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Missionaries of the
Sacred Heart
Last Update:
01/02/2009
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• Up • Purpose • History • Remote Planning • Preparation • Key Milestones •
Three Preparatory Meetings
Once the three members of the new community had been
officially appointed, plans could be made to make the most of the year from August 2004
to September 2005. Three meetings were planned to begin the remote
preparation for the project.
| October 2004 |
Herent and Borgehout, Belgium |
Mark and Carl meeting with André Claessens MSC, the
Belgian Provincial |
The three of us gathered
initially in Belgium (in Herent and Borgehout) for four days during
October 2004 to spend time getting to know one another. We spent
much of the time sharing personal histories, the stories of our faith
journeys, the variety of ministries we have been engaged in, our gifts,
talents, limitations and peculiarities. We also began the work of
defining a more precise vision for the community. While in
Brussels we were able to visit a couple of interesting social ministry
projects in the city. |
| February 2005 |
Princethorpe College, England |
Mark and Ton in front of the College Chapel at
Princethorpe College, near Rugby in Warwickshire. |
In February we met in the MSC Community
residence at Princethorpe College, the MSC Founded Catholic Secondary
School in Warwickshire, England. Here we continued our reflection by
trying to articulate more concretely the purpose of the project and our
expectations around communal living. We spent a day visiting a new inner city
parish project in England's second city, Birmingham. This had been begun recently by an international community of the
Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) where they are engaged in a mission of
evangelisation of secular culture. We were very impressed with their missionary
attitude, being non-judgemental of contemporary Western European culture,
refusing to demonise consumerism and the other "isms" of our time, and their
searching for a new language by which to communicate the basic message of the
Reign of God. Our meeting with them was very useful from various points of view;
it gave us some good ideas about a preparatory process and it helped to clarify for us
what we didn’t want to do (e.g. take on responsibility for a parish, and live in
the commercial district of the city rather than a residential area). It
also
surfaced some useful contacts in the UK. We also walked through the city centre
and visited some of the poorer, multi-cultural suburbs. Before the conclusion of
the meeting we were able to define a Provisional Statement of Purpose and draw up a draft Working Covenant outlining the relationships and
lines of accountability between the various groups involved in the project (the
European Community, the host Province (Irish), the European Provinces and their
Provincials, the Provinces contributing personnel and the General
Administration in Rome). In order to be a formally erected community in the Society we
have to come under the jurisdiction of some legal entity and so we agreed that
the Irish Provincial should be the Major Superior of the community and that he
would be accountable to the Conference of European Provincials. |
| May 2005 |
Tilburg, The Netherlands |
Ton, Carl and Mark with Ben Veberne MSC, the Dutch
Provincial, in the garden of the Mission House, Tilburg, The
Netherlands. |
In May we came together for our final preparatory
meeting in the great old Mission House in Tilburg in the Netherlands, a
place of formation for countless generations of Dutch MSCs and the house
from which so many departed for missions in Indonesia, the Philippines,
New Guinea, the Molukas and Brazil. Conscious of the very history
surrounding us, we thoroughly enjoyed the tremendous hospitality of the
large MSC community in Tilburg as we tentatively continued the planning
for our own new mission, though this time not so far from home. We
took a good amount of time to begin to reflect theologically on what a
ministry of presence in a multi-cultural and multi-religious city
neighbourhood might look like. This helped clarify our reasons for
wanting to begin in a more economically deprived area, inserting
ourselves in the heart of a community largely disconnected from the
traditional ecclesiastical structures. It also confirmed our
initial intuition (following recommendations from the European
Assemblies and the meeting of the European Young MSCs) that we should
not take a parish. We were also able to take care of some
practical matters during our days in Tilburg; drawing up draft contracts between the three Provinces
providing personnel and the host Province, and beginning preparation of a first budget from
October 2005 to December 2006. |
At the end of September 2005 the three of us moved into a
small cottage in the grounds of an MSC school in England to begin a more intense
phase of preparation for the project. Click
here to read all about this time of
study, visits to other projects, prayer and discernment.
• Up • Purpose • History • Remote Planning • Preparation • Key Milestones •
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