The Congregational Gathering, June 2018

After the May 3 meeting of the Implementing our 2014 Chapter Mandate Steering Committee, the program, process, and agenda for the Congregational Gathering in late June are in its final stages. The Gathering will open on Monday, June 25 at St Joseph’s at Baulkham Hills and conclude on Friday, June 28.

These are the five key themes to help guide the process: Refounding our Congregation, Margins/Crossing Thresholds, Ecological Conversion, Celebrating Life/Living as Religious Women, and Revising Our Constitutions.

The Steering Committee continued to be attentive to the “Together … Weaving” commitment of the Sisters made through supportive prayers, and the symbolic weaving of the fabrics of our life together as Sisters of Charity, and the expressed commitment to support and participate in “the process of considering the 2014 Chapter Mandate.”

Through conversations, contemplative dialogue circles, emails/phone calls, and Sr Kathleen Bryant’s presentation – Drawing Sisters to Celebration of Life and Religious living – and for some who were able to attend Sr Pat Farrell’s seminar Contemplation and Transformation, we have endeavoured “to gather … the wisdom of our sisters … weave our hopes and dreams … towards a transformative visioning as a refounding process.”

In the final stages of the Gathering preparation, it is the hope of the Steering Committee for all of us is that:

• We come together to honour and reverence the gift that each of us IS.
• And to take time to be present, to listen, to pray, with openness,
• and where healing and newness may spring.

We invite our Sisters, to join in praying this prayer which began our April/May 2017 State Meetings

Together, we are invited in a holy place of leaving and moving forward now.
This threshold holds both gladness and grief, mercy and hope.

May we hold what is dear to us – may we meet them again.
May what is past be moved along, or be finished for us.
May we look back with gratitude of heart and notice places of growth.
May we forget and let go of some places of hurt.
May we be ready to move into the liminal spaces
of unknowing and unfamiliarity with gentleness and compassion.

This will take our time and space, patience, and attentiveness,
solitude, prayer and togetherness.
May we step across the threshold with courage.
May we tenderly accept that this is our journey now.

We are grateful to you Holy One,
Three in One, Communion of Love.
Glory to you forever. Amen.