
II MIMA: European Regional Phase
The II Marist International Mission Assembly that gathered under the motto of “New Marists in Mission” closed on September 27, 2014 in Nairobi, Kenya. Local and provincial preparatory stages took place prior to this international meeting.
The regional stage that we propose now is “an opportunity to communicate what was lived and discussed during the Assembly at Nairobi”.
To put into practice this stage, the CEM Executive Board (Marist European Conference) decided that the European Assembly would take place at Notre-Dame de l’Hermitage from April 13 to 16, 2015.
Every Marist Province in Europe has appointed eight participants from varied backgrounds: brothers, laity, young people, all with different missions (schools, social work, etc.).
The members of the organizing team for this meeting are Máximo Blanco as Coordinator (Compostela), Íñigo García (Ibérica), Javier Grajera (Mediterránea), Nikos Noulas (Hermitage), Robert Thunus (West Central Europe), Óscar Martín (CEM President) and Teófilo Minga (CEM Secretary).
All the members of the organizing team met for the first time on January 19, 2015, in Alcalá de Henares to prepare the contents of the Regional Assembly. The second meeting took place on February 9 and 10, in the same place, and two of its member participated through videoconferencing. The next meeting will be on March 26 also in Alcalá de Henares. All the materials we will use during the European Assembly at the Hermitage should be ready by then.
The themes of our Assembly will obviously be those of Nairobi: prophecy and mysticism, communion and internationality, but all under a European perspective. In all the activities regarding our Assembly, we will emphasize the aspects of communion and internationality in our European Marist setting. We want a program that gives enough space to the reflection of the proposed topics, and includes prayer as an expression of mysticism and prophecy. We will highlight the questions from the document of Nairobi, and will ask the participants to study some of them, and to envision, according to their experience, in what direction we should lead our European Marist communities in the coming years.