Brothers between 40 and 55 years of age
Within the Program of permanent Formation offered by the Institute to the different age-groups, there is Senderos/Renewal, for Brothers between 40 and 55 years of age approximately.
In 2015, which coincides with the Year of Consecrated Life and within the Marist scenario of the Bicentennial, this program was carried out.
23 Brothers began on March 19 in two different “Homes”, Manziana (8 participants) and El Escorial (15), to conclude in our common house, L’Hermitage.
During the formative itinerary, both groups have followed a parallel way both in contents and themes, so as to gather together for one of the most significant experiences, the pilgrimage to the Marist places, which for several years now both groups have been doing together, the Portuguese-Spanish group (coming from el Escorial) and the English speaking one from (Manziana) thus forming one only community in our “Mother” house and travelling around the places of Champagnat and our first Brothers.
From the time of our arrival, the Community of L’Hermitage, has accompanied the Brothers in the different visits carried out, both within the house as well as to the different Marist places (Rosey, La Valla, Maisonnettes, Le Bessat, Les Palais, Souvenez-vous, Fourvière, Lyon, meeting with SMSM, etc. ) and also other places which are near and significant for the Church in France (Taizé and Ars) and for the Marist Institute (Genève – FMSI, the See of the UNO) thus facilitating a dynamic in a lived experience that has permitted the Brothers to have an intense personal experience, as a group and of re-discovering and encountering the Marist Sources.
Together with the Brothers of the Animation Teams of Manziana and El Escorial, we were also accompanied by Br. Hipólito Pérez, Co-Director of the Secretariat Brothers Today (Br. Tony León, Director, who did it at a distance since he was accompanying his family in the funeral of his father), Father Alejandro Muñoz, General Counselor of the Marist Fathers (SM) and Father Mario Fernández, Chaplain of El Escorial who belongs to the Community of the Augustinian Priests of the Monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial who like other “brothers” have presided over our Eucharistic encounters.
"It has been a marvelous end”, this has been one of the expressions which sprang from the interior of one of the Brothers and which no doubt, also reflects the sentiment of all of them.
To have arrived to L’Hermitage, after travelling through “Paths” of interior renewal (Renewal) and to meet as an international Marist community around Champagnat, has been the best manner, for all the participants to celebrate the Year of Consecrated Life and the year Montagne within the Bicentennial. With this pilgrimage both groups end their formative program and return to their respective provinces and countries of origin, leaving “in haste to new lands”.
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Br. Ángel Medina