Enlarge and open your life to the work of the Spirit (January 27, 2019)

“Enlarge and open your life to the work of the Spirit”
Verbum Dei Family Assembly, Tagaytay

On Sunday January 27, the Verbum Dei Tagaytay community held its 1st Local assembly. Following the mass celebrated by Fr Tony Pegon, SVD and concelebrated by Fr James McTavish, FMVD, the participants began the assembly with some opening remarks by Sr Grace, the local responsible of the Tagaytay community.

Thereafter followed guidelines and a time of prayer. Separate guidelines were given for the kids & teens group. The theme of the guidelines was to grow in the desire to be led by the Spirit, to make this Verbum Dei Family mine, my own. We were reminded of our mission as Verbum Dei “to be at the service of the Word of God.” And to allow our hearts to be enlarged – “enlarge the space of your tent” (see Isaiah 54:2-3) and as a missionary family to be able to “build itself up in love” (Eph 4:16).

An input was given by Sr Rana sharing the results of a survey of the VDMFam in Tagaytay and it shed light on the activities they found helpful. Sr Gaby and Sr Lupita challenged us to dream for our community and to strive to reach out to the whole of Tagaytay and beyond!

After lunch, various groups such as Teens, Youth, Adults and Couples met together to project together the year ahead. They then presented a symbol of their group’s wishes and needs for 2019. Time was spent explaining various ministries and committees and the participants had a chance to indicate which area they would like to serve in. A presentation was given by James on the Verbum Dei National communications project. He emphasized that the Church sees social media as the new pulpit. He also reminded us of the words of Pope Francis in his message for World Communications Day 2019 when he wrote “love always communicates.” Where there is fire and conviction, one will look for ways to share Christ, especially in social media, the so-called digital continent, where so many, especially the youth are gathered. As Verbum Dei we are also called to announce the Good news on Facebook, Twitter and in the digital world. After this he also gave a short introduction to our NGO called Friends of Verbum Dei.

The overall fruit for the Verbum Dei Tagaytay community was the challenge for each one to be pro-active in building up the Verbum Dei Family.

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From the WordNews team