I am not the same person I was a month ago.
A little over a month ago, just a few hours after the opening Mass of our 12th General Chapter, I was standing in the refectory of the Divine Master retreat house in Ariccia, Italy, looking around at the 56 other sisters who were gathering for supper. My shy little soul trembled a bit at the thought that I needed to get to know all of these sisters over the next few weeks, and get to know them well enough to freely exchange thoughts, ideas, and feelings on the most important themes of our Pauline life.
One month later, just a few days ago, I was sitting on the organ bench in the chapel of the Divine Master retreat house, looking out at those same 56 sisters who were gathering for the closing Mass of the 12th General Chapter. This time, my heart swelled and my eyes filled with tears, because over the past month, I had gotten to know these sisters. I had shared life with them, and I had come to love them.
This for me, was the heart of my experience of the General Chapter. From 50 countries, we came together; we opened our hearts to the Holy Spirit and to one another; we shared joys, sorrows, frustration, laughter; and in all of this we sought the face of God and the desires of his heart for us and for our congregation.
So, in a few words and images, here is what I’m taking with me from our General Chapter.
Interiority
The Divine Master retreat house where the Chapter took place is situated above Lake Albano, across from Castel Gandolfo (where Pope Leo XIV takes days of rest). Nearly every day I found a moment to slip away and sit in silence by the lake, which became for me a symbol of the silence that allowed me to perceive God’s presence. It spoke to me of the willingness to go within myself that allowed me to sense his movements, and it breathed into me the openness of heart that allowed me both to hear him speak and to resolve to respond.
Transformation
This particular photo is of the Divine Master chapel, taken from my place in the second pew on the far left. I could have taken similar “point-of-view” photos from my place in the auditorium where we spent many hours every day, or from my place at the last table in the hall where we gathered to work. As I returned over and over to my pew, to my chair, to my table, to the same point of view, I became ever more aware that I was changing. We were changing. We were changing because we were listening to one another, changing because we were going beyond ourselves and our own reality, changing because we were becoming a body that was straining with one heart to perceive the whispers of the Holy Spirit. I believe that it was this interior change, this inner transformation, that will bring about the most good for the congregation and for our mission in the next six years.
Communion
Communion is one of those words that gets thrown around quite a bit in Church circles. We talk about communion, we desire to live in communion, in my congregation we even vow to live “in communion with my sisters.” But I don’t know that I ever really understood communion until this experience of the General Chapter. Here, we lived together, we prayed together, we listened and reflected and discussed together. But it’s not just “being together” or “doing together” that creates communion. The Trinity creates communion, and what grew in me over these weeks was the sense that each sister at the Chapter was openly sharing the gift of the Trinity in her, and tenderly welcoming the gift of the Trinity in the other. It is a sense that I will never forget.
For me, the experience of the General Chapter was an experience of beholding the heart of the congregation. It was an absolutely unique experience and a privilege to see this heart and to discover that it is a living heart, a heart that beats, that hopes, that sometimes rejoices, sometimes suffers, a heart that loves profoundly.
But I didn’t just see the heart of the congregation in the abstract. I saw the heart of the congregation because I saw the hearts of all the sisters who were with me at the Chapter, and in their hearts, the hearts of all our sisters throughout the world. And these are also living hearts that beat, that hope, that suffer, that rejoice, that love.
This is what I am taking with me from the General Chapter: that every time I encounter the heart of one of my sisters, I am encountering the heart of the congregation; and our hearts beat and hope, suffer and rejoice for the world that we are sent to love and to heal.
I am not the same person I was a month ago. I pray that this interiority, this transformation, and this communion accompany me for the rest of my life.