Messina, 24–28 September 2018

‘Which path should I take? It depends on where you want to go’. With this quotation from Lewis Carroll the religious of the Province of Sicily and Naples accepted the invitation that Jesus makes in the Gospel of Mark – “come with me to one side in a solitary place and rest a while’. Guiding them in looking at their goal, not with a purely human eye but with the eye of God, was Msgr. Paolo Urso, the Bishop Emeritus of Ragusa, who along the pathway of spiritual exercises emphasised above all the importance of historical memory, calling the attention of those present to three verbs that sound out in the apostolic exhortation Vita consecrata of John Paul II: ‘You have not only a glorious history to remember and to recount, but also a great history still to be accomplished! Look to the future, where the Spirit is sending you in order to do even greater things’ (Vita consecrata, n. 110).

     Remembering, narrating, constructing. Constructing through faithfulness, through encounter and in dialogue.  ‘Do not be afraid about anything you are about to suffer’ (Ap 2:1), be faithful, to Christ, to the Church, to the man of our time and to your Institute, as the Virgin Mary was, in searching, in welcoming, in consistency and in constancy. With high charity in our encounter with the sick, like Mary in her encounter with Elizabeth, ‘we offer friendship, help and the witness of charity’ (Constitution and General Statutes n. 50). The subjects addressed centred around the word of God made accessible by numerous references to articles of the Constitution of the Ministers of the Sick, pontifical documents, novels and books by non-Christian authors, which together with prayer and daily adoration of the Eucharist permitted a varied and multifaceted vision of following Christ.

     The atmosphere of silence and prayer was interrupted by festive singing during the celebration of Vespers on Friday 28 September which marked the entrance into the novitiate of Luca Apreda, Salvatore Barbagallo and Mariano Servadei. The rite, which took place in the Parish of St. Camillus in Messina, witnessed three young men who had finished their period of postulancy ask the Provincial Superior, who presided over the rite, in the presence of very many other confreres who had come for the occasion and the faithful, to accept their wish to follow Christ perfectly in the Camillian religious family. The three new novices were received into the religious family of Messina where they will exercise their ministries, entrusted to Father Hubert Goudjinou, the teacher of novices. Committing ourselves to accompanying them in prayer, we congratulate our brothers because they responded with generosity to the call of the Lord, placing themselves at the service of the sick, of the Church, and of the Order.

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