GATHERED AND BOUND BY THE SPIRIT
Spiritan Group of the Philippines
In the next nine days, we are invited to reflect on the life of our Co-Founder, Venerable Father Libermann. We seek to learn what the Holy Spirit is willing to teach us through his life and teachings. We shall focus on the call of God to us as a Community vis-a-vis our ministry to the poor. We have our identity as a people called and gathered together by the Holy Spirit with the purpose of following and serving the one Master, Jesus. The reason therefore for our togetherness is divine and not just a human ideology. This fundamental background is at the core for our sharing, support and witness to the world.
Fr. Libermann is unequivocal about our call to community life together as he teaches us that; ‘the Missionary commits himself to the Congregation only on the condition of having a community life’. It is the Holy Spirit who gathers, He is the one who creates and make fruitful his presence within us.
In the 21st century, we are faced with the temptation of individualism and we are presented with two options; whether to follow the standard of Jesus the caller to journey together as a community of faith or go our separate ways and live for our own ego and interest alone. As a Spiritan family, we resist the temptation to convenience or selfishness of individualism and we say with our founder; ‘I am determined to work in the path that you have shown to me’. (Fr. Poullart des Places).
Fr. Libermann reminded us of our call to community all through his writings. For the next nine days of our Novena, we shall try to pray and reflect on this divine call to renew our zeal in community life in direct connection to our ministries. Our ministries are organized from the community, therefore, both the community and our ministries are intertwined and they both combine to make us who we are. Thus we ask, Why and for who are we in community?
