Dear religious family:
Greetings to you from the Monastery of Our Lady of Succor in Tenerife (Canary Islands), Spain.
“Deo gratias… Thanks be to God…”
Unite your voices to ours and give thanks to God with us because we have celebrated the 15th anniversary of our foundation.
On October 1st of the year 2001, the church was consecrated and we took possession of the monastery. We give thanks to God for all these years, for all the blessings that He has given to us and for everything that we could do by His Merciful Providence.
Being the 1st of October the day of the patroness of missions, Saint Therese of Lisieux, we wanted to describe to those faithful who come to the monastery where we are as religious family and what do we do as missionaries. So, for that reason, as a small celebration, we prepared three activities that we usually have: a conference, in this case on the missions, the Holy Mass, and a fraternal gathering (namely, a lunch altogether).
1. We began the morning with a conference presented by Fr. Tristán Gelonch, superior of our house. Its main topic was about the missionary nature of the Church. It was followed by different videos about our missions around the world. Each one of them had a brief introduction given by some of the monks.
We also had the participation of Mother Pia, superior of one of the three communities of the SSVM on the island. She presented their mission here which consists in assisting at a house for Elderly people.
Above all, we want to highlight something that was perceived as we were watching videos involving the difficulty of the missionary life and the diversity of activities of the religious family and was specially remarked by some of the post-conference commentaries: that beyond all what we can do, all what we can suffer, all what we can rejoice, “God always wins in generosity.” This is because we will always receive much more from the Grace of God that acts through those whom we serve or assist and from the joy of carrying the Cross and spreading the Gospel than from what we give and what we usually expect in return.
2. At noon we prayed the Holy Rosary and then we celebrated the Holy Mass. It was presided by Fr. Tristan and the rest of the community concelebrated with around 30 faithful participating.
At the announcements, a proper thanksgiving was given to God for all the graces that we have received through these years, especially for the grace that He gave to the 3 brother priests to build this monastery: Father Juan Jorge Dorta, Father Hipólito Jorge Dorta and Father Vicente Jorge Dorta. Finally, the new destination of one of our members, Fr. Nestor Andrada, was announced. He will be going to the monastery of the Sacred Family at Seforis in Holy Land.
3. As usual, we finished the celebration with a lunch “a compartir”, where the people usually bring traditional or homemade food to share. Meanwhile, we kept on displaying videos from the missions. Most of them expressed how joyful they were on account of the fruitfulness of the Church which they were able to witness throughout the day’s missionary themed activities.
May God keep on sending His blessings upon us so that our monastery may achieve the mission entrusted to it by the diocese: “to be a beacon of spirituality where the faithful could receive the sacrament of penance and spiritual healing”.
We commend ourselves to your prayers.
Fr. Ariel Calandra
