Rome, August 24, 2020
To all Visitors and Regional Superiors
Formation Directors and Directors of Vocational Ministry
Dear Confreres:
May the grace and peace of Christ be with us!
I extend a fraternal greeting to all the confreres who continue to engage in the struggle and who are accompanying so many poor individuals who have been afflicted in countless ways during this pandemic.
As you know September is the Month of Saint Vincent de Paul and as such is month that is dear to the heart of the members of the Vincentian Family.
This year we want to initiate the month with a virtual event that we have called “THE VOCATIONAL MISSIONARY FESTIVAL” … an event that is geared toward all the confreres but in a special way to the directors of vocational ministry, to seminarists and young people who are involved in vocational discernment. Some details with regard to this festival:
The objective of this event is to offer a virtual space for formation, integration and prayer and to do this from the perspective of the themes that are fundamental to our identity: vocation and mission. These two themes will allow us to begin the Vincentian Month in a good way.
In this way we want to promote the theme of a vocational culture as initiated in November 2018 in the First Meeting of Directors of Vocational Ministry (CIF – Paris). That formation meeting was a call to take responsibility for creating this vocational culture in all our works, ministries … in every place where we are present.
The Festival will also be a place to promote our missionary charism. During the event we will also launch the 1% campaign for 2020 in which we seek to encourage confreres to consider ministry in the missions ad gentes, to become involved in reflection on our missionary spirit and to recognize that the mission of the Congregation is not limited to the international missions but extends to the missions ad gentes of the Provinces, Vice-Province and Regions. The 1% campaign is intended to prepare 30 confreres for the mission ad gentes. We do not want to reduce this campaign to a number but rather we hope that more confreres will feel called to our mission ad gentes throughout the world. In this way, this event can provide us with an opportunity to make ourselves known to young people from the perspective of our spirituality, charism and the mission that identifies us.
Throughout the month of September we will develop the following theme: our vocation is to go not to one parish, not just to one diocese, but all over the world (CCD:XII:215). I hope that these words of Saint Vincent help us to revitalize our foundational vocation as missionaries and to do this from the perspective of our universality and internationality. Indeed, may the Spirit of Jesus animate us and enable us to clothe ourselves in a missionary mobility that is proper to our Vincentian charism. That is why I want to encourage and invite all the confreres of the Little Company to register today for this event.
The Vocational Missionary Festival
Date: September 1, 2020
Time:
17:00 Rome
11:00 New York
12:00 Buenos Aires
16:00 Yaundé
23:00 Manila
May this event help us to become more sensitive to our vocational call to go all over the world. The continuity of our missionary activity will also depend on how much we strive to fill the world with the heritage that we have received from our Holy Founder: our spirituality and our charism.
With great joy I hope that we will meet virtually on Tuesday, September 1, 2020.
Your brother in Saint Vincent,
Tomaẑ Mavriĉ, CM
Superior General
