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12.08.2019
Something new for this Extended Council is that the Provincial and Region councilors or team members will also be participating. Styles of leadership in our congregation have changed over the years and the goal is that each council work as a team as much as possible and share the responsibilities. The General Council believes that having the teams come allows them to receive the same input and to be part of the reflections and discussion around the various important topics. It also gives the councilors the chance to get to know other council members and the realities in the other countries. The more we know one another at the congregational level the more we can operate as one body. About 50 of our leaders are participating in this session.
The theme of the Extended Council is:
Incarnating LOVE with Joy. As the General Council reflected on a theme, several ideas were mentioned. We kept returning to the words: attracting, engaging, joyful, loving, and generous. Since the meeting is shortly after the Christmas Season, we chose to focus on the Incarnation and then decided upon the phrase Incarnating LOVE with Joy.
The Incarnation is one of the Mysteries that is foundational to our spirituality and charism. It is central to our faith revealing that God continues to be in relationship with us and that Jesus, coming as a human, fulfills God’s covenant with us. To incarnate means to take on the human form, i.e., Jesus being incarnated as a man. Incarnate also means to be the living embodiment of a quality.
As leaders, all of us should strive to be a living embodiment of God’s love.
To incarnate the love that Jesus has for us is only experienced by others in how we lead and accompany our sisters and associates. Do they experience us as incarnated love? What qualities are necessary for a leader to live this incarnated love? What do we need to embrace and to let go of in order to achieve this? How does this style relate to authority and power? These questions and other related themes, will be explored in relationship to the various topics of the meeting.
We hope that the Extended Council will be an experience of hope, new life and support for our leaders, as well as offer new vision around critical issues for the future as together we discuss the General Chapter. We will have presenters on global leadership and living interculturally, we will be discussing, among other topics, mission sustainability, authority versus power, governance and new structures, and formation at all stages of life. We are grateful for the prayers of all who accompany us on this journey.
Sister Sally M. Hodgdon, General Superior
