Loving God,
we give you thanksfor our Founder Théophile Verbist,
his first companions and all those
who followed him during these 160 years of our CICM history.
Like our Founder,
many laid down their lives for the sake of the Mission.
Even today, you send us to proclaim and live
this challenging Good News in a changing world.
Send your Holy Spirit into our hearts
as a seal on Jesus’ Mission for us today.
So that this time of preparation for the 16th General Chapter
may be for us a time of joyful hope and daring creativity.
May we welcome this Chapter as a gift
and a commitment to continue Jesus’ Mission.
Make us faithful to our charism of first evangelization
and loving attention to the poor
and those at the peripheries of society.
May the hospitality of the heart of the Virgin Mary,
Mother of the Church and Mother of the Mission,
in whom Your boundless love became flesh,
become the outstanding quality of all our confreres worldwide.
Thus, Jesus will dwell in us as in her Immaculate Heart. Amen.
From June 4 to June 30, 2023
"The General Chapter, legitimately in session, has supreme authority in the Institute. It represents the entire membership" (CICM Constitutions, Art. 109)
Witnessing to the Gospel in a Changing World
“This theme was inspired by the need to deal with the internalization of the fundamental characteristics of our CICM calling and to find ways to live out its demands today within a social, cultural, and ecclesial context that is very different from that of a few years ago.
This 16th General Chapter provides us the opportunity to share how we live out our religious missionary calling: the perception of the world and its implications; the demands that impact our lives and the ties it creates among us; the dreams for the future that it awakens in us; and how it opens our lives to God, to our brothers and sisters, and our world.
Therefore, the theme of the General Chapter places each confrere on a horizon of personal fidelity to his vocation, inviting us to go to the source and essence of our vocation as religious missionaries. In the context of an uncertain and fluid world that is eroding identities, we are invited to come together on the need for a renewed witnessing in view of an authentic proclamation. The Chapter is a journey that begins in the heart of each confrere and continues in the local communities, the Provinces, Regions, and ultimately in Rome.
By sending you the theme now, I am inviting you to begin to work and pray that the same Spirit who guided our Founder will guide us during the preparation of this Chapter”. (Extract of the message of the Superior General of August 8, 2021, to the confreres)
