A Kind of Home Coming

The past few days have been quite full. Friday night the Missionary Cenacle Apostolate and I were also accompanied by six soon to be novices in our brother community. Five of them are from Columbia and one from Central America. They are receiving an orientation to Novitiate as well as getting acquainted with the country in which they'll be living for at least the next year.

We had a wonderful conversation on Mission, and especially how Mission for us in the Cenacle is lived out in the providence of our everyday life. This was such a wonderful insight of Father Judge. He noticed early on his priesthood that when people returned to the Church or to a deeper life with God, it was generally not through a priest or a religious, but through a neighbor, a coworker, or perhaps a friend. He said, What is meant by the providence of his everyday life? You meet certain people, you have contact with certain persons or places, your life has a certain circumscription, God overshadowing and intervening in all. This is called your daily providence. It is yours indeed; it does not belong to anybody else. Like the skin on your face it is yours personally, nobody else ever had it, nobody else ever will have it. Everyone of us is a center of a particular bit of Divine Providence.

It is so true, when we arise in the morning, we don't know what awaits us, or whom we'll encounter during the day. One thing is almost certain, no two of us will have the same interactions during the day.

There was much discussion about all the opportunities each one of us has to be a missionary in our everyday life.. Being with our lay branch, the Missionary Cenacle Apostolate always inspires me, and it was great to be back in Temascalapa, a kind of coming home for me.