Within the framework of the Encounter of the Augustinian Recollect Family held in Rome, Claudia Diaz, a clinical psychologist and member of the Secular Augustinian Recollect Fraternity of Queretaro (Mexico), shared her testimony as a committed laywoman, mother of a family and professional. Her participation brought a fresh and profoundly human look on the living of the Augustinian Recollect charism in daily life.
With simple but profound words, Claudia stressed the need to bring the charism to daily relationships: “The great challenge is to help us live fraternity”. From her experience as a laywoman inserted in the world, she insisted that fraternity is not an abstract ideal, but a path that is built in the concrete of every day: in the family, at work, in the community.
“We need a close and meaningful coexistence with others so that life may have fullness,” he said. In this sense, he encouraged religious men and women to open spaces of encounter and listening with the laity, to share the charism not only from the teaching, but also from the mutual experience.
“We need close and meaningful coexistence with others for life to have fullness.”
His intervention was especially significant in a context where the Augustinian Recollect Family is seeking to
strengthen their internal bonds and assume with greater clarity the call to live their charism in a synodal and shared way. Claudia recalled that this road is not only traveled from the structures or speeches, but also from the ability to weave genuine relationships, to accompany each other, to learn together.
Her testimony was one of the lay voices that, in this meeting, contributed to broaden the understanding of the charism as a shared gift. Because fraternity, as she herself said, is neither decreed nor taught: it is lived.
A call to all the members of the Augustinian Recollect Family to make fraternity a concrete and transforming experience. An inspiration to continue building community from the everyday.