Being a lay Marist

Brother Javier Espinosa’s mission for the past two months consisted of visiting 25 groups of different expressions of laity to boost the experience of the charism and collect contributions for the document of the Secretariat of the Laity of the Marist Institute that will be presented at the General Chapter to be celebrated in Colombia during the month of September.

As leader of the Secretariat, he repeated the experience in Brazil on May 4 with the help of Raúl Amaya, of the Santa María de Los Andes province, organising a workshop that was developed in Brazlândia/DF, with 21 participants – Marist Brothers, laity and staff of the country’s three provinces (Centro-Norte, Centro-Sul and Sul-Amazônia).

The sentence of superior general Brother Emili Turú, “abandoning land that we have known to enter new territory,” served as motivation to initiate activities. The group was invited to reflect and express, through images, what this challenge means when applied to the lay process in the Institute.

“How do we want to start the third centenary? What novelty do we want to contribute?,” asked Brother Javier.

Brother Javier spoke about the process that is being followed in the institutional treatment of the theme ‘bonding and belonging’ to the Institute; the beginning of the revitalisation process of the Champagnat Movement of the Marist Family; the preparation of the documents ‘Being Lay Marist’ and ‘Entering into the territory of the new:’ References for a road map, which received contributions from the groups of the provinces for the General Chapter.

The text to date has received suggestions from the teams in Rome, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Ecuador and Colombia.

“Towards the end of May, we gathered in Nairobi, Africa, to gather all the information,” explained Brother Javier.