General Chapter, Friday 10 August

Morning prayer

We started the day with a morning prayer at 7.30 hrs, prepared by the Dutch delegation. The theme was “Love for his brothers”.  We opened with the song “Where true love is dwelling, God is dwelling there”. For the readings we used some markable quotations from the “Rules of Conduct”, written by our co-founder bro. Bernard Hoecken. They are addressed to superiors but in fact to all the FIC brothers. One is about a superior who must be a father and a mother. It says:

“Nothing is more necessary for the purpose of fruitfully governing a community than love. Ah, if only every superior, or whoever he may be who is charged with the direction of souls, understood this well and was imbued with it. An ordinary love is not sufficient for a superior: along with the love of a fatherly heart he must also have the deep tenderness of a mother.”

During the intercessions we had a special bidding prayer for bro. Anton Karyadi, who celebrated his 57^th birthday today. Thus we concluded the prayer service with a sonorous ‘Happy birthday to you’!

General Council Report

During the first session we concluded our discussions about chapter 9 of the Report: “Conclusions”. We gave our comments on the areas of attention the General Council had formulated as the most important conclusions of the whole Report. They referred to the following subjects:

-        The quality of our religious life: The function of religious life in this present time is to be a voice and prophet to the world, to be witnesses of God’s love, and not just a labour force.

-        The ongoing formation of the brothers should be put in the fore. “Not only during our formative years, but throughout our lives we should be open to development, formation, and deepening the meaning of our lives.” (FIC Constitutions, art 115)

-        The spirit of unity and internationality. The challenge for us, especially the provinces outside The Netherlands, is how to keep alive the spirit of unity and internationality of the Congregation, despite the fact that the unifying elements of the Dutch brothers is getting less visible.

-        The proper use of modern technology. Those modern technologies on the one hand can be very helpful for our personal development as well as our apostolate, but on the other hand can bring us to an inappropriate life style and behaviour.

-        Working with all people of good will. What we mean by people of good will includes all stake-holders of our work, such as parents of our students, local government, church officials, alumni / old students, sponsors and supporters of our mission, as well as the society at large who somehow benefit from our apostolate.

The chapter members underlined these areas of attention, also as points for the new General Council.

Herewith we concluded our discussions and deliberations on the whole General Council Report. We thanked the outgoing Council for their hard and serious work in trying to implement all the resolutions of the Chapter of 2012, for their teamwork and for the way they lead the Congregation during the past six years.

Process of election

During the second session the chairman bro. Martinus Handoko gave an explanation of the election process of the new General Council in successive steps, referred to as option one. There was also on the table a proposal of the Dutch delegation, that depicted in one of the steps a different procedure: option two. We talked about the pros and cons of both options and after a period of silence and individual reflection we voted in great majority for option one.

Reflection time

This reflection time was planned for Friday, afternoon and evening, and for Saturday morning - 11 August. The theme of the reflection was that of the General Chapter: “We consecrate ourselves to be witnesses of God’s love”.

Father Mardiatmadja SJ invited us to recollect the very personal experiences of our call and religious life as a brother who believes in God and tries to be a witness of His love. What are our memories? What was stored deep in our hearts? What are the experiences of our faith life?  And: which mission Jesus gave to us?  How did we overcome crises in our life, periods of doubt, questioning, disbelief, suffering? And how have we been supported by our fellow-brothers, family, friends and significant persons in the society? Reflecting and meditating we tried to listen to what the Spirit revealed to us. After a substantial time of  personal reflection we could share our experiences with another Chapter member.

At 19.00 hrs we came together for the Eucharistic Celebration, prepared by the Dutch delegation. It was the feast of Saint Laurence. We sang: “Grant to us, o Lord, a heart renewed. Recreate in us your own spirit, Lord. The first reading was taken from Corinthians 2: God loves a cheerful giver. The Gospel reading was from John 12: If a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it yields a rich harvest. We concluded with the closing song: “Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices.”

In the evening we continued our reflection. Supper at 20.00 hrs and the recreation at the end of the day were in silence. And in this silence we went to bed after a fruitful General Chapter day.

Bro. Frans School FIC