PARAGUAY, by Johana y Horacio Chávez •
The initiation retreat day for the Family League in San Lorenzo took place on Friday 20 May. From very early in the morning, the coordinators and active married couples prepared for the meeting, with a beautiful and welcoming display to receive the new couples that the Blessed Mother has called.
The programme followed the structure for these retreats that have been held in various places. At the start of the talk, there was a short comedy that is already a tradition at the initiation retreats: it shows conflict in a marriage that ends with the intervention of an actress playing Mary. She gives them some guidelines to follow the path she offers: she educates, transforms and sends them as instruments into a new evangelization, forming holy families.
Ten years of experience worth it
The first talk began as normal, given by a couple that has been in the movement for ten years. They made the participants laugh and interact with one another with their testimony and their experiences as a couple. They were able to break the ice and focus on the audience during their presentation. The commented on the reading of the day: Mk 10:1-12 which says that a man and woman are no longer two but a single flesh that God has united, and man cannot separate. Providentially in this moment, the Blessed Mother is calling the new couples who want to be a family like the Family of Nazereth.
A new man who can be an agent for change in Paraguayan society
During the retreat a child kept running among the audience and seemed to be very much at home. This young child is growing in a place where Mary will educate him so that perhaps one day he will become a new man who can be an agent for change in Paraguayan society.
The Family League in San Lorenzo diocese wants to be a family of families that, with Mary, walks into the newest of times.
Original: Spanish. Translation: Sarah-Leah Pimentel, Cape Town, South Africa
