A Vision for Hope
- Plan for the Future
Sutherland MacDonald, C.R.
Chapter President & Superior General
Click here to read the whole document, in PDF
format.
Below are the opening sections.
Vision / Charism
“
Hope will never leave us disappointed because the love of
God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit
who has been given to us. … (Romans 5:5)
At the threshold of the third millennium of the Christian
era, we believe as members of the XXXth General Chapter of
the Congregation of the Resurrection, that the gift (charism)
which Bogdan Janski and his disciples received from the Holy
Spirit for the good of the Church and human society finds
its expression in the Christian virtue of hope. This hope
is founded on the unconditional love of God, which is expressed
in the paschal mystery of Jesus and has as its object our
own resurrection and that of society, and, ultimately, the
full sharing in Christ’s resurrection.
Mission
Ourselves enlivened by hope, we will awaken and nourish
hope in others by:
a) Being community:
-
“Our Congregation must be a model of Christian
community in which people are one in heart and mind” (Mission
Statement). Therefore, sacrifice, personal
discipline, and the setting aside of personal
agenda are necessary
for the religious to become more active
members of their local houses and to advance
the common
good of the Congregation.
- We
foster hope and a sense of Resurrectionist identity
by assisting one another to live more
deeply the
paschal
mystery. This could be achieved by regular
house meetings and other gatherings which are not
of an administrative
character
but rather provide an atmosphere where
the brothers have an opportunity for leisure, social interaction,
and
for growth
in the spiritual life,
- The common life makes
visible our charism and is a sign of hope to contemporary society
which is seeking the
experience of community to remedy situations of
isolation, alienation, and individualism. We recognize that
living alone
is necessary at times, for various reasons, but
this situation should never be considered customary, much less
permanent,
within the Congregation. Those who by exception
must live apart from a community house maintain the common
life by
their fraternal contact with members of a local
house and participation in their activities.
- An expression
of a strong common life is that hospitality which invites our
own Resurrectionist brothers and others
not only into our home but also into our lives
of faith, and ultimately attracts new members to our Congregation.
b) Creating communities in collaboration with the laity:
Our collaboration with the laity is the most traditional
characteristic of the apostolate of the community, which
was founded by a lay person, Bogdan Janski, and which, through
many years of its original history, not only collaborated
with lay persons but also, thanks to them, flourished. The
presence of the laity in our ministry ought to mean a real
collaboration – the laity working with us, not for
us or instead of us.
A special expression of our collaboration with the laity
which belongs to the foundational charism of the Congregation
(cf. §20, original Rule of 1842) is the presence of
lay Resurrectionists, apart from the Congregation, who through
promises constitute communities of the risen Christ. They
share our charism and mission and are assisted by the religious
regarding their spiritual formation; but in their community
life, they are governed by their own statutes.
With great joy we welcome, after many years, the first communities
of that kind in the Polish Province and we express the hope
that we will also be able to establish such communities in
the remaining sectors of the Congregation, basing ourselves
on already existing or yet-to-be-created forms of collaboration
with the laity.
In this way, the Congregation could enter the Third Millennium
with a fully realized vision of the Founder who, from the
very beginning, wanted Resurrectionists ”with two lungs”:
the vowed religious and their lay collaborators.
c) Living and Working as an International Congregation:
From the very foundations of our community, there has been
an evidently international character to our Congregation.
The following are some of the ways in which we continue to
do this.
- Solidarity: compassion for others (social justice),
mutual help among the provinces/region, sharing
of personnel and financial resources
- Formation of
International Mentality – which
is already fortified by existing structures:
- International Seminary
- Resurrectionist Renewal Program
- International Center for Resurrectionist Spirituality
- Notitiae
- Informal International Exchanges: Vacations, foreign-language
courses, even a one-year North American teacher
of English in Poland and/or vice-versa.
- Greater central
authority and a larger understanding of missiology as a project
of the entire Congregation, not
just of the individual provinces. Projects
such as beatification, spirituality, and a statement of models
of personnel exchange
might also be brought under the umbrella
jurisdiction of the superior general and his curia.
- Our
formation programs which ought to stress the possibility
and also encourage those in formation to consider mission
fields in all forms – to foreign
cultures within our own lands, to lands
beyond ours,
and to those marginalized
by unjust structures, wherever they may be.
Ministries / Forms of Apostolates
Janski identified no specific work as uniquely Resurrectionist,
but included all ministries which could fulfill his vision.
Examples of these ministries may include parish work and
education, and surely could include such works as ministry
among those most “unlovable.” These apostolic
forms are most conducive to our response to God’s unconditional
love for us, which we strive to extend towards those of God’s
children “least deserving” of human attention
or love.
Vision/Charism | Characteristics of Missions | Minstires Forms
of Apostolate
