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Does this experience of community life resonate with you? Do you desire a life fueled by the Eucharist and dedicated to rebuilding broken relationships and damaged lives? Perhaps God is calling you to be a Handmaid. What is your mission? New! Community Pictures here! New! Hand in Hand and Shoulder to Shoulder The scent of pine-trees came through the open library windows. There are many pine trees in Rome. I had just made my first vows and begun my life as a student Handmaid – a Junior – in Rome. There we were getting ready to go out into the world, beyond "the walls," to go on pilgrimage taking the Good News with us. In Rome, at that time, I could almost see the heart-beat of the Congregation. A heart that rejoiced when missionaries came in from different parts of the world, that suffered when there was bad news, that sang and laughed on family feast days, that dreamed with the young people being prepared to reach out into new fields of apostolate. And we had St. Rafaela Maria among us, reminding us from her tomb that we have to make ourselves small in this world for the kingdom to grow, and that "the grain of wheat has to die in order to give life." This I learned joyfully, but then came the reality of life, and the "hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder" was not so easy, nor the bit about becoming small in order that he might grow. I knew that we were "CALLED, BROUGHT TOGETHER," that it was not I who had chosen my companions on the journey. The Lord had called us, each one by name, we were sisters in a great family; but sisters with passions and weaknesses, and where the bit about "the first will be the servant of all" was not always very clear. Listening. helping, bearing others’ burdens and proclaiming the Word of God was not always that easy.
Now it is no longer the pine-trees of Rome, but letters from Africa and other places where those Juniors of other times now live, that make me understand how the "hand in hand" of religious life keeps stretching out to carry the love of the Gospel to the ends of the earth, and I am astonished by the power of community life to carry forward the MISSION. Province of Castilla And … an Experience When one decides to follow the Lord closely, and takes his words about giving one’s life for the Kingdom of God seriously, our Lord welcomes and accepts our desire and in return gives us, among many other gifts, a strange present: A COMMUNITY, a group made up by others who also wish to follow him WITH OTHERS. For me this is the religious community, the communities of Handmaids. At present other sisters called like me to live the EUCHARIST to the fullest. The community is the place for inner rest after a hard day’s work: a place for prayer, for looking for new paths, for meeting others, for discovering great human values and also great limitations; a place where, when friendship is given, it is deep and long lasting; a place of personal questioning; a place for discovering and working with the great human values of the gospel, for being able to enjoy the pleasure of little things…. The community, like all human groups, is ambiguous and sometimes contradictory, but it is always able to generate a profound sense of hope and anticipation. Finally, what the community WILL NEVER CEASE TO BE is a place of meeting with the Lord for each one of us. We live, pray, follow the Lord, in order to serve the world better, and more important still: because our community life IS SERVICE AND MISSION, without our having to "do" anything more for it to be so. "Handmaids Today", no. 174 YOU MAY ASK YOURSELF : She loves
and serves.
To serve, to work with him, to take an active part, to belong to that mission, is the work of love to which the name we bear commits us. The mission and the name of servant of Yahweh which Mary took in answer to her call. She "as Handmaid of the Lord, consecrated herself completely to the person and work of her Son" (L.G.56). We also, in a spirit of humility,--"as the eyes of servants on the hands of their masters…"—We try to be attentive to the least gesture which shows us the Lord’s will. Many hours of silent Eucharistic adoration predispose us to this attitude, and we enter into his way of doing things—the way of his Heart. We enter his movement of attraction and impulsion—systole and diastole—which enables us to share his life and to throw ourselves into sharing in his activity in helping people everywhere. But…I return to the question—and what a question! Can any one of us Handmaids say that we do all this? I certainly cannot… This is what I ought to do, what I want to do, what I try to do each day in a spirit of humble effort and renewed love. This is the star which I do not reach, but which gives light to my path. MAY I NOT LOSE SIGHT OF IT! AMEN. "Handmaids Today", no. 174 |
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