World Assembly Reflections – Day #6

July 27th

Greetings on this Day #6 of our CLC World Assembly,

We had found ourselves in a much more quieter space today, especially in comparison to Day #5, our Open Day! Today was a day of Recollection and Revelation. Our morning and our afternoon mirrored each other… Input from our Plenary, a time of personal prayer, sharing in our small groups, and then sharing our graces from our prayer and spiritual conversation back in our plenary.

Our morning was a time to imagine ourselves walking beside Jesus, looking together to the path we have walked in these last days: our personal graces, our history line, our day of immersion, meeting with Fr. General Sosa, and our Open Day together with the broader CLC community from abroad and locally. Then we were to be open to an image, a sound, a taste of these last days to present to our Assembly.

In our afternoon we were then asked to pray upon and name the grace that our CLC World Community has been given since it’s inception and new identity 50 years ago. You can see in the photo for this Day there were many graces offered in our circle…. Poverty, Fraternity, Community, Mission…

All of our communal exercises are oriented through a spirit of communal discernment… in seeking to discover who we are in this day in our world as a CLC community. Our discernment is being led by the group ESDAC (Exercices Spirituels pour un Discernment Apostolique en Commun). All of us are very prayerful. In our rich plenary sharing the co-ordinators cannot keep up with all of our desires to speak about our prayer and interior movements (they have to pass us the microphone to speak!). It is often hard to say where we are being led through all of our prayer. But we are trusting in the spirit.

Yesterday evening I had the blessing of concelebrating Mass and offering the reflection, in which I shared my experience of someone in my life who knew how to name the realities and graces of his life – both Consolations and Desolations – and of the necessity of this in planting the seeds of our CLC vocations deeply and receptively.

We then ended our day with a meeting of all the North American representatives to get to know one another better… followed by a festive drink in our ‘cafe’ where Michelle was filled with stories to the delight of many around the table:)

We also pray for Jennifer Gardner, the President of CLC Australia, who was hospitalized. She is doing much better but will remain in the hospital for a few days.

• In the image above, the face of Jesus is composed of all the portraits of the Assembly participants.

Blessings to each of you,

Trevor