EDITORIAL

On this second Tuesday of a month of June, the date of our digital appointment, I open this newsletter with my greetings, friendly, warm and full of hope.

While some countries are still in a violent phase of the epidemic, other countries are learning to live with the virus that has "upset" our lives on a personal, family, social, economic, religious level... For the people of these countries, it is "the afterlife" that begins, even if it is not just that...

This newsletter N° 16 does not look like the others: content, very lightened, reduced to my introduction, to the spiritual post of Bishop Maupu, ecclesiastical assistant of LAI, information. Indeed, our time has been occupied by the "manufacturing" of bulletin N°80 dedicated to the International Congress of Pastoral for Elders and the Steering Committee:  you will receive it in a few days.

A very brief newsletter, a simple wink, to tell you that we remain faithful to this appointment on the second Tuesday of the month to which we attach great importance, repeating what I told you in the previous newsletter.

At this meeting are invited about 85 people but we regret that several "forget it"; as I said earlier, I once again stress the urgent need to publicize this newsletter, to ensure that it is read by as many people as possible, as this dissemination is part of your mission as a manager.

Let us give all its efficiency to this tool created long before the health crisis which showed the importance of digital communication; let us make it an effective and active tool of communication and exchange:  the newsletter is the link that embodies our belonging to a movement, it allows us to know each other, it makes known what LAI is going through in your country, it feeds our thinking and encourages us to act to witness the love of Christ of which Bishop Maupu tells us about.

I am counting on you to achieve that goal.

The President

Monique Bodhuin

 POST OF FATHER FRANÇOIS MAUPU

            I write this post after Pentecost and before Trinity Sunday. These two festivals illuminate our lives as believers, they tell us the source.

            Trinity Sunday presents us with a mystery of love. What is important in the Church's teaching on the mystery of the Holy Trinity is not the numbers (one God, three persons), it is above all that divine reality exceeds all that we can imagine: the Father's love for the Son and the Son's love for the Father. The current of love that unites them is the Holy Spirit. From this love, we know that it is the origin of the world: it is a creative love without which we would not exist.

            Saint Charbel Makhlouf, saint patron of Lebanon said:

"Before the beginning was love. By him, everything was created from all eternity; without him, nothing would have existed. From the beginning, was love”. And he adds, "Man was born from the heart of God, and in the heart of God he will return." »

            The Son of God made himself man to let us know this love. By giving us the Holy Spirit, he proposes to live from this love, to let ourselves be filled by it and to share it with our human brothers and sisters.

            May the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost find us available to welcome this love and to bear witness to it.

" See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" (1st letter from St John,3,1)

" That the love you have for me may be in them." (Jesus in the Gospel of St. John 17,26)

Father François Maupu

INFORMATION

24 May World Social Communications Day; on this occasion:

• Pope Francis marked the 25th anniversary of the Encyclical "Ut unum sint" in which Pope John Paul II "irreversibly" confirmed "the ecumenical commitment of the Catholic Church." An "ecumenical vade-mecum for bishops" is published in the autumn
• Pope Francis announced a "special Year Laudato si» to mark the five years of his encyclical and invite to an ecological conversion.
• Pope Francis encouraged young Poles to bless their parents: