THE NAZARETH COMMUNITY

Its Life. Its Program of Education for the Ministry.

We recognize that in order to fulfill our mission, it is essential that there be a central community, consisting of priests and candidates preparing for the ordained ministry.

To respond to this need, we have formed the Nazareth Community. It is made up of members of the communion who are priests and candidates for holy orders, who share a common life, prayer and mission.

This community constitutes the heart of our communion because we, its members, feel called to embody with particular intensity all the elements distinctive to our spiritual and apostolic identity. By giving our lives totally to this calling, we recognize and accept the responsibility interpret and exemplify this lifestyle.

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For us, ministry should be exercised in a style of complete engagement, listening to the community that is to be served with an open attitude. Perpetually in the attitude of discernment, we are charged to take care that the pastoral ministry is always carried out well.

The minister is called to see himself as a pastor and a sign of the unity and communion among all the members of the community, devoted to serving, not to being served, and disposed in every moment to give his life for the community, following the example of the Good Shepherd.

For the education of candidates to the ordained ministry we have established the “Angélico Melotto” Catholic Ecumenical Center of Studies (CECESAM). Through its curriculum, students are enabled to satisfy all the requirements of humanistic and theological education. In addition, particular emphasis is placed on mission and ecumenics so that the candidates not only achieve academic excellence but also develop a keen sensibility for ecumenism and missionary activity and know how to strike up a creative dialogue with the contemporary world.  The goal is for them to find new pathways that enable them to respond both from the living tradition and also with freedom and originality to the challenges facing people today.

Aware that becoming educated for the ordained ministry is in some sense a private matter, something that happens within each candidate himself, we also make a concerted effort to the end that every candidate may achieve:
* maturity and human and emotional wholeness
* a firm experiential and personal spirituality
* awareness of his individual personal gifts and the ability to accept and develop them for building up the People of God
* a total identification with the gifts, mission and spiritual, apostolic identity that are the traits of our communion ........ * a solid humanistic and theological education, the latter firmly rooted in the living tradition of the church, enabling him to understand and to face the challenges confronting the contemporary world from the Christian perspective with openness and creativity.

When candidates have attained these objectives, they are prepared so that, if and when God may have so indicated through the process of gradual discernment and of their will having becoming completely ready, they can accede to holy orders, as members in and for the service of our communion.

In order to achieve these educational objectives, we keep the following principles in mind:
            *  Spiritual education and life is carried out in a close collaboration between the
Nazareth Community and the various communities it is called to serve.
            *  In determining the suitability of the candidates, the Nazareth Community carries out a process of discernment; in addition, the opinion of the communities that it is called to serve is taken into account, making an effort to offer the means whereby the candidate’s faith and personality can, from the resources of his own character and nature, become mature and whole, ready to be put to the service of God and of the faithful, in a spirit of truth, openness, pluralism, responsibility and freedom.

We take as our basic education model the example of Jesus when He chose and educated the apostles and inaugurated their missionary work.

We, the signatories of these Minutes of the proceedings wherein the Ecumenical Catholic Communion of “Santa María del Nuevo Éxodo” was founded and its foundational and constitutive precepts were approved, bring the Nazareth Community into being and, in our capacity as constituent members, form part of it. In the future, those who feel called to be incorporated into our community must first have a thorough knowledge of the features of our spiritual and apostolic identity and an eagerness to share them; they will have to undertake a process of discernment in order to ascertain that membership in our communion is indeed the path for them to follow in responding to the Lord’s call; and they must be ready to live out all the aspects of our spirituality and mission and, in common with us, to live them with particular radicality.

When the requisites mentioned above have been met, the candidate must express to the community coordinator his intention to become a member, and in each specific case the plan of study and the steps that have to be taken for him to become incorporated into the community are spelled out.

CONCRETE FORMS OF THE MISSION OF THE NAZARETH COMMUNITY

Although the basis of our spiritual identity and of our mission pervades our personal attitude and lifestyle and, for that reason, they are to be seen in everything we do, we also believe that our apostolic call is to commit ourselves concretely to at least to five specific realms of action:

Above all we proceed from the conviction that our spiritual identity and mission comprise elements that are common to every Christian vocation; we also have the conviction that putting these elements into practice is essential for implementing the poverty of spirit required by the Lord and making manifest in the world the salvation He has brought. For these reasons we are committed to spread abroad by every means available these aspects of our spiritual identity and mission, and in this way stimulate the development of new communities of many kinds, which may become a part of our communion.

We also promise as a primary apostolic activity to promote unity among all Christians and to seek out those who suffer any type of marginalization whatsoever. We feel called to do this, first, by means of prayer; second, by organizing meetings and activities that may promote relatedness and understanding among communities and persons; third, by being open to test and experience principles that, without violating our identity and convictions, may help us develop a greater openness, appreciation and acceptance of others; and, fourth, by boldly seeking means to establish networks of communication and communion with all those who for whatever reason are or feel marginalized.

We feel called to seek means of creating spaces and opportunities such that every person, regardless of his or her personal, moral, religious or cultural situation, may experience the compassion and love of the Lord. For as a good Father, the Lord wishes to show through us that he is always ready to welcome a son who returns, to give him affection and love, to dress him in the new of clothing of grace, to put on him the ring of the recognition of his dignity and the restitution of his rights to participate fully in life, and to revel in festive celebration over the joy of finding him who was lost.

We think that a trait of our every apostolic action ought to be that of encouraging the whole People of God to participate in it actively and deliberately. In this way, the dignity that we all have received at baptism and the gifts that we have all received from the Holy Spirit, being blessed with abilities and co-responsibilities in the advance of the church, are concretely recognized, and we are empowered to avoid every kind of clerical division whatsoever.

We feel specifically called to explore new horizons and new forms of response as we face the challenges that today’s world sets before the Gospels. We are convinced that in order to actualize this call we must ourselves be deeply rooted in the living tradition and maintain our identity. Nevertheless, the living tradition, understood in its most genuine sense, is not something that is locked in the past, but, on the contrary, it shapes a communion living from its roots, and puts into motion a deep, creative, liberating dynamic.