Mediterranean Marist Province
During the 29 and 30 of April, 2017, 95 persons met in Malaga, 22 of them were children and young people, from the 23 Fraternities of the Champagnat Movement of the Marist Family present in Spain and Italy. It was not possible to count with the presence of the Fraternities from Lebanon and Syria.
The Assembly began with some proposals presented by the Team of Animation that directed the Assembly. The motivation of these proposals was taken from words of Pope Francis and of Brother Emili: The need that the Assembly would help to get out of oneself in order to be more alive as communities of the Church. There was the invitation, together with all the Marists of Champagnat for a new beginning. It is necessary to face the challenge with hope; trust and hope, like those with which Mary lived, to whom, from the beginning, we have asked to guide the Assembly.
The Marist Fraternities of the Iberian and the Scholapian Laity shared their experience. Both witnesses were significant for the Assembly.
A draft of the “Project of Life in Fraternity” of the MCFM was presented as a first introduction to this document on which an international commission has worked during 5 years and which has gathered the result of various consultations to the Fraternities of the whole world and also to the Marist Provinces where MCFM is not present.
On the second day of the Assembly Br. Juan Carlos Fuertes (Provincial) once again asked regarding the willingness for a new beginning, for the “new epoch for the Marist Charism”. Then followed Br. Ventura, presenting the Secretariat of the Laity in the Province and how the Fraternities of MCFM are inserted, as lay adult communities, within this Provincial structure.
From the Assembly emerged a new structure of animation of the Champagnat Movement, formed by 4 persons, representing each one of the zones of the Province.
The Assembly ended with the celebration of the Eucharist in the beautiful chapel of the Seminary of Malaga. In it the children shared their work of these days of Assembly materialized in a stage representation. On the altar was placed everything lived during these days: the family environment, the utopia, the witnesses, the hope, the new team and the new structure of animation.