Rome Novice Masters' meeting.  Khoi Nguyen writes:

REPORT ON THE MSC CONGREGATIONAL NOVICE MASTERS MEETING, Rome, October 28 - November 3, 2022 

By Khoi Nguyen msc. Novitiate DIrector, Australian Province

This meeting gathered 9 novice masters from 8 entities in the Congregation across the world. We had one from Australia (me), two from Brazil (Getullio and Gilberto), one from the Philippines (Nords), one from India (Alex), one from Indonesia (Eddie, one from South Korea (Ireneo), one from Africa (Jonas), one from Pacific Islands (Tetoaitii). This meeting was facilitated by Chris Chaplin (Assistant General in charge of Ongoing Formation) and Humberto Henriques  (Assistant General in charge of Initial Formation), with translation assistance from Mike Miller, the Secretary General, and Absalon Tovar, the Superior General. 

This was a gathering not to solve the problems of formation in our congregation and in today's context, to make any decisions or to update any formation documents, but the primary invitation was to 'be together' in fellowship as formators, with prayerfulness and discernment, trying to listen collectively and communally what the Spirit of God is saying to us, not merely as individual formators from different entities, but also as a whole, as one congregation. We are invited to shift from our ego-system to the emerging ecosystem, from 'the ME to the WE'. In this space of being together, praying together, sharing together, listening together, moving together, we experienced enrichment and nourishment from one another and from the whole body of novice masters. This enrichment called us to integrate and to become more whole as individual selves and as a community with a common mission given by God. 

Every morning, we spent a quality of time doing the practice of communal wisdom, articulated and promoted by Brian Gallagher. This process might not be new to us in the Australian Province but might well be to many others in other parts of the world. This challenged ourselves to deepen our awareness and to expand our horizon to that of the whole group, the whole community across the globe, through contemplative listening to self and one another. The resounding call was to let go of our intellectualising in the process and to move with the heart, its emotions and feelings, its sensing and telling of a story or an image. 

During the day, we continued to proceed to formation agendas with this sense of communal listening from the heart. These agendas include: 

- Re-evaluation of our novitiate programs and structures according to our experiences 

- Building up group identity and recognising group vulnerabilities in formation process

- The central role of formative accompaniment

- Psycho-spiritual framework in formation accompaniment 

- Re-reading and re-evaluating the Valladolid Document 

- Understanding the complexities and complications of our world today and of our formation candidates - a sense of dealing with mystery rather than mere problems and issues 

- Criteria for approving profession as MSC 

• Co-sensing the possibility of international formation houses across the congregation
• Structural issues and challenges in novitiate (i.e. relation and communication with entity leadership, coherence between formation stages, cooperation within the local formation team and with other teams from other entities, screening for candidates coming into formation, external resources in accompaniment and professional help)-
• What are our hopes and dreams for our formation coming into the future together? 

By the end of the meeting, we communally felt greatly grateful for this opportunity to come and be together as brothers in common mission of making the heart of Jesus to be known and loved through our mission of accompanying new members of the community. 

We are looking forward to more collaboration and 'being together' in the future, especially when another international conference of MSC formators is being organised and finalised for May 2023, prior to the General Chapter, and/or in any other ways we can. We continued to share our hope and our call to participate in and contribute to this same mission and vision of community and love.