Provincial Conference, Mission, to be on earth the heart of God.

Key paragraphs from Chris McPhee’s opening address:

You are the light of the world… If someone were to ask me, in one sentence, what would you see as our mission? I would answer them in this way… that we, you, and I, each of us, in our own way, become on earth the heart of God. As simple as that may sound and as hard as that may be… that is it… to be on earth the heart of God… your heart reflecting God's heart to our world.

More than ever, the world, the church, our community, needs more people of heart, more people of heart to spread the love of God instead of the law, to be a sign of hope and contradiction rather than authority and legalism… to be that heart - in a world that is hungry and ignorant, and spending more money and talent and time on the potential destruction of the world … more than ever do we need to be people of heart.

We have been sent to be a heart, a light into a world, we have been sent into a Church, a community, a mission that says the divorced and remarried, the homosexual, and women are inadequate images of Christ… in a world that discriminates against race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, refugees, different religious traditions, the aboriginal and any other bigoted beliefs about a group of people, that separates and divides the world into those who are in and those who are out… all of us, as Missionaries of God’s Heart, we  have been sent to restore, to welcome, and to accept difference, as being the very image of God's self… and in fact each of us, know that we have been sent to turn the world around… one heart at a time…

Br Peter Ryan FSC (De La Salle) facilitated a day of formation for the Conference members. Peter has produced a PhD on how to live a Charism of a Religious Congregation in changing times. We were able to explore what it means to live our MSC charism in such times.

A critical question for religious life today is whether we are still at the margins and peripheries. Are our places of ministry where we are wanted, or are they where we are needed? There is an old Maryknoll adage: “They came where they were needed but not wanted and stayed until they were wanted but not needed”.

A frank and heartfelt discussion took place regarding the inevitable position of not having enough MSC to place in the ministries in which we are currently involved.  With thanks to Peter Hendriks for the photos - this one is from the archives.