An appropriate year-end activity… Today, the Provincial, the Provincial Treasurer, and the Regional Superiors, in presenting their reports, helped the capitulants re-read the life of the Province over the past five years. As the Provincial says, the Province is getting younger! Thanks to new brothers who have come to religious life during the past five years and to relatively young confrères who have accepted to join in the Province’s life and mission, the average age of the Province has diminished during this period. 

 In fact, one is struck by the humble dynamism of the Province, despite meager resources. That’s clear in the Philippines, a foundation that will be celebrating its fifth birthday on 25 January 2011, and has grown from five religious and one community, to seventeen religious and three communities.  But it’s also clear in Mexico, in the US and in Canada. The Province’s leaders are nonetheless posing some challenging questions.  What structure would best promote shared responsibility for every aspect of the Province’s life regardless of the Region to which one belongs? How can we raise the funds we need for the mission? How do we promote real inculturation yet truly live internationality?  How do we form leaders (Superiors, formators, treasurers, ministry leaders) for the future?  How can we be more rigorous and responsible in the management of our resources?

From Region to Region some of the same priorities were reviewed:  formation, vocation ministry, fraternal life, the lay/religious alliance, development activities. An effort was made to evaluate the extent to which the religious have tried to grow as men of communion, living in solidarity with the poor, and proclaiming the faith in a world progressively more secularized.

Along the way, there have been successes, disappointments, and discoveries. But the Province continues to move forward, ready to begin a new year and to face new challenges.

Fr Richard Lamoureux, a.a.
Thursday, 30 December