“GROWING UP TOGETHER” 

INTRODUCTION

     We, the young Brothers of the Holy Family Congregation, have met in Campanero’s property (Minas, Uruguay), in order to share our life, to look into our today’s Holy Family Bothers life and to imagine how the future Brother has to be. 
     We have shared brotherhood moments praying, knowing each other, enjoying folkloric expressions, eating, talking, and playing during our free and sport times. In all of this we have joyfully experienced our Family Spirit of Nazareth. 
     We have thought about our charism, our prayer life, our community life and our mission. We have shared our different ways to think and to feel. We have became rich in the dialogue. We have found some common certitudes, challenges and questions. 
      We have shown our experience and our inner self in order to look together for the main inspirations that the Holy Spirit has sown among us. 
      We want to engage in living what we have found these days. As well we want to express mainly to you Bothers, Fraternities of Nazareth members, and also to you lay people that share our charisma, simply the result of this event of grace, in order it enlightens our life with the Gospel. 

EXPERIENCE OF GOD 

Certitudes:
-   We are convinced that God is near, available in Nazareth. Therefore in our simple and humble life we will be available to God.
-  We are convinced that Brother Gabriel’s experience of God, especially his trust and giving himself to Him, enriches and sustains our experience of God. 

Challenges:
-    We want to be always aware of God’s presence in our lives. We wish to be witnesses from this experience.
-   We want to share in community the experience of God.
-   We want that all the Brothers be available, approaching people, humane people, listeners and companions, and people that live the Family Spirit of Nazareth. 

Questions:
-   We wonder how to be renewed continuously in a real experience of God.
-   We wonder how to share among the Brothers and with the other people our experience of God and our spirituality. 

PRAYER 

Certitudes:
-   We are convinced that the ecclesial, common and personal prayer is and essential and basic aspect of our religious life.
-  We are convinced that prayer is a place for meeting God and persons and for discerning God’s will. 

Challenges:
-  We want to find a balance between contemplation and action. For this we need joint prayer and life: praying from life and bringing our prayer to life.
-  We want to work at an apostolic spirituality that points towards searching evangelic criteria for brighten up our day to day decisions, attitudes and relationships.
-  We want to be prayerful people. For this we need to work at our personal, common and ecclesial prayer being creative people and putting in a first place personal meetings instead timetable, structures and observances. 

Questions:
-          We wonder how to pray in a creative and acculturate way as Holy Family Brothers. 

BROTHERHOOD 

Certitudes:
- We are convinced that our brotherhood deep his roots into the Trinity. God-Trinity demands us to accept that each one is different from the other Brother. Therefore our fraternity is a gif: God call us to be in this world Bothers for every one.
- We are convinced that we built up our fraternity giving each Brother our best. This required from us to deny ourselves, to avoid prejudices over the other Brothers, to know ourselves in order to do not transfer our problems and blockades, to love one each other and the other people, and to welcome the people as they are. 

Challenges:
-  We want a brotherhood life based in being each Brother transparent, seeker of a deep and sincere dialogue, and help for accepting our conflicts in order to overcome them.
-  We want a relationship that helps us to grow up as Brothers through correcting brotherly, discerning together, welcoming, having gestures, being happy and considering Jesus Christ our Brother and every Brother as if he were Jesus Christ.
-   We want not to be afraid of more affectionate and human expressions in our community life. Every Brother has to be the most important, even over structures and observances. 

Questions:
-  We wonder how our common life could be more LIFE, brotherly and fecund.
-  We wonder how to carry out the fraternal correction that we consider something important. 

MISSION 

Certitudes:
-  We are convinced that Jesus Christ entrusts his mission to the community. Therefore the community evangelizes.
-  We are convinced that our mission has a meaning if we work for the Kingdom of God and his justice, putting Jesus Christ in the middle and living his choices.
-  We are convinced that our apostolic life has to be an expression of our fraternal and prayerful life. 

Challenges:
- We want that each Brother feels co-responsible with the Church’s, Institute’s and community’s mission. For this we consider essential to be insert in the Local Church.
-  We want that all the Brothers be involved as community in the vocational work.
- We want to develop all the capacities of our charisma looking for new possibilities that could embrace the educational, cathequetical and liturgical fields attending the needs of the human people. We support new missionary presences of our charisma in other countries.
-  We want to discern in community which answer we will give to the present needs of the human people. 

Questions:
-  We wonder how welcoming in a better way the poor people in our mission.
- We wonder how to move forward in the way of the shared-mission, in order to surmount the pure working-together.
- We wonder how to accompany the vocational work in the provinces with few candidates. 

CONCLUSION 

      We thank God, communion of Persons, for having gathered us and spoken us to our hearts during these days. We are grateful to the General Administration for having called, promoted and accompanied this Meeting. We are grateful to Saint Joseph Province (Uruguay) for its readiness to welcome us and to look after us. We are grateful to all the Provinces for their presence and participation. We finally give thanks to all the people that contribute in making possible this Meeting.
      Is our desire to invite each community and Brother to welcome the fruits of this Meeting in order to continue together growing up. Let us continue walking together with joy, resting us on wells that quench our thirst (Jn 4) and healing the wounded people that are lying beside our way (Lk 10). 

                God, which is near in Jesus, make every Brother more approaching, humble, happy and human people.
                Jesus, Mary and Joseph bless our fraternity, enlarge it and always enlighten us with their wisdom.
                Let us be united in JMJ. 

                                                                                                                                      Young Brothers

Minas - Campanero  (Uruguay)