Becoming a mature, joyful and missionary Religious Dehonian

It’s been a blessing from God to have such an amazing experience of our final vows preparation in Indonesia. In the end, all the conferrers from Vietnam, Hongkong, Indonesia and India were able to say that “We have found the Joy”. It was the joy of coming together, moving together and Having all our activities together as joyful Dehonians. We found Joy Stronger when we put together our joy from varied cultures. And our joy was rooted in the heart of Jesus; the heart that Fr. Dehon has offered us to have. We felt a sense of unity and brotherhood as Dehonians. We were welcomed and treated well in all the communities we visited. We had unforgettable memories in the provincial house where we stayed the maximum days for our final vows preparation. There were various inputs by our beloved priests from Indonesia. The main theme of our preparation was “BECOMING A MATURE, JOYFUL, AND MISSIONARY RELIGIOUS DEHONIAN”.

We had beautiful sessions by Rev.Fr.wahyu SCJ, Fr. Sunardi scj, Fr. Susanto scj, Fr. Kusmaryadi, Fr.purwanto scj, Fr. Cusmaryanto scj, Fr. Candido scj. Everyone had their best input to enlighten us to be mature, Joyful and missionary religious Dehonians. They spoke about “the ways to build community, Leadership, Human maturity and Healthy relationship, The experience of God and Discernment of vocation, Moral Values like love, justice and courage. We were also given some beautiful inputs on Sacred Heart Spirituality and Dehonian Charism. And at the end, we had useful sessions on moral and theological reflection on marriage and family life followed by the family ministry on Faith education, Communication, and counselling. All these sessions were there in our minds. But we could feel more of that concretely when we began to move around to see how we Dehonians in Indonesia have concretely put these teachings and values. We were happy to see the Parish Church, Schools and Universities as part of the Dehonian ministry in Indonesia. It was inspiring us to see our Dehonian priests and brothers involved in their active ministry. We visited almost all our Dehonian parishes and all of us were introduced with the traditional round of applause. We also had an opportunity to visit all our SCJ communities with the agape Meals at the end. It wasn’t the end of our visit to places where Fr.Dehon’s Charism was alive. We were extremely happy when we had a beautiful time with the youths who study in our Dehonian School. We noticed that the care and efforts put forward to maintain the School to educate the students were amazing. We noticed people feel proud of being educated in our Dehonian schools and there is an invitation from the Indonesian province for all over Asia to join this active ministry in a greater manner.

Our visitation continued to our own retreat house located on the high mountain to seek strength from Jesus, while we stayed overnight in the novitiate house. We got together for a while with the novices and made our Dehonian Celebration beautiful. To our surprise, we reached another retreat house run by the Sacred Heart Sisters to End our final vows preparation by complete rest with the lord. It was such an enriching experience for us. And it was possible because of dear fr. who guided us prayerfully and meaningfully. We had various types of meditation and reflection while some of us continued our reflection even on the sea beach. Finally, we concluded our retreat with a cultural program; expressing our joy of finding ourselves mature and joyful Dehonians. So, we thank our Indian District superior Rev fr. Rinu Jose SCJ and his councils and all the provincials of SCJ belonging to other countries and especially to Fr. Andreas Suparman SCJ and his council in the Indonesian province for their hard work and unforgettable hospitality made our journey useful and fruitful.

Thank you…