Vocational Week • Carina belongs to the Augustinian Recollect Youth (JAR). This movement invites youth to live, experience, celebrate and share the Augustinian Recollect charism with other young people in a prayerful, communal, missionary, Marian, and Augustinian way.
My name is Carina, and I am a young woman who dreams of achieving many goals, with the desire to help other people and be a person who develops differently in each stage of life. I celebrate a life full of joy, love, and faith.
In the Augustinian Recollect Family, present in my Parish of Our Lady of Pleasures in Guaraciaba do Norte (Ceara, Brazil), I have learned to be merciful and compassionate with others and especially with myself first.
The Augustinian Recollect charism has been present in the environment of my ecclesial community for almost 25 years, since 1999. First, the Augustinian Recollect religious came the contemplative nuns, then the Secular Fraternity and the Augustinian-Recollect Youth.
The Augustinian charism has been sowing the call to charity in a straightforward and fraternal way, especially towards the most disadvantaged, through charity.
As for me, being part of the Augustinian Recollect Youth has been a unique experience and has helped me to empower myself in my inner life, spiritual life, and human and community relationships.
Augustine of Hippo has taught me, among other things, to know and accept myself, experience true intimacy with God, and be part of a community.
I admit that at first, it took me a bit to understand how I would live this spirituality as a young, active person, bombarded by many other offers, possibilities, and easily accessible worldly satisfactions.
However, with the help of the community and the importance it gives to fraternity, everything became logical, more transparent, and accessible. The JAR Group, our advisor, the two Augustinian religious communities (male and female), and the members of the Secular Fraternity support and encourage each other. It’s easy to see that St. Augustine’s intercession benefits all of us.
The saint of Hippo left a message for us young people that I consider very important: that we follow Jesus and witness his love to fulfill his commandment of love in different ways. Thus, we can do so by helping those who need it most, loving those who find it difficult to love, and constantly reminding everyone of the joy of being faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.
