Associate Group News

Magnificent evening

Group associated with Paulette Chénard. Volunteers of God, Drummondville.

volontaire drummondville

It was on a magnificent evening, enhanced by magical Christmas decorations in the sanctuary of Saint-Frédéric Basilica, that the renewal of Volunteer promises took place with an animation filled with meaning and a challenging teaching given by Louise Fleury on the “spirituality of commitment.”

We share an extract with you. To add icing on the cake, a great joy for our group was to welcome Maribel Mendoza who pronounced her first promises as a Volunteer. Congratulations to Maribel!

Each with her gifts and talents is committed to exercising the Volunteer mission: "To live everywhere the Love of Christ in the present moment."
By Jacqueline Blais, co-host and Jocelyne Binet, December 8, 2021

SPIRITUALITY OF COMMITMENT.
Extract from the teaching given by Louise Fleury

Since our commitments are based on the 5 attitudes of life that flow from the spirituality of the Secular Institute of the Oblate Missionaries of Mary Immaculate, I thought I would speak to you about the "spirituality of commitment."

One day, I read from a philosopher of spirituality that the word "spirituality" in the philosophical sense means: to give meaning and value to what we are, to what we do and to what we become. And the etymology of the word "spirituality" in ecclesiastical Latin is "spiritualitas" and "spiritus", meaning spirit and breath.

For me, to live a spirituality is to listen to my inner being, this spirit and this spiritual breath that dwells within me. It is also perceiving what wants to arise in me at the very heart of my quest for meaning and what wants to adjust to my inner being. The spirituality that we have chosen to live as Volunteers should help us to be well immersed in the “now”. It invites us to follow Christ and it always remains an experience of the ‘greater than oneself.’

I invite us all to look at and live our 5 attitudes as a recipe for personal happiness that allows us to make others happy and to glorify God. They are a spiritual way of life, a direction to follow which is expressed through values: welcome, understanding, love, respect, simplicity, non-judgment.

It is essential to apply these values to ourselves so that they become part of our everyday life and be witnessed around us. Opening up to living a spirituality is a good thing, but above all we must maintain and develop it.

Commitment is first and foremost a decision; it is often expressed by promises that we wish to fulfill and bring alive at the heart of the world... To commit oneself is above all to unite our response to that of Jesus who, one day, said yes to Father to be incarnated and, by this great yes, he was the first to commit. To follow him is to serve like him, it is to give our word, it is to surrender our heart to him and it is to do him honor. Our yes has great significance since it responds to a mission of fertility.

It should not be surprising that, at times, obstacles arise on our way. A spiritual crisis is at times a winding path which can lead us to hesitation and to question ourselves. But we must believe in the moment of grace bestowed upon us at the moment of our commitment and live these challenges with confidence, since they are above all a very strong call to discover and become who we really are.