Spirituality of collaboration and networking

We understand that the spirituality of collaboration consists in feeling, tasting and becoming aware that the mission entrusted to us is carried out with others. It is about building an “inner knowledge” of the Lord and his sending as challenges that call us to link ourselves with others in order to discern, negotiate and channel capacities that dynamize and facilitate greater fruitfulness.

With pertinent and continuous mediations (context analysis, action plan, joint actions, conversation and discernment of the mission among companions, instances of articulation, etc.), spirituality is transformed into a bonding mentality and habits in the institutions, that is, that we always think and build in an interdependent way.

In the Province of Venezuela, the regional Ignatian apostolic networks are a means of sensitizing, cultivating and developing a collaborative and networked way of proceeding in the mission, with Ignatian spirituality as its source and activator.

Six networks of articulation of the various Jesuit works that operate in the country have been created with the purpose of being an instance for common apostolic discernment – regional, strengthening regional human talent (belonging/identity, spirituality, installing capacities), facilitating joint apostolic actions of local and common interest among some works and energizing the articulation to execute projects, joint programs, indicated by the national directorates of the works.

There is a document on Collaboration and Networking that guides the formation, management and functioning of the regional networks. In fact, at its core, at the first level, there is a network coordinating team composed of a lay coordinator, a lay assistant and a Jesuit who serves as spiritual and apostolic accompanier of the local process. This is the animating, convening and mobilizing team of the network.

At the second level, the coordinating team brings together the coordinators and directors of the Jesuit works in the regions to form the network; this is the level of dialogue, discernment and horizon building, joint planning and common action in the region.

And at the last level, according to the horizon and common action, the network convenes and articulates with the rest of the collaborators of the works and with other organizations and civil and ecclesial networks of the region, to carry out the horizon and common actions agreed upon by the network within the framework of the Apostolic Plan 2021 – 2026.

Thanks to the Pedro Fabro Program of the CPAL, in this year 2022-2023, we were promoting a national process of strengthening the vocation, commitment and spirituality of collaboration through 17 batches of spiritual exercises, lasting 5 days, in which 341 collaborators participated, accompanied by 15 Jesuits and 12 lay people. Before and after the retreats, the participants discussed notes, additions, ways of praying, rules of discernment and experiences of apostolic discernment. The fruits of this project will now be cultivated through spiritual exercises in daily life for the collaborators who are most concerned.

We end consoled and grateful for the fruits in the province and the alliance with the Pedro Fabro Program of CPAL. May God continue to bless us with his joy, courage and hope in our hearts.

Article written by Robert Rodríguez, SJ. Coordinator of the CPAL Collaboration and Networking Commission and originally published in its web