A few days ago, returning from the Holy Week missions in the rural parish of Sinincay (Cuenca) — an experience led by the Colegio de la Asunción of Guayaquil, Ecuador, which brought together a diverse group of young people and adults from different pastoral ministries —, we shared in community a great certainty: the mission continues when we return home, in our own daily life. It is there that the challenge lies in living consciously and coherently, without being swept away by the rush of adult "obligations" (which is sometimes very difficult). In the midst of a thousand things, it is easy to lose one's center and not be attentive to that constant passing of God, which is almost always discreet, small, and very everyday.
This daily life is often marked by an invitation that seems harmless, but which conceals a permanent demand: the invitation to "vibrate high and always be positive." However, when one fails to meet this standard, there is a risk of feeling discarded. There is a deep fear of living the present from a place of fragility or diminishment. In response to this, Mother Marie Eugénie proposes a perspective that springs from the Gospel: living the present moment from the Mystery of the Incarnation. It is an invitation to encounter the person in all their nuances, embracing with tenderness even that which does not shine and may make us uncomfortable.
Through all that has been lived, today as a laywoman of the Assumption, I have gradually discovered that my mission is not something static, but a path that moves through different spaces and runs through my entire life: from my work environment, friends, and family, to my shared mission community; nothing is dissociated. TO BE THE PRESENT is a decision that springs from love, from daily choices, and from the commitment to that Kingdom which is built in the everyday.
To think that "I am the present and not the future" is the commitment to contribute my small stone within my sphere of action. Over the ten years I have worked as a real estate agent, I have learned that my work is not merely transactional. My challenge is to recognize that behind every contract there is a story and people who inhabit it. Almost without intending to, over the course of some years, my workspace has been transformed into a place of mission: I accompany during Christmas novenas that have a beautiful ecumenical dimension. In that same space, we find ourselves — people of different faiths and non-believers — united by a need to search for "something more"; it has been a place that reminds us that God dwells in the diversity of our searching.
I do not give this response alone. My strength and my confirmation rest in my sisters of the Voces Asunción community. There I have discovered that it is in community life that one is constantly made and remade. Living the present also means being available for wherever we are called and for those who call us.
The joy of living the present is not something ethereal; it is a deep joy that springs from service and encounter. It is a joy of Resurrection that knows that new life also passes through the cross and through our fragilities. Living the present means accepting that not everything is aesthetically perfect, but that in our own humanity we can always choose to give a little more love. As our provincial told us, when we took up the cross of the Camino de Vida: "the journey is only just beginning."
Alexandra Jurado Alarcón
Province of Ecuador, Mexico