Being a new creation (Gal 6,15)

10 May 2019

#Christ, #Missionaries of Charity, #prayer, #Saint Paul, service

22nd April 2019: Genoa Airport, 1.40 pm. The person in charge of checking the documents of the passengers arriving from the flight coming from Tirana, having viewed my identity card, asked me with a smile: “Vacation?” and I : “To be honest, I’m a religious and I’ve been in Albania for an apostolic experience”. Leaving aside the fact that I would have branded as science fiction a similar dialogue with me as the protagonist until a few years ago, I would like to share with you something about the period I spent in the land of the Eagles.

One of the most beautiful memories is the meeting with the Missionaries of Charity, the female religious institute founded by Mother Teresa. During the time I spent in Tirana and Scutari, I did service more than once in their residences. What characterises their charisma is the commitment to serve “the poorest of the poor” and I can assure you that they embody this ideal perfectly. In the structures they manage, they welcome and house in a stable manner people born with serious physical and/or mental disabilities and who are rejected by their parents because of this, as well as several elderly who for reasons of age are no longer self-sufficient and who, without the help of the family, no longer receive any assistance. Every day they provide everything that is necessary to ensure them a dignified life.

But what amazed me was not what they do! What left me astounded me was their angelic appearance. Although they lead a very austere life, characterised by numerous deprivations and a rhythm of work that is difficult to sustain, their face is always radiant, a mask of peace and joy, stuff that would make a Buddhist monk envious. They are very kind and welcoming with guests, always gentle and patient with the people they care of. They are also capable of humour and irony. By spending time in their residences you understand concretely what Paul was talking about when he said that what matters is being “a new creation” (Gal 6:15). Speaking with them, one is then struck by hearing them say that service to the poor, their main occupation, is not the center of their life and that all their commitment originates and takes meaning from a relationship with Jesus, which transforms us and makes us more and more like Him.

This meeting confirmed me in the certainty that serving others and prayer give that fullness to which we aspire deeply and that other recipes are not able to guarantee us. Following the Lord can sometimes seem depersonalizing, but it is precisely in the decentralisation of ourselves and in the death of our egoism and our narcissism that we find what we really desire.

Sullo stesso argomento

The repetition of prayer: a frustrating or deeper experience?

by Andrea Cassar

During the month of Spiritual Exercises, I lived and experienced for the first time what St. Ignatius of Loyola calls the ‘Repetition of a meditation or contemplation exercise’. This consists in meditating a Bible passage or any other exercise described by St. Ignatius for a second time, putting emphasis on those points in which one has felt major consolation or desolation or greater spiritual feeling (Spiritual Exercises [62,2]).

When I got to know that I had to do this type of exercise, I was struck by a feeling of frustration and asked myself: “What else can this Bible passage tell me?” This thought had crossed my mind many times before the month of Spiritual Exercises and, in fact, it happened quite frequently to meditate on the same Scripture passage with wariness, lacking an attitude of engagement with the text. During this long retreat, however, I noticed that my frustration and dissatisfaction were hindering me from accepting a profound truth: that prayer does not depend on my thoughts and expectations, and that I’m not the protagonist of such a time. On the contrary, it is the benevolent presence of God that awaits me and desires to meet me as I am, even though I could feel distant from Him.

In the Letter to the Hebrews, Saint Paul writes that the word of God is alive and active and judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (cf. Heb 4:12); keeping in mind such truth, I didn’t feel the need to worry anymore about meditating the same passage and the same words of the Gospel. This experience brought about great inner freedom and it taught me how to let go of my expectations and ideals, which I usually set before starting the moment of prayer. With this disposition of the soul, I could face and engage, in much more depth, with the various repetitions of the Biblical passages, observing slightly clearer what my interior movements were telling me. Moreover, there were specific days where I experienced more “taste” in the second hour of prayer (the repetition) compared to the first hour, which proved to be hard and tedious.

I believe that this method of repetition, proposed by St. Ignatius in the Spiritual Exercises, could be useful and valid not only for personal and community prayer but also for our everyday life. Often, we find ourselves immersed in long days made up of a succession of things to do and this could provoke a sense of boredom and perhaps apathy in us, giving up on the beauty and surprises that such days could offer. In a world where joy seems to depend on the latest market news and the many earthly pleasures that weigh down the soul and try to wither our heart, stopping and taking the time to reread our days and delve into the true meaning of our everyday life may seem a waste of time. This is a real temptation and none of us is exempt from experiencing it, and could lead us to live our daily lives with mediocrity. Deciding to act against this temptation will help us recognise His living and consoling presence, particularly in those areas of our life where everything seems dull, unknown and dead.