Opening Message – General Chapter 2024
Very dear Sister,
Deeply touched by the guiding spirit of our founders, St Louis Marie de Montfort and Blessed Marie Louise of Jesus, I welcome each one of you to the General Chapter of 2024. We have already received the message from the Word of God, an invitation to “cross over to the other side”. From the very beginning of the Congregation, at each important turning point, our founders, our leaders, welcomed and lived this invitation to leave the known for the unknown. Today we hear this invitation as a Congregational body
Six years ago, we heard the call of Wisdom to “Love without borders” and with much enthusiasm and joy we set out wholeheartedly to live it fully. The journey we lived was marked by joys, gratitude, openness, and creative ways of reaching out in mission in union with one another. We have also experienced suffering, uncertainty, fear and the need to let go. We recognized too that as a Congregational body and as individuals we carry certain wounds, brokenness and hurt feelings, and desire to live a time of dialogue and reconciliation. Wisdom walked with us as we journeyed together with the guiding spirit of Montfort and Marie-Louise.
A call to leave the crowd and cross over to the other side.
The disciples, after having been with the crowd, were happy to get into the boat with Jesus. In a way, the sea was dear to them and being in the boat was something familiar. However, while Jesus could relax and rest, the disciples were shaken by the wind and the troubled sea.
Maybe we too, like the disciples, have hearts that are troubled? The known realities of our Congregation, Church and the World are changing so fast that the familiar is slowly disappearing and the known has becoming less known to us. Our faith too shakes with the unknown of the other side…
“Master, do you not care? We are lost!”
It is at this moment that the disciples discovered another face of Jesus and realized that they have more to experience and discover even before they cross over to the other side. Jesus helps them to touch and calm their inner world so filled with fear and allows them to deepen their faith in Him.
“Filled with awe they said to one another, who can this be?”
Jesus, who invited them to leave the crowd and pass on to the other side with Him is not the same Jesus whom they knew when they started their journey together with Him.
Today we, the forty Capitulants and three invitees, heard the call of Wisdom to leave behind our Entities and get into the boat to cross over to the other side. Let us step into the boat with Jesus and with the spiritual legacy of Montfort and Marie-Louise. We are not alone, there are other boats in the sea with us, our Sisters back home who are in union with us, the members of the Montfortian family and our Friends of Wisdom.
May each one of us open our heart and mind to be transformed by the presence of Christ Wisdom to discern and listen attentively where Wisdom is leading us at this important moment in the life of the Congregation, never forgetting the poor of our time. Yes, with Wisdom, we are called to renew our Congregation and strengthen our foundation, to revitalize the Charism received from our founders.
Let us have a beautiful experience of journeying together.
Sr. Rani Kurian, DW
