National Assembly 24 – 26 July 2009

La Verna Retreat Centre, Gauteng

At our Assembly at La Verna last month the recommendation towards becoming an Apostolic Body headed the list and the Exco considers this as the most urgent need for our National Community at this time.

APOSTOLIC BODY

We are challenged as a Community to develop a visible apostolate that identifies us as CLC and through this to be able to say that this is what CLC South Africa is about.

It is recommended that the most urgent, universal and greatest need is for CLC to take risks within the community to do something (however small) in a visible way in some community project/issue for some category of “poor”/marginalised, so that we begin to move from discipleship to apostolate. In this the Group’s support of the individual’s, as well as the Community’s, endeavours, is essential.

At Fatima we remembered the words used in the preparation leading up to the Assembly: The apostles gathered around Jesus and told him all they had done. We are challenged now to embrace the theme of the Fatima 2008 General Assembly: Journeying as an Apostolic Body and in our way to tell Jesus all we have done and want to do, as Our Response to this Grace from God was enunciated in the results of our deliberations at La Verna.

We as CLC South Africa are to discern how we can become an Apostolic Body in reality and journey with our World Community, as our desires clearly reflect those of the World. How are we to do this? In the Principle and Foundation of the Spiritual Exercises ,St Ignatius says, We are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save our soul... to do this we are to.... desire and choose only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created. Our aim therefore, in becoming an Apostolic Body is to praise reverence and serve God our Lord. Thus it is to God that we have to go to find out what it is she wants of us. Thus the Exco asks everyone, in your daily prayers, to pray asking:

God our Lord we pray for the grace to become aware of your desires for us,

We pray that CLC may grow into an apostolic Community

and we ask that you help us, the Community,

to find our particular apostolic charism here in South Africa.

The Exco asks too that in our weekly Community meetings we pray for the grace to be open to God’s desires for us as a Community and that we do the same in our regional meetings. With the whole Community praying as one, in a short while, we will find our apostolate.

--- You're invited to view Jane's photos from La Verna ---