25TH MSC GENERAL CONFERENCE, BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA
From Jommy Burgos MSC, Secretary of the Conference.
DAY 01 (Tuesday, September 23, 2019: First day, started with a para-liturgy inviting all participants to a solemn presence of God. Conscious too of being present to one another. Fr. Mario Absalon Alvarado Tovar, MSC, Superior General exhorted everyone to listen to God where life cries out. As a congregation we shall analyze, discern and seek together and face as one body the different pressing challenges of the time, he stressed.
PRESENCE
The day was an encounter of PRESENCE, trying to examine oneself, what each of them brought along and what they could give up. What were those things that may hinder them entering into real encounter with one another? The liturgy enabled them to enter into real brotherhood, though packed up with real concerns yet came as brothers-in-mission. With two readings as guiding texts, drawn from John 19:31-37, they reflected upon, to “look on the one whom they have pierced” and from the General Chapter’s address of Pope Francis on 16 September 2017 to “Keep your gaze fixed on Jesus Christ and learn from him how to love with a truly human heart, to care for the lost and hurting members of his flock….to work for justice and show solidarity with the weak and the poor.”
PROCESS CONFERENCE
More profoundly, the activities were done for everyone to get into the process of the entire Conference. It is a process Conference where without so much of inputs and lectures, the Conference is made by the participants, it is seeking wisdom from where they are, from experiences, and the wisdom it could get in view of the mission.
Fr. Chaplin, one of the main facilitators, introduced to everyone the new emerging paradigm which will be employed in the conference processes, represented with the image of the heart. In the end, the Spirituality of the Heart is the new emerging paradigm. The new emerging paradigm seeks to understand wholeness and the interconnectedness of all things. In our context, it is the movement of the spirituality of the heart: Encounter, Intimacy, Conversion & Mission. So that, in leadership where accompaniment is important, it has to promote listening and reflecting back our hopes and desires in the light of the Congregation.
“It must build trusting relationships, using a personal, relational approach that leads to openness, trust and in living the culture of the Gospel. “Listening is always at the source of all great leadership.” Having the four movements of the Spirituality of the Heart and adapting the theory-U by Otto Scharmer, the entire approach would give us a sense of direction from
EGO SYSTEM to ECO-SYSTEM.
It is making spaces for openings;
OPEN MIND, OPEN HEART, OPEN WILL and WILLING VULNERABILITY.
When we reach to the last stage which is willing vulnerability, it is to be open to God whatever He wants us to do, not only what we can carry and assume but also the willingness to take which is auguring us to engage in mission.
