Some 500 people gathered for the Feast of the Universal Mission on Saturday 19 October 2024, in the commune of La Prénessaye, Central Brittany, France, at the shrine of Notre-Dame de Toute Aide in Querrien – a place particularly dear to them since the authentication of the apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1652 to an 11-year-old shepherdess who was deaf and dumb -. These people, including around fifteen Daughters of the Holy Spirit, came from all over the diocese of Saint Brieuc, invited by the Service de la Mission universelle. The music of the group ‘Avelig’ flooded the space with its festive tunes.
Welcomed by Mgr Moutel, bishop of the diocese, we were invited to live the day in the joy of being called to become ‘missionary disciples’.
A variety of ‘witnesses’, both in terms of origin and vocation, captured the attention of the audience: a lay missionary sent to teach in a secondary school in Palestine run by the Christian Patriarchate in a Muslim environment; a deacon who teaches in a Catholic secondary school and who, with his pupils, has taken part in solidarity actions encouraged by the school; two nuns, one French, a Daughter of the Holy Spirit, whose congregation sent her to Cameroon and then to Chad, and whose ‘soul has remained African’; the other, from Cameroon, a sister of Sainte Marie de la Présentation de Broons, who has arrived in France to work as a youth chaplain; two priests, one African, who has taken on various responsibilities in France – in a school with children in difficulty, in an intercultural environment where living together is not always easy – and the other, French, a parish priest, whose growing religious indifference has led him and his team to think up a welcoming and fraternal pastoral approach…
When asked about the meaning of ‘doing church together’, each person responded according to his or her experience and place of mission… But all were happy to ‘do church’, here or elsewhere…
The experience they shared – because all were shaken up, even transformed – can challenge each of us sent ‘with our frailties’, therefore called to ‘go beyond ourselves’ to ‘go towards the other with confidence’, called to ‘live the encounter and the fraternity’ by a ‘simple presence, with all our being’ in the respect of the other and his culture, a quality presence drawn from listening to the Word of God which radiates his Love… A very full morning!
After this substantial menu, another menu awaited us: copious tables laid by the team of volunteers from the sanctuary.
The afternoon was full of good times. There were workshops on storytelling, writing, painting and dancing, followed by exchanges with friends of Madeleine Delbrel (1904-1964), a woman of prayer and action who lived her daily life simply with the Lord, at home, in the underground, in the street… There were also exchanges with members of the Green Church, showing how many parishes are involved in integral ecology…
The day ended with a time of prayer together ‘to give thanks’. Before the proclamation of the Word of God, a highly symbolic moment that resonated strongly with the day: the transmission of the Book of the Word, from hand to hand, from one generation to another, from one culture to another.
Sent out to all, we left this blessed place singing or listening to this prayer to Mary:
‘O Mary, you know our lives, you know our weakness,
You know us to be poor and small.
O Mary, teach us to say yes to the love that calls us…’.
Sister Armandine BAGOT, DHS.
Published on 29 October 2024, the day after the feast of the Apostles Simon and Jude.
