Acts of 10th European Assembly of Lay Dominican Fraternities
During the Jubilee Year of our Order and on the way to the next ECLDF Assembly from 4–8 October 2017 in Fatima (Portugal) we organize a kind of Lay Dominican chain of European preachers of hope.
Thinking about our mission as Lay Dominicans, we wondered how to be(-come) a preacher of hope in our world in which we live with so many serious problems of different kinds on different levels:
- We talk about political and economy problems in Europe and in countries nearby Europe: violence, oppression, religious fanaticism, fugitives. Here the connection with the Dominican involvement with Justice and Peace can be strong.
- We also talk about social problems as living together with ‘strangers’, people with other cultures, other religions, and other habits. But we are also confronted with criminality, people in prisons, increasing poverty and loneliness. And we experience in our lives and neighbourhood many family problems, divorces, unemployed people, big debts…
- And there are great worries about the future of the Church, how to change the often bad image of the Church and find new ways to reach young people, to raise our children in faith. How can we tell the story of our Lord in these days and find signs of grace in the world?
How can we be preachers of hope within these problems?
All Lay Dominicans are invited to talk together in their fraternities about these issues and to collect some of the personal stories about their experiences being a preacher of hope in their own lives. Or find pictures, showing your involvement as preachers of hope, with a small explanation and/or prayer.
The Chain: Each Province/Vicariate is invited to share their stories and/or pictures with a next Province/Vicariate, if possible with a meeting. That Province/Vicariate invites the next Province/Vicariate, etc.. For the Chain there is a route with a time table, which can be used.
If every Province/Vicariate send their stories and pictures also to the ECLDF website, we create, doing so, a real chain of preachers of hope throughout Europe until the next Assembly October 2017 in Fatima.
For inspiration: The silence in house of Zechariah.
The contributions to the Chain:
– Nordic Vicariate Dacia (Sweden, Norway, Finland).
– Elisabeth Vondrous from Vienna
– Ireland
– United Kingdom (England, Scotland & Wales)
– Vicariate Lithuania, Latvia (Letonia) and Estonia
– Province of Russia and Ukraine
– Province of Poland
– Province of Slovakia
– Czech Province
– Province of Teutonia
– Province of the Netherlands
– The „young“ Province of Southern Germany and Austria
– Province of France
– Vicariate of Hungary
– Province of Malta
– Province of Spain
– Vicariat of Bulgary
– Province of Portugal
More about the Assembly Fatima 2017.
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