Dominican mission today

Publié le : 17 août 2015

Four sisters shared their experience and their reflection with us on the theme of Dominican mission today. Each spoke from her own context, experience, mission, and convictions. All spoke from the perspective of Justice, Peace, and Care of Creation.

Sr. Frances Thibodeau from the USA Province presented her reflection on biblical truth and justice in Dominican mission. She titled her talk with a verse from Psalm 85 : “Truth shall spring up from the earth and justice shall lean down from heaven.” She reminded us that justice has been important in the Order from its beginnings. It takes two complementary forms : study, and action to do justice.
She shared four ways to “do justice” :
- historicize justice : what is before us here and now ? We can’t affect the past, but what we do in the present can affect the future ;
- recognize our own implication in unjust situations and turn away from it
- realize that we cannot do everything, but each one of us can do something
- keep hope alive and not let ourselves become discouraged, for “Glory be to the One whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can do or imagine.” (Eph 3:20)

S. Rosa Barboza and Sr. Geraldinha Magela, from the Province of Brazil, shared their experiences in that country and their work with marginalized people and the Sem Terra. They told us that we need to hear three calls : for water, land, and against human trafficking. Both sisters insisted on the importance of international solidarity.

Sr. Marie-Laure Denes, from the Province of France, opened her talk with a quotation from Pierre Claverie : “I need the other person’s truth”...in order together to readjust our way of being Dominican. Dominican mission today is a way of being in the world, a way of seeing the world in a particular way, daring to encounter it and dialoguing with it, and being at the service of its fragilities. Marie-Laure gave her last word to Paul VI : “Later on, when people ask what the Church was doing at Vatican II, we can answer that that Church was caring, it was caring for the human person ; it was caring for all human beings.”

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