From July 28-31, 2024, 7 Junior Sisters of Adorers participated in a Formation Meeting held at the Mother House of the Congregation in Madrid.

Then, from August 1-10, they will move to the San Ignacio Spirituality Centre in Salamanca, Spain, to  cultivate their interiority during these days. These Spiritual Exercises will be led by Jesuit Father Juan Antonio Guerrero.

The meeting was attended by the Junior Sisters: Huyen Do Thi, Uyen Vo Nu Phuong, from Vietnam and currently assigned in Ciudad Real and Almeria, respectively. Mimose Dauphin, Haitian, and Sofia Gonzalez, Argentinian arrived from Salamanca. Inmaculada Jiménez, Spanish, travelled from Cape Verde; María Reina Zanou and Honorine Afua, Togolese sisters assigned in Cinkassé and Lomé, respectively, came from Togo.

The formation was given by Sr. Gabriela Valot, Consultant and Formation incharge of the General Government of the Congregation.

Programme of the Junior Adorers’ formation meeting

On each day of formation, the Junior Sisters developed an aspect of their consecration, taking into account the Word, the documents of the Congregation and their own daily life. The themes dealt with were the following:

• He called us to be with Him…: ‘With the certainty of having been chosen by God, we joyfully live this belonging to Him and we love Him “with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength”, that is to say, with all our being as women. We educate ourselves to recognise and to free ourselves from all kinds of attachments and dependencies that take away freedom from our heart which, by giving all to Him, is able to exclude no one, in the style of Jesus who loved everyone to the end’ (GPF. 37).

It is not possible to follow Jesus without rekindling our personal relationship with Him. The core of the following does not consist in allowing ourselves to be seduced by a cause, an ideal, but by the person of Jesus. Only in this way do we allow ourselves to be transformed by his Spirit.

• Called to live in community: ‘Above all, he wants us to be sisters in affection and help, in mutual trust and fraternal correction; affection that is sometimes forgiveness or concern, praise or reproach, encouragement or relief. Always family love and a relationship of closeness’ (GPF. 11).

We recognise the need to communicate in depth in order to know each other; to accept and love each other. It is indispensable to move from ‘a life in common to a life in community’ and for this our communities must be paschal.

• Called to be sent: ‘The Eucharist, the Body of Christ, given for all, places us in an attitude of self-giving for the apostolic mission. We carry out this mission in community or in personal ministries, but we are always linked to the community and sent by it’ (Const. 54).

To accompany in liberating action means to involve ourselves in the lives of women. We approach them as sisters and in their lives we discover the suffering face of God.

Each theme presents material for reflection, personal and group work and plenary sessions. The Junior Sisters ended each day sharing Adoration, motivated by the theme shared that day.

During this formation meeting, the Junior Sisters shared moments with the community of the Mother House in Madrid and had the opportunity to get close to some books and writings of St. Maria Micaela, our foundress.

Also, on July 31st, before leaving for Salamanca, they visited the International Novitiate of the Congregation in Madrid. The Novices Ann Mutuku, originally from Kenya, Isis Segura, from Cuba, and Yeraldine Mota, from Colombia, are living there.

Testimonies of Junior Sisters

Huyen is very happy to be able to participate in these formation meetings with other Junior Sisters, especially with those who come from far away. These days are for her ‘a richness to deepen my time as a Junior and she thanks ‘all the sisters who have dedicated this time to us’. Uyen, for her part, underlines ‘the trust and the sharing from the heart’ that they have experienced during these days.

Sofia explains that these spaces help her to continue deepening in this stage she is going through as a Junior Sister, ‘in the sense of fraternity, mission and spirituality’ and that all of this encourages her to continue.

Finally, Honorine sums up this meeting with the words ‘together, on the way’, very similar to the motto of the 31st General Chapter of the Congregation. For her, this meeting also serves to communicate what each one has experienced from the community in which she finds herself. In this sense, she underlines that ‘listening to the others, we realise that we are in the same boat, on the same journey. This renews our strength, we return to the source, which is Jesus, and we continue on the way together’.