It was a week like no other. So many facets of my life came together in one place, at the same time, connecting and coexisting in such a beautiful way. In March of this year I once again traveled with my husband to San Andrés Itzapa, Guatemala. Our home parish, St. Thomas More, has been in a relationship with the Carmelite Sisters of the Holy Family and the residents of San Andres for 30 years. Phil and I have been taking Notre Dame de Sion High School students on Guatemala Spring Break Mission trips for the past 6 years.

When I first heard about Sion’s trip to Guatemala, I was slightly skeptical. I was worried that there wouldn’t be a way for me to make the kind of impact that needed to be made in a community like the one that we were serving. San Andres Itzapa is so far removed from anything I had ever experienced in my life before. How could an unskilled and sheltered person like me possibly make a difference?

“When the sickle has begun to cut the ears, you will begin to count seven weeks. Then you will celebrate the feast of weeks” (in Hebrew: hag ha-shavuot, cf. Deut 16:9). Seven weeks (and even fifty days, cf. Lev 23:16) after the barley harvest at Pesah, the feast of Shavuot celebrates the end of the wheat harvest (in Hebrew: hag ha-katsir, cf. Ex 23:16). Later, the Exodus from Egypt was grafted onto the agricultural feast of Pesah, and the gift of the Torah onto the agricultural feast of Shavuot: From one harvest to the other, from spring to summer, the time of maturation, the passage from an external, physical liberation to a spiritual liberation. For Jewish tradition sees the gift of the Torah as the goal of the exodus from Egypt: “Let my people go that they may serve me”,  as Moses repeats tirelessly to Pharaoh in the Lord’s name (cf. Ex 4:22; 5:1; 7:16.28; 8:16; 9:1.13; 10:3). The service meant here is none other than welcoming the Torah and putting the commandments into practice …

A monthly group gathering on the last Thursday of the month, called “Praying Together in Jerusalem”, reminds me of the Psalm 122 and eventually becomes one of my favorite Psalms for my prayer during our apostolic ministry in our guest house at Ecce Homo, in the Old City. “I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord! Our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem”. Psalm 122:1 When I try to read and meditate on this Psalm, I arrive at the moment when I ask questions about a “house of the Lord” and “Jerusalem”. Why does the city become the house? Why did the psalmist use an image of a “house” to describe Jerusalem? Can we consider a house as a home where people take refuge, where members of a family live together, where the people come together in relationship? James Luther Mays says that Jerusalem is praised for three reasons: it is a place of refuge; a place of praise; and a place of justice. …

I did not know how to start to write this report, since the experiences in Krakow for these three and a half months have been very meaningful in our life with new feelings, knowledge and growing. So, one day I sat down and I asked God for the wisdom to write. I started when I was in Oswiecim in Poland “my faithful love, my bastion, my citadel, my Savior; I shelter behind him, my shield.” (Psalm 144, 2) In the text we will find many questions perhaps some will have answers and others will not, since they do not need to be answered, because the silence is the answer or perhaps we know already the answer, we do not need to respond to it, otherwise it will take time and many pages. We, María and I lived in the community in Krakow with Sister Ania nds, who received us with a beautiful welcome. We lived Sion´s spirit and charism in our community life, prayer life and apostolates (JCC-Jews Community Center- and the Montessori’s School). “Community …

Br. Élio, NDS shared with us his knowledge about the Resurrection on Monday Easter. He invited us to think about our tradition of faith from the biblical texts and Jewish interpretation. It is important to keep these dynamics between Synagogue and House of Study, one feeds the other and one should not take the place of the other, they have life only together. The Jewish religious universe is constituted from the world of the Synagogue which is the space where we manifest our life of faith, life of prayer, religious festivities (Yom Kippur, Shavuot, Passover, etc.) and religious acts (circumcision, Bar and Bat Mitzvah, weddings, etc.). The community of faith or individual observes and leads the liturgical world according to tradition, the habits and practices already received. In the same space, but with another purpose is the House of Study (Beit haMidrash), it is the place and the space of the search of God’s Word, where there are questions and trying to understand better, that is open to all. This quest is constant, it does …

“We are pilgrims on a journey. We are brothers on the road. We are here to help each other Walk the mile and bear the load.” (The servant song) “Knowing that“ his hour had come,” Jesus chooses to spend the last night of his life with his closest companions, one of whom would betray him, another who would deny him, all of whom would abandon him when he was arrested. What he does as he faces his own death is astonishing. He takes off his outer robe, wraps a towel around himself, and washes the feet of his companions, just as a slave would do. In all likelihood there would have been someone other than Jesus who welcomed the Teacher and his disciples when they arrived for the meal by washing their feet. So it would have come as a surprise on a number of different levels to the disciples when Jesus got up, as John tells us, in the course of the supper, and began to wash their feet. Why is the Teacher doing …