Luanda (Angola). Queen of Peace Preprovince (ANG) shares the Lenten experience of Don Bosco Scholastic Complex in Kakuako, Luanda, accomplished as an Educating Community in preparation for Easter.
In thinking about the proposal for Lent 2023, the pastoral team reflected on the opportunity to offer female and male students an integral conversion, with particular attention to ecological conversion. In this direction, the ecological group Laudato Si’ has been activated as a first step to encourage and accompany their companions in the separation of waste and by renewing the containers for differentiated collection.
Furthermore, the daily moments of welcome were marked by ecology, seeking to help the students tune the “ears of the heart” to the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth. In the last few weeks before the term exams, students in grades 6-9 of the Secondary School were then offered ecological retreat afternoons.
The four ecological retreats made consisted of two main moments: viewing and reflecting on the docu-film “The Letter”, and sharing and experiencing the ecological Via Crucis. They were deep afternoons in which the students were touched by the testimonies of the film and understood that they too can and must do something to protect nature and human life.
During Holy Week, teachers and educational collaborators had the opportunity to experience a morning of ecological retreat in which, on the basis of a reflection, everyone was invited to examine their ecological awareness and to choose concrete gestures of change. Sr. Idalina Mareco, FMA, Laudato Si’ Animator, accompanied the reflection. The sharing among them was very rich.
This ‘Easter’ experience was an opportunity to address the theme of ecological conversion as an Educating Community, concretely and with different age groups, with the hope that “the fruits will make the difference”!
“We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all” (Pope Francis, LS 14).
Source: salesianasangola
