Sunday, September 29, 2019 our Charlottetown Diocesan Council of Development and Peace – Caritas Canada hosted our annual Fall Action – education Workshop. Our guest speaker was Luke Stocking of Toronto, Deputy Director of Public Engagement and the face of Development and Peace's leadership team for the Ontario and Atlantic regions. Luke's presentation was informative. It inspired me and blessed me with renewed energy to support the work of D&P. By the enthusiastic reaction of the seventy-five or eighty people present I believe they went home feeling as I did.
Almighty and everlasting God, we give you thanks
for the gift of life, for Marguerite Bourgeoys’s vocation,
and for the spiritual heritage she bequeathed to us 400 years go.
We glorify your Name and we recognize your active presence
in the works of her daughters and sons throughout the world.
“My sister, my brother, my friend, the hand that takes from us tomorrow will make things grow without asking us our opinion.”
With these words from the song of the Saguenay, I invite you to live this official opening of our festivities. I feel that the opening of the year of the 400th anniversary of the birth of Marguerite Bourgeoys and of the 50th anniversary of CND presence on African soil merits a special time of preparation.
On this occasion or at this time of preparation, we will ask the Lord, through the intercession of Marguerite Bourgeoys, for the grace of living this time of preparation in love, reconciliation and mercy and of finding a new missionary fervour, like that of our founding mother, in order to set the world ablaze with the contagious fire of love and faith.