On Sunday August 1st we all met in the parish-sanctuary of St. Judas Thaddeus in San Paolo to set off for Lavras (Minas Gerais), the venue of the international meeting on the vocational ministry. We came from 18 different countries, it could have been Babal, but instead, through the grace of the Lord, it was Pentecost. Pentecost because though speaking different languages and living in the most varied cultural contexts we found that we all converged on one point: we want to re-discover or discover how to make the vocation of every Christian mature, and how to present and make real the special vocation which the Church has received from the Lord through the intersession of our Founder.

In Lavras we were received as if we were members of a family by the community of the parish of “Sant’Anna” with its parish priest, Fr. Carlos Martinenghi, S.C.J. The “Recanto Sagrado Coração de Jesus” (Sacred Heart Hospitality House), where we lived for two weeks, is in fact property of the parish of Lavras.

The lectures were of an excellent level and certainly described the vocational situation in an appropriate way. However, I don’t think this would have been enough if the other aspect of the meeting had been missing: the presentation of the various realities within the Congregation. We discovered in this way, in tune with the project “We the Congregation”, that in our Institute there are great differences, as great as it is possible for them to be. There are Provinces, at least in the vocational field, which shine and others which unfortunately have enormous difficulties. This however did not result in some of us becoming very proud of ourselves and others becoming very depressed, but rather in a sharing of worries and joys. Discovering that in some parts of the world Fr. Dehon’s charism is a lighthouse which shows many the road they must take to follow Jesus, and that in other parts of the world one must come to terms with problems which are not easy to solve, made us go back home convinced that we must all do our utmost, without distinction, for the cause of vocations. A Province which does not have its future at heart, and its future are the young recruits, is a Province which is destined to bite off its own tail. In this sense I think that contact with the BM Province was a lesson for me and a great stimulus. The vocational ministry is the pulling engine of the entire Province: it is a vocational ministry which, while being integrated and convinced of the goodness of the baptismal vocation of each individual, never loses sight of the aspect concerning vocations to special consecration. Every parish (Dehonian) has a body of vocational ministry - in which participate lay people, married and not, nuns and priests - which has as its thriving purpose the organization of vocational activities, the accompanying of candidates, contact with their families and, above all, the stimulus to pray for vocations: every Dehonian parish in Brazil dedicates Thursday to the prayer for vocations. The third aspect of the meeting which I have already mentioned was the meeting in the field with the ministry reality of Brazil. The weekend between the two weeks was dedicated to visiting some parishes in the area of Minas. We of the Italo-French group went to the parish of the “Divino Spirito Santo” (Divine Holy Spirit) of Varginha. Apart from its size, what struck me was the involvement of the whole parish in the ministry, including that of vocations. The ministry council is a complex organism, the fruit of all the ministry experiences of the parish community, which endeavors to collaborate and follow the line given by the Fathers of the parish, which is a truly Dehonian line; this one can visibly notice in what is happening in the Churches, in relationships, in the Liturgy. One can say that every lay person of our parishes in Brazil is a “Dehonian lay person”. On August 12th we shared the eucharistic liturgy with the community of Sant’Anna in Lavras. For the community, this day, the date of the death of our Founder, is a day of rejoicing and of giving praise to the Lord for the gift made to the Church through Fr. Dehon.

One concrete result was the message which the participants at the meeting sent to the Congregation: a message which, while starting out from differing situations, looks with trust to the future, without forgetting to make concrete proposals either.

The third week of my stay in Brazil was dedicated to visiting the houses of formation of the southern Province. Through this “tour” I was able to appreciate the hospitality and the welcome given by our brethren, as also the simplicity and enthusiasm of the young seminarians (many).

Lastly I would like to remember and thank all the brethren who took part in this meeting. Each one of them taught me something: commitment, welcome, gaiety, joy, enthusiasm, the seriousness of work, love for our charism... I would like to thank in particular Fr. Claudio Weber, S.C.J., BM Superior Provincial, who followed us with complete availability from the first to the last day of this stay in Brazil; and I would like to remember Fr. Ricardo Pascuale of the AU Province, whom the Lord called to Himself a few days before he was due to participate in this meeting. Certainly he participated from heaven, sharing our preoccupations and our joys.