As the Mass will close the day, the morning begins with a plenary session. It is time to work on the conclusions of the Assembly’s discernment, in which the delegates want to gather the main points of their discernment’s outcomes, and the aspects that still need to be addressed in the coming months, with the goal of sharing with all members a written reference of what has been worked on during the Assembly over these days. The Assembly is consultative and serves to guide the governance toward a final draft of the Statutes, which will be approved in November.

Long sessions have also been dedicated today for delegates to openly share the intimacy of their experiences of forgiveness, their need to reconnect with memory, history, their own mistakes, the need to ask for forgiveness, to acknowledge wounds, and to re-experience the mercy of the Lord, that resurrection is possible in the life of the Church.

Father Ghirlanda has accompanied today’s plenary sessions. In his warm words, he recalled the times he was made an “honorary member” of Regnum Christi. With words from the general director, Father Eduardo, the last session of the day was concluded before heading to the closing Mass and dinner held at the International Legionaries of Christ College in Rome.

Father Eduardo Robles-Gil, L.C., presided over the concluding Eucharistic celebration of thanksgiving to God for the extraordinary General Assembly of Regnum Christi. At the start of his homily, Father Eduardo said: “We finish by thanking God our Lord for the first session of the extraordinary General Assembly of Regnum Christi. It is not the first time we have gathered all the branches […], but in a way, it is the first time that the four branches of Regnum Christi have gathered to try to see a matter of this kind, in which we want, before the Church, to declare that we are one.”

“We thank, first of all, God our Lord in this Mass, for all His graces, all His protection. We thank the Church, the Pope, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life represented by Father Ghirlanda, S.J., who has been with us for eight years. I would especially like to thank those who have participated more directly in this process. And above all, the lay members of Regnum Christi who leave their work, leave their homes, leave their families, and come to this place that is also their home,” he added.

Then, he reflected on the community dimension of the Church reflected in the lives of the apostles and the early Christian communities. He particularly highlighted the example of Saint Peter who said: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God” (Jn 6:68-69). “Saint Peter responds, from his simple humanity, in the first person plural: ‘we have believed.’ He speaks and responds for others. He answered ‘we’ because he felt and was part of a group that believed and lived the same. But also because Jesus Christ already saw the apostles as a group that each one had called […]. We are a spiritual family. We have believed that this is our home. I invite you to ask the Lord to confirm us in this conviction, which will make Regnum Christi a wide house, with its doors open, so that it may be a meeting place of God with men, a family of apostles who motivate and encourage us to holiness and to apostolate,” said Father Eduardo.

For more information, you can visit the website www.rcstatutes.org.

Pictures of the day can be seen here.