Vocation & Mission

The document written by ERI, published and delivered at the Fatima International Meeting 2018 to all team members, serves as a guide and guide to ERI’s reflections and work in the coming years. All members of the Teams of Our Lady should read and deepen these words so that as a couple and as a team they can follow the course of the ENS.

 

Introduction

The changes that are taking place in our world today reinforce the urgency of discerning and facing the signs of the times with hope and boldness. The Teams of Our Lady throughout the whole world and gathered together on the occasion of the 12th International Gathering at Fatima does not turn away from this challenge.
In 1988, on the occasion of the 6th International Gathering in Lourdes, the International Responsible Team (ERI) had already wanted, in a document entitled “The Second Wind”, to analyse “the urgent needs” of the couples at that time and, as a response, to suggest some ways of encouraging the creativity of team members and avoid the Movement running out of steam.

After thirty years, it is evident that the reality of married and family life had not stopped evolving and that the environment in which couples live today no longer has a lot in common with that of 1947, the date of the proclamation of the Charter, or those of “The Second Wind” of 1988, even if the fundamental question asked by Father Caffarel in 1939 remains: “How to love as Christ loves?”

In a materialistic world, marked by atheism, it seems that Christian couples, who experience the richness of marriage through their ecclesial and sacramental life, can no longer be satisfied to be 4 witnesses to the value of this conjugal model. In a society which no longer accepts a system of pre-established truths, it is essential, if we do not wish to fail our apostolic mission as baptised people united in the sacrament of marriage, to demonstrate and justify by our actions how the characteristics of Christian marriage are
understandable, commendable and beneficial with regard to human reason, even when this is not enlightened by faith…

Dowload the Document