Champagnat Movement of the Marist Family

As at the beginning of each course, on 17 September 2011 the members of the fraternities of the province met in Lardero, to hold a weekend meeting in family. This year’s meeting, however, had a special flavour: we were celebrating the silver jubilee of the fraternities’ movement which, 25 years ago, commenced its journey with the  Champagnat Fraternity of Pamplona.

From this first initiative, and without being very clear about what we were getting into, other groups emerged in Zaragoza, Bilbao, Logroño, Madrid,… so that now more than 100 persons in the Province of Ibérica form part of the Champagnat Movement, striving to be followers of Jesus in the style of Champagnat. And all that is what we celebrated in our family meeting.

We proclaimed our festival, we recorded our history in a type of review of our community photo albums, we reflected on the Marian face of our family with the help of Brother José María Ferre, we shared prayer and Eucharist, around the same table, we shared experiences of solidarity and thanked God and the brothers who have accompanied us and given us the opportunity for living it all.

As in all good family gatherings, all played a hand in the preparation and development of the  activity, and as all was prepared with love, it left us with a good taste in the mouth.

It may not have been a meeting with great conclusions: we did not program, we did not set out strategies or reach great conclusions. Because this year we wanted to make fiesta and to be together, to celebrate and give thanks.

And for this reason, I remember the moment of the closing of the meeting, when Brother   Ambrosio encouraged us to live this moment in our history as the beginning of another 25 years of shared life. As the motto of the General Chapter says, always on the way, always thinking of new horizons.

And as we have been working in our Province of Ibérica, because “Something new is possible”