FROM WOMAN TO WOMAN

Knowing and recognizing oneself as a woman is truly a source of energy that generates vitality and the desire to fight more and more to achieve dignity and fulfillment in personal, family and social life.

When this experience is lived in a group of reflection and debate, it revives the awareness that we are inhabited by an inner strength capable of overcoming difficulties and our own limitations, because at the same time the conviction arises that it is possible to make happen what is apparently impossible.

This was the atmosphere experienced in a formation session for a group of formators of Christian communities and parishes of the Diocese of Maputo. They all belong to the ministry of women who, in a model of ministerial Church, assume the task of promoting and giving consistency to the mission of women, based on the synodal sense, always in conjunction with the other ministries.

The reflection helped to awaken feelings that beat in the depths of each one and to manifest and share them among all those present, releasing what is kept “in the heart”.

The horizon of reference was the way Jesus, in the Gospel, dignified the woman who, at that time, lived in a hostile and excluding environment. His encounter with the Samaritan woman, his relationship with Martha and Mary, his attitude with the bent-over woman, with the widow of Nain, with the Syrian Phoenician woman, with Peter’s mother-in-law, etc. In the group work, the reflections spontaneously gave rise to many comments, establishing very evident similarities and comparisons with the reality that surrounds us. In addition, the plenary was accompanied by songs and dances alluding to the theme with much grace and joy.

In sharing the challenges of the reflection, some were directed to the women themselves, because they still need more strength and courage to believe in their own capacity. That is, to conquer and assume greater decision and protagonism within the ministries, and others, to the Christian community itself where attitudes of lack of complementarity and recognition of our identity as women are felt.

The general feeling was that the road is made by walking… and in this task we are all responsible for advancing more and more.

Before concluding, each of the participants, in an atmosphere of prayer, was sent to their respective communities and parishes to transmit and make live the atmosphere of sisterhood lived in the meeting.

Sister Maria Auxiliadora Hernandéz

Maputo – Moçambique