AgustinosRecoletos.org will celebrate its virtual vocation week 2023 from April 21 to 30, in line with the celebration of the Conversion of Saint Augustine (24th) and the Day World Prayer for Vocations (Sunday 30). This is the preview about what we offer you.
Every year, AgustinosRecoletos.org takes advantage of the celebration of the Conversion festival of Saint Augustine to locate its Virtual Vocational Week, an informative, pastoral and specific testimonies whose final objective is the promotion of vocational culture for all public.
It is not the only offer that the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine makes to create a appropriate environment for reflection, dialogue, celebration and the joy of knowing that we are all called to follow Jesus and, in our case, in the style of Augustine of Hippo and the secluded movement.
Other elements will appear these days, such as the poster (which we will present tomorrow with more detail), a vocational video, which we talked about in this same presentation, and the Canta y Camina (Sing and Walk) magazine, whose April and May issues also tends to be vocational.
In addition to the two publications with liturgical comments on Sundays 23 and 30, which will have a special vocational tint, every day of the next week we invite you to be keep an eye on these posts:
- Monday 24: “The affective process of the conversion of Saint Augustine”, an article from the Augustinian Recollect Enrique Eguiarte in which we enter into how the history of Augustine is summed up in that desire to love and be loved that led him to Christ.
- Tuesday 25: we present the book “Beatings of the Restless Heart”, by the Augustinian Recollect Fabián Martín and recently published by the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine. In addition, it will be officially presented the following day, Wednesday the 26th, at six in the afternoon, in the Parish of Saint Rita in Madrid, Spain.
- Wednesday 26: on this day we begin various testimonies that come to show how that experience of Saint Augustine of which we spoke on Monday has been transmitted to people in different contexts and situations. The first testimony will be that of Carlos María Dominguez, Bishop of San Rafael, Argentina: “In community life I discovered how I had to follow Jesus.”
- Thursday 27: the second personal testimony leads us to the contemplative closing of a monastery of Augustinian Recollect Sisters. It will be Elva Leticia, a nun, who will tell us about her vocation: “In the monastery we lived as was said of the first Christians: “Look how they love each other.”
- Friday 28: this day the testimony is choral and takes us to just 400 years ago. On April 28, 1623, the first mission of the Augustinians Recollects left the Philippines to Japan. The Augustinian Recollect Pablo Panedas will narrate us this story full of martyrdom vocation and authentic testimony of fraternity in the midst of the most unthinkable difficulties.
- Saturday 29: on Saturday we will travel to Guaraciaba do Norte, in Ceará, Brazil, where we will listen to what Carina, a member of the Augustinian Recollects Youth (JAR Youth, wants to tell us: “Augustine of Hippo has taught me to know and accept myself, to experience intimacy with God, to be part of a community”.
- Sunday 30: This day we will have a double publication. First we will prepare together the celebration with the liturgical commentary of Sunday IV of Easter, World Day of prayer for vocations and Day and collection for native vocations. After that we will listen Maricela, from the Secular Fraternity of Getafe (Madrid), we will listen to her testimony as a lay Augustinian Recollect: “Enthusiasm, affection, simplicity, humility, tenderness and teachings summarize our being community in the Secular Fraternity”.
Video
The Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine also offers you a new video, which brings a space for reflection on the path towards interiority and the decision-making that each person faces.
Five different people (a lay person, a postulant, an Augustinian Recollect missionary nun, an Augustinian Recollect nun and an Augustinian Recollect priest) will offer their own testimony of that journey inside where they discovered Jesus and the community.
The video was recorded at the end of March in the surroundings of Monte del Pardo in Madrid and we have with the collaboration —for which we are grateful— of Gabriel Uribe, Álvaro Morell and Sara Morales, a group of friends who together with Celia Salamanca, director, have wanted to collaborate so that our readers live this Vocational Week.