Equipes Notre-Dame
The Equipes Notre-Dame , also Équipes Notre-Dame ( END ) are a spiritual community founded in France in 1938 of married couples in the Catholic Church . END groups have also existed in Germany since 1958.
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The END's concern is mutual assistance and the spiritual advancement of Christian married couples. For this purpose, around a handful of families / couples come together to form a fixed group in which the members share their lives in regular meetings and support each other spiritually and materially. The END want to help the married couples to live out of the sacrament of marriage, to shape their everyday life and to find a way to God together. There are also suggestions and help for the personal relationship with God, standing together before God as a couple and for the partnership relationship within the married couple.
The movement has written work topics for the group meetings that deal with marriage, family, faith and theology; Retreat and meditation days, seminars for married couples and families; regional and international meetings and encounters as well as a “monthly letter” as a link between the German-speaking groups.
Spiritual help and rules
If the marriage is to succeed all of life, the married couples must always strive for it. Therefore, the END couples plan to have time every day for personal, contemplative prayer, quietly and regularly to read the Holy Scriptures. There is also a personal resolution (a rule of life) that shapes life. It is important to pray together as a married couple. a. every day the Magnificat , as a connection to the whole movement and to the church. At least once a month, the married couples get together for an in-depth, marital conversation (called the “hour of reflection”, also DSA, “devoir de s'assoir”, the task of sitting down together as a married couple). After all, it is desirable, if possible, as a married couple to take time off once a year for a retreat or a spiritual weekend.
Group life
With this help the members try to deepen their faith and to get to know and love their spouses better and better. This works better in community, which is why four to six married couples and a priest form a group (équipe). Even if the END is a lay movement, the priest is a very important, equal member in any group. He represents the church and is at the same time the link to it, but has no leadership function. The monthly group meeting, despite all the differences between the individual groups, has common elements: It usually begins with a simple meal as an expression of community and friendship. Then read and consider a passage from the Bible together, appropriate to the day or the topic of conversation. It is important to have free common prayer with praise, thanks, intercession and the discussion of the concrete resolutions as mutual help and encouragement or the discussion about the work topic.
Community
The groups are independent, but not left alone. From the overall movement, they repeatedly receive impulses and impulses to stay awake and active, e.g. B. through the "monthly letter" and prepared work topics. The latter are an offer, not an absolute “must”. Eight to twelve groups form a sector, and the seven sectors in the German-speaking area are combined into one region. Regional and international meetings and seminars ensure a further exchange of experiences and ideas, even across national, language and mentality boundaries. Everything wants to help us to find and go our way to God with our spouse.
The history of the END
In 1938, a couple of young married couples and the vicar of their parish, Abbé Henri Caffarel, in Paris thought about how they could walk a path of faith as a married couple. This group had survived the difficult years of the war poorly and rightly in fraternal cooperation. When a free, religious life was possible again afterwards, further groups were founded. As early as 1947 there were so many that a charter - principle - had to be adopted so that all groups (equipes) live according to the same spirituality. Structures developed and the movement spread across France and soon in French-speaking Belgium and Switzerland. The END came to Germany from 1958 onwards through various channels of personal acquaintance.
The movement is now represented in all five continents with 12,000 equipes worldwide (as of October 2014); in Germany there are 70.
Footnotes
- ↑ What is the END? , accessed October 20, 2014.
- ^ Catholic News Agency , October 17, 2014.
