Eugenia Alvarez

I am Venezuelan, and I was born on August 16, 1980.  I am the youngest of six children.  I was consecrated on August 21, 1999, and currently I am in the community in Paris.  We are eight consecrated women of six different nationalities, between the ages of 26 and 78 years old.  It is a community in which God is sought from our diversity.

I was an assistant in the pre-candidacy in Mexico, and afterwards I worked for many years in ECYD in western Mexico City and Chile.  My last year in Chile, I was also the director of the youth section.  For the last five years I have been in Paris as the director of the community and studying spiritual theology at a Jesuit college.  Besides being the director of the community, I am also a territorial councilor.  I coordinate the catechesis in our parish, and I support the activities for adolescents and youth and have begun to accompany those who participate in retreats according to the methodology of St. Ignatius.

When I was in Chile, I had a very strong experience of communion among all the branches of the Movement. In 2008, a group of students from the Cumbres School were involved in a bus accident in which nine of them died.  They were between 15 and 16 years old.  Many of the girls had been in NET and in ECYD.  Several of their moms were very supportive of ECYD and active in the school.  After the accident, a very beautiful community was created among the consecrated women, the chaplains of the school and the families.  This made it possible to live the situation as a family and from a perspective of faith.

I would like us to live these assemblies in a climate of profound discernment and with an attitude of listening to the Holy Spirit who manifests Himself where he wants and how He wants.  We need to let him be the one who shows us the steps to be taken.  I would ask that we open ourselves to the action of the Spirit.  May we live listening to God interiorly and in our sisters, in order to seek together what God wants from us in this historical moment.