vigilance, lucidity, dialogue, discernment, to detect the newness of the Spirit and discover the will of God. Lucidity is necessary to capture the whole framework that the new borders entail. Discernment helps to take the limits and discover the right steps.

This call to transcend borders requires a creative, prophetic and shared leadership to identify the borders that we must and can reach and transcend. A General Chapter and the various instances of government should favor the search, discernment and acceptance of what God may be asking us here and now. This is the favorable time, pointed out our past General Chapter, for the search, the opening, the exit to the peripheries, the encounter with the others; today the call is to transcend, to cross borders. All with one purpose: The unpostponable renewal of our lives of consecrated women, Dominican Sisters of Charity of the Presentation.