The Prior General of the Order of Augustinian Recollects, Miguel Miró, sends a message to the whole Augustinian Recollect family on the occasion of the feast of St. Augustine.
Together with the whole Church, let us gratefully celebrate the feast of our Father St. Augustine whose experience of grace and mercy continue to be felt today through his life and his writings.
Always alive in your children…
Saint Augustine leads us into our inner beings, where we experience the love of Christ. This love moves us to contemplate the ever ancient, ever new beauty, to listen to the Word, to live together in fraternity, to give ourselves in the service of the Church. How can the desire to live and love, to seek and serve be contained inside us? How can we not humbly perceive our poverty before God and how can we not hear the cry of the poor?
With a restless heart
Let us thank the Father because He has deigned to entrust us even today with the mission of living in communion with the Church and sending us to be prophets of the Kingdom of God. He urges us to live the charismatic revitalization of the Order with availability and hope. Each community, each one of us, whatever the situation we are in, we feel called to return to the heart to meet Christ and move forward like Augustine through paths of conversion and evangelical life.
We are aware of our fragility and perceive the restlessness of the heart that drives us to grow in faith and love. Christ infuses us with his Spirit and trusts in those who form this family today, with their diversity of vocations, experiences, cultures and languages. We are not promised a comfortable or easy path, it has never been. Let us remember the words of St. Augustine: “Or do we now have to suffer such extraordinary misfortunes, or something similar, that our ancestors have not suffered? Or do we not realize, when we suffer them, that they differ very little from theirs?.
United in Christ
Thank you, Lord, because in many ways your call to unity of life and coherence, growing humanly and spiritually, is present in our hearts and communities. We love you, but if this love is still little, make us love you more intensely. Thank you because the charism is not a theory or something external, but the action of the Spirit within us; it is the grace and experience manifested in our way of living, praying and loving God and our brothers. We put our hope in your mercy, Lord, and with humility we dare ask you: “Give us what you command and command us what you will”.
Our dreams and wishes
We thank the Lord for the processes of communion initiated in the Order; processes that require an Augustinian and a Recollect conversion that will not be carried out without the help of grace or without the necessary poverty of spirit on our part. Give us availability to move forward on paths of faith, prayer and fraternity, in communion of goods and pursuit of common projects.
In our Life and Mission Project we wanted to highlight the vision of the Order, our desires and our dreams: we want to love and live with gratitude and joy, we want to move forward on the paths of humanity, spirituality and communion. The communion we seek is a process of conversion that knows how to “put the common before one’s own, not one’s own before the common”. Respect for the dignity of people is sacred and that means listening to the different opinions and avoiding self-reliance and disqualification. When we seek communion we start from listening and openness, we engage in dialogue and follow a process of discernment to achieve the common good and seek together the Truth.
“Great are You, Lord, and most worthy of praise! Great is your power, and your wisdom has no measure!” Thank you because your mercy is eternal! We thank you for Saint Augustine and the saints of the Order. Thank you for calling all of us today to “have one soul and one heart directed toward You”.
Rome, August 22, 2019.
Miguel Miró OAR
Prior general