MESSAGE FORM FR. GENERAL FOR THE "UNIVERSAL CLARETIAN MISSION DAY" CELEBRATION.

Rome, August 22, 2007

Dear brothers and sisters:

This year the Universal Claretian Mission Day celebration takes place within the plans we have drawn to outline the Bicentennial of the birth of Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Founder of our Congregation.



To remember Claret is to place ourselves in a missionary key. We have wished to express this with the main theme to preside all celebrations during the Bicentenary: “Born to evangelise”. This is the heart of Claret’s life. This must be also the heart of any person who tries to live a life inspired by his missionary charism.

This mission has a concrete translation for each of us according to the place where we are. There we find the challenges that come to our way every day. That is the place where we have to answer to the missionary call of Jesus: ”Go and announce to everyone that the Reign of God is near”. Now, this mission has also a universal dimension which unites all of us in the joyous effort to make present the Reign of God in this concrete moment of our history. The solidarity among all peoples, and among those who serve them with their missionary vocation, has its roots in the very Heart of the Father who loves all his children. To feel coresposible in this mission of witnessing to the love of God for all peoples, widens our horizon and awakes our creativity to search for ways that can express this communion that unites all of us.

The Universal Claretian Mission Day objective is to channel in a concrete way this sense of communion that makes us to look beyond our own context and makes us feel as our own the needs of others.

This year, the General Mission Procure, besides attending other projects and coordinating many more sent from the Procures of the Provinces and Delegations, is inviting us to take the challenge of providing adequate formation structures to some places where the Congregation has been established recently. Particularly, to build a Claretian Novitiate house in Nairobi (Kenya). I encourage you to motivate people we are in contact with, in our parishes, centers of education and many other ministries, to support these projects that try to help the formation of good missionaries.

During this year of the Bicentennial of the birth of Saint Anthony Mary Claret we thank the Lord for the new missionary vocations and commit ourselves to accompany them in their formation process so that the Claretian missionary charism may continue being the force that makes grow the missionary commitment of our communities.

Thanks for your collaboration. Fraternally yours,

Josep M. Abella, cmf.
General Superior