“With 'Jacinto' we renew our faith”
From October 24 to 28, 2023, in the Diocese of Salto - Uruguay, a rural mission was carried out, organized by the Diocesan Board of Consecrated Persons.
Within the framework of the pilgrimage of the relics of the new Blessed Mons. Jacinto Vera (first Uruguayan Bishop), we go out to meet our brothers, to share and renew ourselves in faith, together with those who are part of one of the Uruguayan peripheries.
The San José parish is the largest in territory, encompassing many distant rural communities, which generates the experience of a certain pastoral absence. For this reason we were invited to walk with the relics of a Blessed who rode throughout these lands, urging us to renew ourselves communally in faith. Certainly we walked in the confidence that Jacinto interceded and accompanied this pilgrimage.
The missionary community was made up of two priests and a religious brother, three religious sisters, a consecrated layman, two catechists, and two young people (one in vocational discernment). We experience the beauty and richness of the diversity of our Church in a beautiful fraternal atmosphere. An intercongregational community (from five different Congregations), international (there were Uruguayans, Colombians, Argentines and Mexicans), intergenerational and intercultural.
Typical of these times, and especially in the poverty of these secular lands, where consecrated vocations are scarce, we find as a profitable path the encounter of our poverty, to enrich each other, "in our frailties God makes us strong." We gave ourselves like the widow's coins: Congregations with few brothers, lay people with a lot of work, but with generosity, and we witnessed how Grace overflowed.
Personally, it was a precious experience for me to be a Pastorcita, which reaffirms and renews me in the option, which I recognize as formative in my conception of the Church in openness to this type of “inter” pastoral work and from which I was enriched with the look from other perspectives and formations. I give thanks for this opportunity, also to my community sisters, who had to assume my commitments in my days of absence, which confirms that the YES are given by an entire community, even if only one goes to the land of mission. Deo Gratias for this time and for the work of God in these lands!
Sr. Gabriela Cavallero, sjbp
