The recent meeting of the General Secretariat of Missionary and Ministerial Apostolate has established new guidelines to reinforce pastoral action in the ministries and missions of the Augustinian Recollects, making these true “prophets of the kingdom”
The Life and Mission Project of the Augustinian Recollects, elaborated in 2016 after the General Chapter, establishes that the Recollect religious should be “missionary disciples”, in line with what Pope Francis indicates. In order to reinforce this idea, the members of the General Secretariat of Missionary and Ministerial Apostolate met with the presidents of this secretariat of the provinces at the Talavera House of Prayer in Cebu (Philippines).
During this meeting, which lasted several weeks and dealt with different issues, the Augustinian Recollect Ideology of Pastoral Ministry and the document of Orientations for the Augustinian Recollect Missionary Apostolate were presented. These are the two documents on which the General Secretariat has been working in recent months and which sets out the guidelines to be followed in ministries and missions. The Augustinian Recollects, like the Church, must be in permanent mission, in exit, open to the option for the poor, to the family, to life and in favor of creation. In this work, a shared mission is necessary, which in areas such as education is implanted but not yet in parish or missional ministries.
Matters such as the updating of pastors and missionaries or the formation of the laity are important matters in the Secretariat. Being “prophets of the kingdom” is another objective. This translates into commitment to the work of solidarity or the care of the common house. For this reason, those responsible for the Ministerial Apostolate of the Order of Augustinian Recollects have proposed a guide for the ecology of parish communities, in line with the encyclical of Pope Francis ‘Laudato Sí’.
The Augustinian Recollect religious who participated in this meeting have planned for 2019, counting on the Extraordinary Missionary Month of October 2019. For this purpose, materials will be published. In addition, in the previous months, it is intended to encourage prayer for the missionaries in the communities. In a joint action with the International Solidarity Network ARCORES, the Secretariat proposes to promote in the parishes the volunteering in mission areas of the Augustinian Recollects.
The meeting was also attended by the Prior General, Miguel Miró, who thanked the General Secretariat for its work and involvement. Miró insisted on the need to be creators of communion in the mission and in the parishes. To this end, the Orientations for the Augustinian Recollect Missionary Apostolate must be put into practice.
