Butare, Rwanda - December 2024 - A specific formation session for Salesian Brothers in the Africa Great Lakes Vice-Province (AGL) working in the various communities concluded on Sunday, 15 December. During the two-day formation session, participants had the opportunity to share the theme ‘The identity and mission of the Salesian Brother in the Church’. Ndanga Spiridion, from the Marist Brothers, facilitator of the meeting, drew on Church documents and his own experience of secular religious life to recall that vocation is not a personal decision but an initiative of God, and that man as such does nothing more than respond to the call, an expression of God's infinite love. He emphasised that while for priest religious the clerical dimension dominates in the eyes of many, for lay religious the secular dimension better expresses and embodies the salient features of the person of Jesus, and becomes a gift for the world and a permanent mirror of fraternity. The participants appreciated this new practice of ongoing formation of the AGL Vice-Province, which not only helps them to strengthen their fraternal unity, but is also a moment of celebration and joy, an exchange of experiences and an opportunity to rediscover a taste for living one's lay vocation with pride and joy.