If I have to give a name of this week it would be: JOURNEY. From two points of view.

The first one is Helen’s long journey from Costa Rica to Israel. The second one is our retreat.

I am going to speak about the second. As for the first point I will let Helen tell you herself in the coming weeks.

As you maybe know we have had sister Maureen Cusick in our community for wonderful sessions on Human, Spiritual, biblical and theological development.

For a few days we had a retreat guided by sister Maureen. A lovely journey with God!

On the first day we were reflecting on our call, our Hineni -’’Here I am’’ using some of the personalities from the bible like: Abraham, Moses, Elizabeth, Mary. We have all been called by God and we answered positively; but where are you now in this process of developing your own call?

To develop the call, we must begin the journey. It is what we did in the second day. Helped by the text from the Luke 24: 13-35, “The walk to Emmaus” we were walking again through our journey.

During our journeys not, everything is easy. Sometimes some turbulence can appear or we can find ourselves wrestling with our limits and difficulties or really, we struggle with God like Jacob (Genesis 32: 22-32). Rabbi Lee Diamond said that, “Israel is the constant struggle, to reach our very best and if our struggle leaves us somewhat wounded, we must be Israel” (the ones who struggle with God )

Our whole life is about a journey, a pilgrimage, not just geographical but it has to be in particular an inner pilgrimage. In the dictionary we find this wonderful definition of pilgrimage: “a trip, often a long one, made to a holy place for religious reason”.

“Made to a holy place”! Amazing! Our inner self is a temple, a holy place for God.

In what condition is your temple? How often do you do this pilgrimage?

We give thanks to God for sister Maureen, who is here present among us! It has been a rich and blessed time for our community!

Iulia NDS
Ein Karem 23.11.2018