Living Water launches 50th anniversary celebrations

The Living Water Community (LWC) will have a year of celebration leading up to their golden jubilee on March 13, 2025. During the year, activities will be held and blessings which the Community has received from God shared.

“We want to share the blessings of God as we have done for 49 years, we want to do it in a special way this year,” LWC co-foundress Rhonda Maingot said at the 50th year celebratory launch and Mass on Wednesday, March 13 at the LWC Chapel, Port of Spain.

She invited everyone including individuals and parishes to give thanks and bless God for the goodness in their lives. “If we look, we will see it,” she said.

In the homily, chief celebrant Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon said if there is one thing that has brought the Community to the present, it is the gift of discernment exercised over the years.

Discernment would not have always been easy but through the “tension boiling inside” the Community moved from prayer ministry to ministry to the poor, then prophecy led to establishing “institutions” such as the Duncan Street [Ava Maria Caring Centre] and LWC hospice.

“A lot of ministries of the Community were born out of discernment,” Archbishop Gordon said. He urged the LWC to safeguard its spirit of discernment.

LWC has its “paradoxes” with Maingot being called to teach the world to love and Rose Jackman, co-foundress, called from the Rosary Monastery after being cloistered for 16 years, to teach people contemplation and the fruits of contemplation.

“Two calls, as opposite as they are, became the dynamism that kept the Community real in the last 50 years. Rose’s gift of contemplation allowed Rhonda and all of us who entered early to come not just into the Church and into the Community but come into understanding… who God is.”

Citing from the Gospel of John 5:17–30 “I seek not my own will, but the will of him that sent me”, Archbishop Gordon said, the “fruit of contemplation became like leaven through the Community”. The paradoxes of the Community allowed it to stay alive and fresh and respond, “in every age and stage”. While there can be temptation to harmonise, their charism is a gift.

Referring to the “great Catholic AND”, words used by Fr Timothy Radcliffe OP at the 12th General Congregation of the Synod last October, he commented, “The Community is active AND contemplative, the Community works in social justice for the poorest of the poor AND in the pastoral, the Community has business practices that are really clear and transparent, AND it is contemplative”.  The question and challenge ahead for the Community is how to safeguard “the great Catholic AND”.

Archbishop Gordon stated, “to move from the founders to the next 50 years requires of the Community to have a spirit of discernment that is far more intentional than it might have been in its early days, and a spirit of listening to God.”

The spirit of love and the mission to love have to be real and active not just in the interpersonal and Community but into the care and love for those on the margins of society, and “to be love to the unloved”.

A history of the LWC was given by Community members Ian Camacho and Adele Rose before the liturgy. Concelebrants at the Mass included Msgr Michael de Verteuil, Chairman of the Liturgical Commission; Frs Matthew Ragbir and Christopher Lumsden. Deacon Derek Walcott proclaimed the gospel. —LPG