We all have some difficulty to believe it but the fact is that we are nearing the end of the present Tertianship program. After the Ministries of the Christmas Season, spent by all ten tertians in the mountains of the Cordillera, in the Vicariates of the Mountain Province and of Kalinga-Apayao, January has been dedicated to an intense but still “sapiential” and “spiritual” reading and study of the Constitutions. The fact that we are studying our Institute while the General Congregation is meeting in Rome adds a lot of interesting questions and insights to our sharings.

In early February, the group will go out again for the last experiment of the Tertianship, which is called “elective” because each tertian is invited to choose whatever type of experiment he would like to have in order to complete his Tertianship journey. The choices are quite varied: two tertians are returning to the place of their Christmas Ministries for pastoral and retreat work, two will be joining the prison ministry (with the hope of being paroled or released after three weeks), two will do some chaplaincy work in hospitals, one will join the community of L’Arche near Manila, one will do some campus ministry at the University of the Philippines, one will pursue his Islamic journey and go into interreligious dialogue, and one will even go to Japan for some ministry among the Chinese Community of Tokyo.

And then, the sad (?) end will come on March 8, with the “dispersion” of the community and the return of each one to mission.