It is really nice to have this booklet in this year 1984, the year of the chapter. We have named it – ‘What moves us’ – spirituality of the sisters of Our Lady –
In these words is expressed what we want with our lives for whom we want to live and how we want to live and experience this together now and in the years to come.
In these words is expressed what we want with our lives for whom we want to live and how we want to live and experience this together now and in the years to come.
In short: That, which heartfelt moves us and time and again set us in motion, to bring the Good News of the Gospel a little bit nearer to people.” So far the letter.
When we name ourselves Sisters of Our Lady of Amersfoort, we express that we sprang from one and the same source, that we will live from one and the same inspiration, that we have in common “What does move us”. It feels good to experience to belong to a bigger whole. ‘Moving on in one Spirit’ means to live from the Gospel, the Good News and, in the words of “What moves us” (daring to belief) being engaged on ‘a world more fully human, in which God feels at home’.
A world more fully human is not a perfect, ideal world. The world is not perfect and also man is not perfect. Fortunately! A perfect world would be sterile and God would not feel at home, and so the same with us. Fully human has to do with making things hum, with living from and with ideals and has nothing to do with being lived. Where there is life, there God feels at home. The old church father Ireneus has already said: ‘The glory of God is man fully alive.’ Someone who is fully alive shows God’s glory, is an image of God. That is rather something! We, human beings, can only shape such a responsibility in unity with one another and in the awareness that God is out for a world fully human. A warm world in which no law ever takes precedence over the person, a world in which people have their heart in the right place. It is about a world where people care for one another, where literally everything and everyone is being listened to, where young and old know themselves respected, where solidarity and involvement are felt.
In such a world you can feel at home, because you are allowed to be as you are, with your shadow, your shortcomings, your petty sides. The human shortcomings are all part of it. That is exactly what fully human means: time and again trying to welcome the good things in each other, over and over again scrambling up and trying to make the best of it. The older we grow in the Netherlands, the deeper the awareness comes home to us that this continuous trying, this actual longing to become a neighbour as the Samaritan is the most important.
During the last general consultative organ meeting in Indonesia the sisters of Indonesia and Malawi have given us the conviction that they will carry on the congregation when the Dutch province comes to an end. It makes us feel good that the same source from where Julie Billiart and all other sisters who identify themselves with Mary ever drew, will continue to be bored in the different parts of the world. To part with, to let go and finally to die in human dignity is less difficult when you trust that the same source of life continues to flow.
Sister Agnes ends her letter with a declaration of the longing: ‘May we more and more discover how our spirituality can become an indicator, a guide, a source of energy of our religious life.’ This wish, in which future and past, destination and source come together in the actual presence, is for us of continuous value. May ‘What moves us (Daring to belief)’ continue to keep us moving in good and bad days.
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