As part of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Society of St. Teresa of Jesus, we offer the Teresian communities a formative itinerary that, beyond commemorating a significant date, aims to provide a time and space to delve together into the core of our vocation and mission in the Church and in today's world.
This anniversary is a privileged occasion to reread in community the charism we have received, putting it in dialogue with the concrete contexts in which we live, with the daily challenges of our mission and with the great cries and movements that today traverse humanity. The calls of recent General Chapters-especially the most recent one-invite us to look at the world from a horizon of community identity, recognizing ourselves as part of a humanity in movement, marked by forced human mobility, inequalities, social wounds and the yearning for an evangelical transformation of reality.
The itineraries are designed as materials at the service of the communities - of sisters, of the Teresian Family and of lay people who share the charism - to facilitate a process of prayerful and discerned re-reading of our spirituality, of our way of looking at life and of understanding ourselves in mission with others. In this key, each meeting will have previous materials for personal preparation and a central moment of community meeting, lived from the synodal methodology of spiritual conversations, where the most important thing will be to listen to each other, talk, discern and let ourselves be questioned by the Spirit.
It is an itinerary that prepares us to listen to where the Lord is calling us today to actualize the charism received 150 years ago. The eight themes that articulate the itinerary run along the great axes of the Teresian experience and the history of the Society. The first is based on the conviction that the history of the Society is woven from personal stories lived in a vocational key, inviting us to reread our own life as a place where God continues to write his call. The second deepens in the centrality of Jesus in our life: to know Him, to follow Him, to love Him and to make Him known and loved, as the inalienable core of our identity. A third theme emphasizes fraternal and community life, understood as an essential experience of following Jesus: sisters and companions on the way who share the same life and mission project. The fourth theme opens with the prophetic implications of the following of Jesus today, recognizing that religious life is in itself a prophetic sign, called to live with evangelical radicalism in a world marked by profound contradictions. The fifth theme strongly reflects the intuition that new situations impose new duties on us, inviting us to a religious life capable of reinventing itself, reimagining itself and dreaming differently in order to serve a changing world. The sixth section delves into the experience of Teresian synodality, understood as a "bond of union of many hearts," present since the origins of the charism and lived by Enrique de Ossó as a way of associating persons and groups around the Gospel and the spirituality of Teresa of Jesus.
This journey also highlights how, in the Society, the Teresian charism takes educational form: education as a path of transformation, not so much for directly changing the world, but for forming people capable of transforming it.
The itinerary culminates with a look at the ultimate goal of the Society: to collaborate in the regeneration of a wounded world, being an evangelical presence where life cries out for care, justice and hope.
This itinerary is intended to be, in short, a space of grace and sending, which will help us to return to the sources, to take care of life and mission, and to continue updating with creative fidelity the charism we have received as a gift for the Church and for today's world.
You can find these itineraries in the PARTICIPA section of the website!
