Fernando Tapia Miranda, priest
Responsible for the Pan-American Fraternity of JESUS CARITAS
The Pan-American Assembly of our Priestly Fraternity was realized in Cuernavaca, MÉXICO, in February of 2016, at which time was proposed the formation of an international Team “to convoke a team of four persons to realize a specific study about the identity, finality, contents and manner of realizing the Month of Nazareth, that will permit writing a document with the Common Orientations, respecting the particular cultures of each country. This document will be presented for approval in the next General Assembly” 1.
The International Team accepted this proposal and in their meeting of October of 2016, decided to solicit Manuel Pozo (Spain), Jean Michel Bortheirie (France) and Fernando Tapia (Chile), to form this commission and write a document about the Month of Nazareth.
The three accepted this charge and worked from our places of origin, studied the articles from the bulletins JESUS CARITAS about the Month of Nazareth, collecting experiences and materials elaborated for former Months of Nazareth from the different countries.
Finally we united in Almeria, Spain, from February 20-24, 2017, to realize our work. Manuel Pozo received us in his parish Our Lady of Monserrat, with a great spirit of fraternity. We initiated our daily Workshop with Eucharistic Adoration and Lauds and finalized the evening with the Eucharist, together with the parish community.
We three have had experiences in receiving and giving (directing) the Month of Nazareth, so that the work was very fluent, participative and very awarding. The principal Inspirational reference was for us the text approved in the International Assembly realized by our Fraternity, in Algeria, in 1982, titled, “The Month of Nazareth” and that has been incorporated in the last editions of our Directory.
The principal destination of our work is for the Regional Responsible Persons and their Teams, as well as the Coordinators of the Months of Nazareth and their teams. The First Part contains the general Orientations in relation to what is the Month of Nazareth, its Objectives, the criteria for the realization, the profile of the Coordinator of the Month, the levels of its realization and the development of a typical day.
The Second Part also (the longer part) contains the themes of reflection, questions for the personal and group work, and the themes for the meditations of the week of retreat, with some exercises for the personal prayer. They should be a help for the speakers at the hour of preparation of the reflections as well as the meditations of the retreat.
We give thanks to God for the possibility of collaborating in this work that is so important for our Fraternity and we place it in the hands of the International Team that charged us with the work.
Almeria, February 25, 2017.
Reference:
1. Pan-American Assembly, document “Building together our future. Proposals of growth for our Fraternities”, February 2016.