Final Document, Christian Life Community (CLC) in Australia
National Assembly, Naarm, Victoria, 19-22 July 2024
Our Hope-filled Path: 2024-2028
Before and during the National Assembly, Christian Life Community (CLC) members in Australia considered the fruit of the past four years and courageously named significant challenges. We identified this as a time of letting go and of renewal; a time to draw wisely from our tradition and to be open to new possibilities and structures. We trust that the Spirit provides the charisms that we and our church need currently, to read the signs of the times and respond to God’s call.
From our prayerful discernment several flagstones for our hopeful path forward emerged. These include:
- new possibilities for making connections within CLC at various levels
- embracing synodality
- collaborating within our capacity with others in the church and in wider society
- expressing solidarity
- openness to new possibilities and structures, and
- an outward-looking disposition oriented to transformative action in our CLC community and the world.
Image by Susan Daily
Our Hope-filled Path: Priorities 2024-2028
Priority 1: Forming our members and sharing Ignatian Spirituality
We offer personal formation and communal discernment, in the Ignatian Tradition.
The gifts of discernment, attentive listening, and the quality of our presence are at the core of our activities.
We share the gift of Ignatian Spirituality to support lay leadership and action in the Church and the world.
Priority 2: Caring for God’s Creation
We embrace our responsibility, personally and communally, to love and care for all creation, seeking to respond in a spirit of hope informed by our faith.
Our approach of integral ecology acknowledges that the ecological, social, and economic crises are interconnected and cannot be solved separately.
We continue to develop and implement our Laudato Sì Action Plan.
Priority 3: Walking with the Excluded
We follow Jesus imitating his special concern for the poor, marginalised and excluded.
Our responses include both addressing the immediate needs of people and working to transform causes of exclusion and injustice.
We commit ourselves in particular to walking with, engaging with, and supporting First Nations people in their quest for recognition, truth telling, justice and reconciliation.
Rather than setting new concrete targets, while we wish to keep those priorities we have, we want to live them out in a more nuanced way that allows for greater listening and responding to the Spirit.