Peru on Becoming One

CJ and IBVM at the Parliament of World Religions

On the Path to Becoming One at meeting in Slovakia

Wednesday 29th March to Saturday 1st April, the extended ERC spring meeting was held in Slovakia. Five CJ provincials Sarah, Cosima, Monica, Pilar and Agnesa met together with three IBVM provincial leaders Elena from Spain, Barbara from Ireland and Jen from Britain. The meeting was a great step in the Becoming One process. The provincials spent a fruitful time in a small Slovak spa town called Trenčianske Teplice working together, sharing experiences of mission and ideas about a possible future collaboration and formation of new members. Equally, they had the opportunity to relax and walk and enjoyed some wonderful quality time together. On Thursday, the European CJ novice director Johanna from Vienna joined the group and presented on current formation in novitiate.
The group was very grateful to God for this fruitful meeting and the days spent together.

Members of the IBVM and CJ leadership teams are taking steps on the path to Becoming One, visiting provinces and regions, and taking time to meet communities of sisters.

IBVM Visit to CJ England March 2023

Becoming One – Mary Ward sisters in Manila reflect together! Chris Burke ibvm and Bosco Lee Kum Mee CJ

Chris IBVM: Two older women, previously unacquainted, with different perspectives and experiences, from two expressions of Mary Ward’s charism, used to different foods, arriving from north and south, living together for ten years, moving house five times, over that time sharing community with more than twenty younger women from different countries, and providing hospitality for many more…

What we hold in common is our charism, our commitment to a God calls us in love, gratitude for each other’s different gifts, a sense of humour and a friendship that has grown and sustained us!

Bosco CJ: We have all have widened our horizons- hearing about different ways of doing things, different perspectives on religious life, hearing from provinces with different histories. Life together is rewarding. Our future calls….Come and see!

Becoming One meeting in Italy

“It was a real joy for us to spend time with our CJ Italian, Romanian and German Sisters in the North of Italy, recently.

The welcome, hospitality and friendship we experienced from the communities of Rovereto and Vicenza, where we stayed, warmed our hearts. We are well and truly on the way towards greater connectivity and bonding”.

Fionnuala Lynch IBVM and Patricia Stevens IBVM

This video features Berna Fahy IBVM a member of the Dalkey community, Ireland. She has always wished for the CJ and IBVM to be ONE. She is genuinely full of joy that it is now so close and grateful to God that the Spirit is moving so fluidly among our sisters.

The Mary Ward Family Recent History

VIDEO ON BECOMING ONE – Noelle Corscadden IBVM and Jane Livesey CJ

The Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM) and Congregatio Jesu (CJ), currently two different congregations, are becoming one. As Mary Ward women, we are determined to accomplish and celebrate this process that will lead us to the union of hearts and minds.

We are living our process of union deeply, taking time to know each other, sharing time and conversations, and praying together to find our common ground.

From CJ General Congregation 2022

Jane Livesey CJ’s response to IBVM petition for fusion 23rd August 2022

Noelle and all our IBVM sisters here in Nemi, standing for the worldwide Institute

I stand here with you as the representative of the CJ General Congregation, which is at this moment and for the days of its duration, the highest authority in our congregation.

All of us here and all who are with us today via livestream have walked – or perhaps rowed – with all of you on a long journey down the river in front of us, whose story you have told so creatively and movingly, a river whose origin is shared and whose history has so much that is shared, not least during the past few years. This river, charting our history, poses one question to us all – What, in our time, are the Holy Spirit and Mary Ward asking of us, inviting us to?

As we receive your petition, we pledge ourselves to receiving and discerning it in the context of our shared charism of the Just Soul – with freedom to refer it to God, with justice to all of you and to the mission, with sincerity and integrity, knowing that this will bring all of us to the felicity of our shared “estate” as daughters of Mary Ward.  In doing so we will honour the generosity and sacrifice your petition has asked of all of you and pledge ourselves to whatever generosity and sacrifice the Holy Spirit and Mary Ward ask of us in responding to it.

Jesus say Amen.

Noelle’s Opening Words on Becoming One at the IBVM General Congregation October 12 2022