Greenville, RI - The new school year is bringing 12 new faces to Mater Ecclesiae College, the consecrated women’s formation center and college in Rhode Island. After completing a summer candidacy program, these young women – 9 from around the US, one from Mexico, one from Chile, and one from El Salvador – have decided to begin a program of discernment, living and studying with the consecrated women.

Magdalena Fainé, director of the first year of formation, explains the program in the following way:

“The purpose of this time of formation and discernment is to offer these young women time and means to further the discernment they started during summer candidacy, in an environment conducive to prayer and reflection, while experiencing a fraternal life in community and apostolic experiences within our spirituality.”

In this first year of formation, the young women are part-time students at MEC, with most of their focus placed on spirituality and deepening in prayer life. While they have meals and spend Sundays with the consecrated women at the college, their life has a slightly different rhythm, with more personal time open to prayer. They have daily Mass, adoration, and lectio divina, as well as prayer time together and with the consecrated women.

Their day also includes time for exercise, and personal time for extra prayer or for communication with family and friends. On Saturdays they have time for apostolic work: works of mercy at soup kitchens, pregnancy centers, and nursing homes; missions of evangelization organized by the diocese, and support for diocesan needs.

The academic load in the first year of formation is light, and includes classes on Christian spirituality, anthropology, consecrated life in the Church and Regnum Christi, and the Gospels.

“The entire first year is a deepening in Christ and an opportunity to know themselves better through prayer, classes, and various workshops,” says Magdalena. “They experience the consecrated life from within, in a gradual process, while not yet having made promises.”

These 12 women are the first group to begin a new process of discernment of consecrated life in Regnum Christi. This process is part of our current renewal of consecrated life and is still subject to adaptation, but as it stands now, aspirants to consecrated life will begin with 2 years of formation, followed by temporary, 3-year promises. 3 years later, those who wish to continue discerning will make a second set of 3-year promises. Those who have decided that they wish to live consecrated life will then make their final promises, after a total of 8 years – having had time to discern, pray, study, and experience fraternal and apostolic life with the consecrated women.

All of the young women are excited to begin their path of discernment, and all of them spoke of how they had experienced God’s love in his call to take a step toward possible consecration to him.

“Regnum Christi has given me the tools to see who Christ is in the reality of my life,” says Clare O’Donnell of Nebraska. “Through this contact with him and the consecrated women, something within me has been moved, and I want to be all his because he desires it. Although I have many questions and specifics still pending, I know he wants me here and I rejoice at this blessing from God.”