Roadmap for the coming years

Our meeting took place in the city of the Apostle James in Compostela, Spain, from 6 to 8 February 2019. We know that there is a ‘millenarian’ aspect to our task and that this can only be discovered in its totality by taking a first step, by undertaking an adventure of a faith that is itself on pilgrimage, always open to being expressed in new and better ways. This was essentially the plan of our meeting as the European Team of Brothers Today.

Our Roadmap for the coming years has been designed around the following broad themes:

• Ongoing formation
• Knowing one another better as Marists in Europe and joint activities
• Ministries for senior Brothers
• Network of Marist communities across Europe

Each of these thematic ‘blocks’ holds the multiple dreams of what we would like to develop over the next few years. We have to prioritise and little by little be more concrete about some of them.

We would like to give special emphasis to setting up a network of Marist communities across Europe to help us benefit from more synergy, as companions on the journey, discovering new horizons for our Marist mission on our old continent. We spent most of our meeting discussing this topic. We reviewed the background to this initiative which came up in 2011 on the occasion of an Extended Council meeting for Europe (a meeting of all the Provincial Councils with the General Council), and which has been gradually spreading. We gathered the suggestions of the various Provincial Councils of Europe and had another look at the framework document for the “Network of Marist Communities in Europe”. Our proposal will go back to the Provincials of CEM for their study and approval if they agree. We really believe that this is an initiative that could be life-giving for us.

Santiago de Compostela provided a further opportunity for us to continue our dreaming in this home of ‘the camino’ … The community of El Gelmírez, made this easy for us through their warm, fraternal welcome. We were fortunate to be able to share our dreams with Angel Medina and Tony Leon, directors of the Secretariat of Brothers Today, who are the Institute’s people of reference for what we want to achieve through our European team of BROTHERS TODAY.

May Mary, our pilgrim Mother, accompany us along our way.

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Br. Aureliano García Manzanal