Everything comes to an end, even the very good things. The Third Year Session 2025, closes its doors at the same time as the Year 2025. We would like to share with you some of our experiences of these last few days.
After a wonderful experience of the 30-day retreat led by Father Thomas, a Jesuit from India, we continued the journey with a few more themes from the session.
Before saying anything about the themes, we would like to express our great joy at the wonderful opportunity we had through the retreat experience. We can say with conviction that it is an experience worth having. We are very grateful for this beautiful gift that deeply renews us in our relationship with God, with others, and in our mission where we are sent to live the 5th week, that is, in our daily life. The celebrations of the birth of Christ, experienced with Christians in different parishes, were a source of enthusiasm that had a positive impact on us.
On 26 December, we took up the theme of Leadership-Discernment-Synodality in an online session with Father Elías López, a Jesuit from the Canary Islands. He took us to the very heart of the experience of Synodality, which is nothing other than inner conversion to live in discernment as communities renewed according to the Gospel. We were invited to revisit what was expressed in the General Chapter document so that it might become a reality in our daily lives. It was a call to live our conversations in the Spirit.
On 27 December, we welcomed Sr. Mercedes to speak on the theme of the culture of communication. This was another invitation to live in the digital world with discernment, truth and witness. It was also a time of practical training in the world of artificial intelligence.
On 28 and 29 December, it was Sr. Rekha's turn to take us to the heart of the Gospel of St. John, to help us experience the beloved disciple in our deepest being and through our encounter with God and others. We have seen, we have heard, we have believed, and we are ready to experience this deeply in our daily lives and, above all, to be active members of the Johannine community, the people of the new covenant, children of God through the action of the Word made flesh.
The next day, with Sr. Lerma, we began preparing for the post-session, that is, ongoing formation. It was a moment of heightened awareness of our identity, which we must maintain and nurture for greater freedom in our being. We were further invited to ‘be who we are as fully as possible,’ to grow in discernment and constant awareness of God's action in our daily lives. At the end of her talk, we were set on our way to draft our personal projects.
The beautiful celebrations on 31 December and 1 January allowed us to welcome the new year together in all its beauty, crowned by the celebration of Epiphany, where the ‘queens’ of the day, together with the animation team, gave us the joy of a beautiful cultural, fraternal and creative celebration. It was also a moment of thanksgiving. We offer them our sincere thanks.
On 5 January, it was time for the official farewell, where we experienced a beautiful sending ceremony by Sr. Rekha and a blessing by Fr. Guillaume, our parish priest, during Mass. He expressed his joy at having an international community that bears witness to the universality of the Church. In addition to the blessings received from the priest and the entire community gathered together, we offered our various personal projects, the fruit of the session, for the next three years. We bless God for the wonders accomplished in our lives during these two and a half months.
We take this wonderful opportunity to express our deep gratitude to Sr. Rekha and the entire General Council for all their efforts to ensure that we experienced a time full of grace, blessings, powerful experiences and a deepening of our identity as Religious of the Assumption. Thank you to each one of you for your generous gifts, your care and, above all, for the love you have given so abundantly. Our gratitude goes to the community of Auteuil for their hospitality, care and attention, which enabled us to enter peacefully into the experience.
Our heart-felt gratitude to each of our provinces, which gave us this beautiful gift of the 3rd Year. Thank you to all our sisters and to each of the sisters in our communities who agreed to take on our various responsibilities so that we could be fully immersed in the experience. May the graces we received be yours for the greater glory of God.
On behalf of the Sisters of the Third Year,
Sr. Françoise, Sr. Marie Rachel and Sr. Marie Bénédicte