A group of Brothers of St John of God from the European Provinces have
taken part in a fraternal encounter on 3 and 4 April. The Order's Europe
Commission has been promoting a reflection process on ‘How to be a Brother of
St John of God in Europe today’. This initiative emerged from a European
Working Group of Brothers on our lifestyle, which came up with this dynamic
"process". As such, it has a starting point and a methodology that
calls on us to listen to each other and to share our lives and circumstances.
The aim is to offer all the Brothers the best possible opportunity to
participate, to enable every Brother to make their personal contribution. To
approach this objective, a communitarian, then intercommunitarian and then
interprovincial dynamic was adopted. The purpose of this two-day regional encounter
was to pool the outcomes of the dialogues we had previously engaged in, and to
listen to one another’s thinking. We are not looking for any "magic
solutions", or to come up with any lofty definitions. All we want is to
share practical guidelines for living our lives in a way that can help us to
perceive and discern the most appropriate way we should be living as
Hospitaller Brothers of St John of God in our European environment today.