{"id":5936,"date":"2014-04-01T23:09:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T23:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catholicnewsagency.com\/news\/fraternas-living-and-serving-with-the-total-security-of-god\/"},"modified":"2014-04-01T23:09:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T23:09:00","slug":"fraternas-living-and-serving-with-the-total-security-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/catholicnews\/2014\/04\/fraternas-living-and-serving-with-the-total-security-of-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Fraternas: Living and serving with ‘the total security of God’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Los Angeles, Calif., Apr 1, 2014 \/ 05:09 pm (CNA<\/a>).- At age 19, Maria Teresa Alva was already involved with the Christian Life Movement in her native Peru, when she met members of the Marian Community of Reconciliation, also known as \u201cFraternas\u201d \u2014 laywomen who have consecrated themselves to God in order to serve others in the world.<\/p>\n

\tFounded in Peru by a consecrated layman in 1991, the Fraternas take on the commitments of obedience, celibacy and detachment from temporal goods in order to be fully available for the apostolate, centered on working with youth, families, the needy, the evangelization of culture and the protection and the dignity of life. Currently, members of the community serve in several dioceses of South and Central America, Australia, England, Italy and the U.S. (California, Colorado, Connecticut and Texas).<\/p>\n

\tAlva felt there was something special about the Fraternas. \u201cI was really touched about their joy and happiness,\u201d the now 37-year-old told The Tidings in a group interview with three other community members at the recent Religious Education Congress.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI started to ask myself and ask God what he wanted for me,\u201d said Alva. \u201cI knew I wanted to give my entire heart to God, not only a part, all of it. So, with a lot of signs, I realized he was really calling me to this kind of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tSince joining the community, she has served in Chile, Ecuador, Peru and arrived two months ago to join three other Fraternas living together in a house near St. Victor Church in West Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\tSusana Nieto, 36, the director of faith formation at St. Martin of Tours parish in Brentwood, says her high school participation in the Christian Life Movement\u2019s ministries to the needy and to youth also sparked the desire for a deeper commitment.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI felt that God was calling me to consecrate myself somehow,\u201d said Nieto. \u201cJust by opening my heart to the will of God, to see what it was that God wanted me to do and also knowing the signs that he was putting in my path, I realized that this was my vocation [to join the Fraternas],\u201d which she did at age 20.<\/p>\n

\tShe said the authenticity of the Fraternas impressed her. \u201cThe joy that each member was able to spread and share just by living \u2014 by doing daily things like cooking, going shopping, praying, leading groups \u2014 it was that joy, their own witness and testimony, that brought me closer to Christ. I saw how they were so happy and fulfilled living their own vocation that it put down my own [fear] barriers of discovering my vocation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tLike other Fraternas, after living three years in a house of formation, Nieto was sent to a community \u2014 in her case to a town close to where she grew up in Lima, Peru \u2014 and she started her apostolic ministry, which lasted for two years. She was then sent on a mission to the U.S. in Denver, serving there eight years working with youth before arriving in Los Angeles nearly four years ago along with fellow Fraternas, Brazil-born Luciane Urban, executive coordinator to Archbishop Jos\u00e9 Gomez.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cSometimes,\u201d noted Urban, \u201cwhen we tell about our vocation and we say \u2018I gave my life to God and I don\u2019t know where I\u2019m going to live, who I\u2019m going to live with, what I\u2019m going to do, or how long I\u2019m going to be in one place,\u2019 people ask, \u2018How can you live with such insecurity?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\tShe explained it as a paradox of faith. \u201cOn a human level, it seems so insecure, but it\u2019s totally the opposite,\u201d said Urban. \u201cWhat greater security can we have than being in God\u2019s hands?<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI think that\u2019s one of the things that gives us a lot of joy and that helps us be able to live here and meet the people and the friends we make in one place, and then go to another place or change ministries or do something that we have never done or thought of before. If God is asking us to do it, he\u2019s going to give us the grace. What seems so insecure in the eyes of the world, it\u2019s the total security of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tPeruvian native Rossana Goni, 47, who was a journalist with Catholic News Agency before joining the Fraternas at age 26, points out that the community\u00a0 (canonically approved as a society of apostolic life) was born after the Second Vatican Council, which called for the laity to be more active in evangelization.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cIn our community, the emphasis is on being a lay person and being active and evangelizing \u2014 to go out and be there in the middle of the world doing something,\u201d explained Goni, the community\u2019s superior in Los Angeles. She notes that Pope Francis is calling today for a similar type of outreach with the new evangelization.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cWe want that \u2014 we want to go out and tell people that God is alive and he loves you and he wants you to be happy,\u201d said Goni.<\/p>\n

\tShe noted that, although members take a vow of celibacy, that doesn\u2019t mean the consecrated laywomen give up motherhood. They become spiritual mothers, helping people on their path to holiness. \u201cI\u2019m a spiritual mother to many, even people older than me,\u201d noted Goni.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cTo be a spiritual mother,\u201d she added, \u201cis extremely fulfilling. We were born for that. We\u2019re women; we don\u2019t lose that [desire for] motherhood. We live it fully.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tPosted with permission from Angelus: The Tidings Online<\/a>, official publication of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n

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