The Redemptorist lay missionaries of the parish of Our Lady of the Abandoned of Nazareth (Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados de Nazaret), Valencia, have met again. The meeting, which was the first in-person after the pandemic, took place on 24 October. It was a festive moment for everyone.
At the meeting, they organised the current academic year and set up new activities to give the group a new focus. After 28 years, they were in a moment of transition and all those present “listened to the Spirit to show us what we needed at this time because the dynamics of the last few years had already been exhausted”, according to one of the participants. The period of the pandemic provided the silence and tranquillity necessary for such a festive and fruitful return.
During the pandemic, a Spirituality Space began in the middle of life, with the intention of offering a space for silence and prayer to all those who wished to share it with the group. This year a new venue for these silences has been opened in the parish of La Purísima de Bétera, a town near Valencia.
In addition, the activities of this space will be extended to include two cycles of mini-conferences open to anyone interested, both in the parish of Nazareth and in the parish of Bétera. They will offer “what we have been working on for so many years and what our vocation as lay Redemptorists means in society”, said the group’s spokesperson. “It is about seeing that spirituality and silence lead us to give and offer what we are to others. The cycles will be entitled “Bearing fruit”.
In this new phase that is now beginning, the group will meet less to focus on offering what they are to other lay people and to other parishes. In the words of the spokesperson: “We want to broaden our missionary dimension and the proclamation of the good news that shapes us as people and helps us to be in life-giving rather than receiving or demanding. We want our missionary facet to be the predominant one in our work in the coming years”.
Throughout this process of discernment and new perspectives, the spokesman assures us that they have felt accompanied at all times by the community of Valencia, which “supports and backs us in everything”. Together with them, each with their own charism, “we try to announce the good news of the Gospel and to be missionaries in the diocese of Valencia”. And he concluded: “We can only be grateful for this climate of trust and harmony which produces abundant fruit”.
Lay Redemptorists of Valencia
(redentoristas.org)
