"Almighty ever-living God, who assumed the Immaculate Virgin Mary, the Mother of your Son, body and soul into heavenly glory, grant, we pray, that, always attentive to the things that are above, we may merit to be sharers of her glory. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

(Collect from the Mass of the Feast of the Assumption)

"You should put away the old self of your former way of life, be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self"
(Eph 4:22-24).

On Sunday, August 5, as nine young men awaited the moment that they would officially begin their novitiate at Evening Prayer by receiving the cross of the Congregation, Fr. Richard Lamoureux, A.A., their novice-master, called to mind the second reading from Sunday's Mass and encouraged them all to allow themselves to be molded into the new creatures to which God was calling them. Making further reference to the gospel passage chosen for Evening Prayer (Mk 3:13-14), he pointed out that a novitiate year is an opportunity to prepare oneself ultimately for mission but a mission that presupposes a deep friendship with Jesus. It is the forging of this friendship that the novitiate is all about. Just as Jesus took the chosen twelve aside to prepare them for mission, so, too, these young men will spend a year apart with the Lord to know themselves better, to know and love Him better, and so prepare themselves to be true apostles for the Kingdom, in the Assumption.

In mid-April we were happy to receive a visit by Fr. John Franck to San Román. Fr. John is an assistant general of the Assumptionists stationed in Rome. He was in Argentina to get to know our work better since he has been given responsibility for South America as a continent and Assumptionist educational institutions around the world as a particular area of concern. He was accompanied by Fr. Juan Carlos Cisterna, the provincial of the Assumptionists in Chile-Argentina and his first assistant Fr. Esteban Monsalves.

Fr. Nicolas Potteau was born on June 12, 1979 and ordained a priest by Most Rev. André Vingt-trois, archbishop of Paris, on June 30, 2012 in Notre Dame Cathedral.

His voice soft and composed, Br. Nicolas Potteau answers your every question with care, without a useless word, concerned to describe as best he can what he is thinking or feeling. Having made his final vows with the Augustinians of the Assumption (Assumptionists) two years ago, he likes to speak about his call to religious life and priesthood by alluding to the famous painting of Caravaggio, "The Call of St. Matthew": "In this painting, you see Christ, accompanied by the apostle Peter; Christ is pointing to Matthew who is aglow with a halo of light. This is meant to underline that a call always includes three persons: God, the person called, and the Church. It also recalls that it is always God who takes the initiative."